Dive Brief:
- Archana Deskus is leaving Intel to serve as EVP and CIO at PayPal starting March 28. The executive, who served as Intel's SVP and CIO, will oversee PayPal's global information technology operations, the company said Monday.
- Deskus will report directly to president and CEO Dan Schulman. In her new role, Deskus will focus on optimizing internal technology processes and systems, said Schulman in the announcement.
- Intel CTO Greg Lavender will serve as acting CIO as the search for a permanent CIO is underway, Intel said in an emailed statement. In February of last year, former VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger took over the CEO role at Intel to execute an ambitious turnaround plan at the chipmaker.
Dive Insight:
PayPal's appointment of Deskus, a seasoned CIO with stints at Timex, Baker Hughes, Ingersoll Rand and HPE, comes after a pullback in earnings and user projections.
In its Q4 2021 earnings report, PayPal said it no longer expected to meet a previously set goal of 750 million active users by 2025. Revenue growth projections for 2022 were also pulled back from 18%, to between 15% to 17%.
Deskus also joins the company following a period of intense investment in tech and engineering.
Over the last two years, PayPal invested nearly $1 billion "over and above our historical spend in areas like engineering, technology, marketing, and customer support, all of which have generated tremendous returns for us," said John Rainey, CFO and EVP, Global Customer Operations at PayPal, according to a Motley Fool transcript of the earnings call.
Deskus will split out the CIO role once again after it was combined with the CTO role. Bradley Strock served as global CIO until 2018, when the executive retired after more than seven years at the company.
Strock's role was then combined with Sri Shivananda’s CTO role, PayPal said in an email statement.
