Today, we’re welcoming Brian Benedik as our VP of Global Revenue, leading our new sales organization. Joining us with over 25 years of experience leading sales teams, he will be responsible for increasing the footprint of our location-based advertising with marketers globally. Prior to joining Niantic, Brian served as the Global Chief Revenue Officer at Spotify, where he built and led their Global Sales, Operations, and Freemium Conversion Subscription teams. Prior to joining Spotify, Brian was the Founder & Managing Partner of Katz Digital, a digital sales arm of Katz Media covering online audio and video, mobile, and email marketing products.

I’m also excited to share that Erin Schaefer will join us as our new VP of Operations, starting October 29. Erin will oversee our customer support, data operations, advertising operations, and trust and safety efforts, championing the voice of our players and advertisers while also improving operational efficiency to enable innovations in mapping and augmented reality. Erin joins us from Google, where she spent over 14 years driving growth across operations, partnerships, sales, and finance by scaling teams, strategy, and processes. As Managing Director for Global Operations at YouTube, Erin led the development and enforcement of YouTube’s community guidelines and managed customer service experiences for the platform’s vast user, creator, and subscriber bases.

I’m thrilled to welcome Brian and Erin to Niantic. Their energy and enthusiasm for the mission of Niantic, combined with their tremendous experience and leadership in their respective fields, will help guide and accelerate our next phase of growth—so that we’re in an even stronger position to both meet our ambitious goals across AR and real-world gaming, and continue serving our growing global community of creators and players.

–Megan Quinn, Chief Operating Officer