TikTok chief operating officer V Pappas opens up about their professional and personal journey to the apex of the global tech sector.
V Pappas never imagined that their media identities studies at the University of Queensland in the late 1990s would set them up to run one of the world’s most controversial tech companies.
“I don’t worry if you don’t use V or they/them all the time, but I do appreciate the effort to recognise my preferences.”Pappas has had a rollercoaster ride as a US-based executive of TikTok, which is potentially reaching its zenith as a viral video company. The app has been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times worldwide. More than 1 billion users watch its snappy videos every month.
When Pappas was around 10, the family was drawn to the bright lights of Brisbane, where a life-changing event occurred in the family home. “It’s still difficult for people now to understand what roles might be available for somebody who doesn’t want to be an engineer or coder.” Bouncing around marketing and design jobs, Pappas met their future wife while on a trip to New York City.
Developing new audiences and the burgeoning creator economy became Pappas’ core focus, and they spent the next seven years at YouTube helping music artists, media publishers and other creators attract an audience and build a business.TikTok came into view around 2016, when Pappas met Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, which had created the Chinese-centric video app Douyin, and Alex Zhu, the founder of Musical.ly, which went on to become the “global facing” TikTok app.
Pappas was the person for the job, and they took on the role of general manager at TikTok’s new US business when the company launched in 2017.V Pappas, the Australian-born chief operating officer at TikTok, facing Congressional questions.This focus on localisation was an abrupt change from YouTube, which had a global-first approach and standardised its products, but Pappas could see that content creators would gravitate to a short-form video platform like TikTok.
A broad-based understanding that Chinese companies could be compelled to open their data rooms to the CCP had swept through global markets, and fears were rife that the biometric facial data collected by TikTok through its filters, as well as the geolocation and identifiable data, might find its way into the party’s hands.
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