Lyft Expands Its Executive Team Adding Two VPs

We are thrilled to welcome two tech industry veterans to Lyft: Vice President of Growth Ran Makavy, and Vice President of Product Design, Henrique Penha. Ran joins Lyft from Facebook and brings incredible experience leveraging data science, deep market analysis, innovation, and hard technology to create products used by hundreds of millions of people. Henrique comes to Lyft from Apple where the focus of his work was making increasingly complex products and services simpler and easier to use.

Henrique Penha

Ran Makavy

In his role at Lyft, Ran will be focused on accelerating the growth of the business as we continue to change the way people think about car ownership and transportation. He was the founder and CEO of Sequoia Capital-backed Snaptu, a platform that allows mobile apps to run on any cell phone, including feature phones, which was acquired by Facebook in 2011. Snaptu - now known as “Facebook for Every Phone” or “Facebook Lite” - has over 200 million monthly active users and 1 billion downloads. Ran also led the team that started Internet.org, an effort to bring affordable internet access to everyone. Prior to founding Snaptu, he worked  on the initial team at Odigo, which was acquired by Comverse, and ran product at Followap, which was acquired by NeuStar. Ran holds a computer science degree and an MBA.

As VP of Product Design, Henrique will focus on the overall product experience. He'll take a design-driven approach to creating and imagining the way we navigate our urban landscapes and communities.

He joins Lyft from Apple's User Interface Team, where he led the development of multiple innovative software experiences across all of Apple's products. Prior to Apple, Henrique created Google's Android Design team and studio in London, leading the design of future components and services of the Android platform. Originally from Brazil, he holds a B.S. in Communication from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and a MS in Communication Studies from Boston University.

Ran and Henrique are joining Lyft at a time of unprecedented growth. Already this year Lyft closed on a $1 billion round of funding which included a $500 million investment from General Motors; launched operations, Lyft Line, and airport service in cities across the country; teamed up with California's MTC to launch Lyft Carpool; and together with GM, announced Express Drive making sure everyone who wants to be a Lyft driver has access to a qualifying vehicle.

We are excited to have Ran and Henrique on board as we continue fueling our forward momentum and working toward our vision of reconnecting people and communities through better transportation.