Age: 30
From: San Francisco
Pole position: Uber employee No. 4, now head of global expansion and its PRO (process, resource, optimization) team, never thought she’d be leading the charge for a tech startup worth more than $50 billion. “I kind of fell into it. I had just finished school at Berkeley, and I was looking for a job.”
Lane change: With Uber now in 330 cities and counting, Geidt’s focus has expanded from launches to overall business operations. “There are a lot of opportunities for things to go off the rails—so that you don’t break into 330 different companies.”
Top gear: Geidt is also working on Uber’s 1 Million Women initiative, a plan to enroll a million female drivers by 2020. “We’re trying to understand how women drivers are interacting with our system. So far the results have been really interesting. They want to work part-time, and they’re juggling a lot.”
Race Ready: Wearing multiple hats comes naturally to Geidt. “It’s about learning my limits. I haven’t found them yet.”
A version of this article appears in the September 15, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine with the headline “Austin Geidt, Uber.”
