SINGAPORE — Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading superapp, announced five industry leaders will join the team to further its superapp advertising capabilities and strengthen the technology, product, marketing, partnership, and operational capabilities of its GrabAds offerings. The executives will play a key role in growing and developing GrabAds, which connects advertisers large and small with millions of consumers across Southeast Asia.
They include Jennie Johnson as head of marketing for GrabAds; Kaia Lai as head of product for search and personalization technology; Christina Lin as product marketing lead for ads and personalization technology; Kareen Mendoza as regional financial services partnership lead, GrabAds, and Wong Yi Ling as head of sales operations, GrabAds.
In May, Grab announced its commitment to increasing the percentage of women in leadership roles as part of its annual Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) report. This is to ensure that the company has diverse voices in management positions and considers a variety of views in crafting and implementing policies and decisions.
Executives to helm marketing, technology, and business functions to further GrabAds’ growth
“We continue to build technology that connects advertisers with the millions of consumers who use Grab to commute, eat and shop every day. I’m thrilled to welcome these leaders, who will be instrumental in furthering the GrabAds mission: helping merchants and advertisers build their brand while driving real-world sales impact using Southeast Asia’s leading superapp,” said Ken Mandel, regional managing director and head of GrabAds and brand insights.
Jennie Johnson, who brings 15 years of experience in marketing and communications, will be leading brand building and demand generation to accelerate growth as head of marketing for GrabAds. A veteran in the industry, Johnson joins from adtech company The Trade Desk where she served as senior director of marketing, Southeast Asia. Previously, she led marketing at artificial intelligence company Appier and held positions at Google.
Kaia Lai has been appointed Head of Product for Search and Personalisation Technology of Grab. She will lead company-wide efforts to build a unified search strategy and platform for Grab, deepening the superapp’s personalization capabilities to delight end users. Lai was most recently Head of Product, Strategy, Marketing, and Operations for Grab where she led the platform strategy and consumer app redesign that transformed Grab into a multi-service superapp.
Christina Lin will be responsible for driving the adoption of GrabAds’ full-funnel advertising solutions as Product Marketing Lead for Ads and Personalisation Technology, and will work closely with product development to build solutions to help businesses of all sizes to harness the Grab ecosystem. Previously, she was with Facebook for a decade in the US, Singapore, and Japan, spearheading new business and product growth strategies.
Kareen Mendoza, Regional Financial Services Partnership Lead, will drive efforts to support financial services advertisers in harnessing the power of GrabAds to create meaningful engagements with high-value audiences. Mendoza previously led regional financial services brand partnerships at TikTok and sales of data services at audience measurement company Comscore.
Lastly, Wong Yi Ling has joined as Head of Sales Operations at Grab, where she will be responsible for driving sales operational efficiencies for the team and advertisers. She joins from Criteo where she led the sales transformation strategy and sales operations across Asia Pacific.
In 2021, Grab welcomed senior media and technology leaders David Baser, Ashu Mathura, Margaret Chang, and Dave Yang to strengthen the technology, product, and distribution capabilities of its advertising offerings. In 2022 Q1, the company logged a seven-fold increase in the GrabAds advertiser base as Grab merchants turn to the platform’s search and display functionality to drive sales.
