Just right morning. Ben Weiss right here filling in for Sheryl.
“I’m slightly of a boomerang,” Peggy Alford informed Fortune.
Within the early aughts, Alford labored at eBay, the place she taken with mergers-and-acquisitions due diligence. She left in 2005 however, as of Monday, she’s again on the on-line public sale area—because the newly minted CFO.
She returns to eBay as the corporate continues to go back to its roots. {The marketplace} began in 1995 as a house for quirky collector’s pieces, like uncommon Pokémon playing cards, area of interest Beatles posters, and antique leather-based jackets. However, because it rode the dot-com growth to new monetary heights, the e-commerce massive expanded past simply area of interest pieces.
“For a short while, eBay used to be seeking to turn out to be where the place you purchase and promote the whole thing,” Alford mentioned. “And now the focal point is on, ‘Let’s return to the wealthy historical past of creditors and those who desire a personalised, custom designed revel in.’”
As a substitute of seeking to compete with the the whole thing market Amazon, eBay has now attempted to refocus on secondhand items, like antique fashion designer type, beneath CEO Jamie Iannone. Over the last two years, as an example, it’s backed the Met Gala, the place celebrities on the type spectacle say they’re dressed in Courrèges—and eBay.
In some ways, Alford’s occupation tracks with eBay’s virtually three-decades-long historical past.
After she left the web public sale area in 2005, she entered the C-suite of Rent.com, an rental and houses apartment listings site that eBay bought for $415 million in 2004.
Then, in 2011, she jumped send to every other eBay acquisition: PayPal. The net public sale area had bought the fintech massive in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and Alford had helped vet the acquisition when she used to be first at eBay, she mentioned.
At PayPal, which eBay spun off right into a separate corporate in 2015, Alford rose during the ranks to turn out to be an govt vice chairman. She parlayed her revel in to land a place at the board of social media massive Meta.
Now, as she decorates her emblem new place of job in eBay’s headquarters in San Jose, California, Alford is taken with advising eBay on one in all its latest focuses: AI.
The buzzy tech vertical is one thing different eBay executives had been touting. Nitzan Mekel, leader AI officer on the on-line public sale area, not too long ago unveiled a personalised AI consumer at Fortune Brainstorm AI in London.
And Alford didn’t cut price the opportunity of AI offers as soon as she settles into her new function. “We will clearly be taking a look at M&A as smartly,” she mentioned. “We’ve a wealthy steadiness sheet, and so the facility to make strategic investments in M&A is a space that might be indubitably in focal point.”
Have a excellent Monday.
Ben Weissbenjamin.weiss@fortune.com
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