“Harvard double” Adam Presser takes charge of TikTok’s new joint venture in the United States with a mission to turn a moment of regulatory reset for the Chinese company into a lasting success story.
Presser was chief of staff to TikTok’s global CEO, Shou Zi Chew, between April 2022 and July 2023, until he reached the position of head of operations and then head of operations and trust and safety, according to his LinkedIn profile. Based in Los Angeles, he now assumes one of the most politically sensitive roles in the technology sector: leading, in a context in which the company tries to calm Washington’s concerns and, at the same time, maintain its user base.
TikTok did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
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Still, Presser seems well prepared for the challenge, in light of his elite background and a nearly 20-year corporate career. He studied at the private Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles. He then went to Yale, where he graduated with a degree in Chinese Language and a master’s degree in East Asian Studies. While at Yale, Presser received the Richard U. Light Scholarship, which funds Chinese language studies abroad, and spent time in China.
His interest in China began with Chinese films, he said in a 2023 interview at the John Thomas Dye School in Los Angeles, where he studied before enrolling at Harvard-Westlake.
“For three years in high school, I watched Chinese films and had this extremely eye-opening experience of realizing that at first glance it was a very different and distant language and culture, but through the films you began to realize that many of the themes were the same as you would see in any typical Western film,” Presser said, according to the school.
Academic training and corporate career
After Yale, he completed an MBA at Harvard Business School and law school at Harvard Law School.
Early in his corporate career, Presser used his knowledge of Chinese as a senior director for Ticketmaster in China. He later held executive positions at Warner Bros. Entertainment and then WarnerMedia. In the latter, one of his roles was to lead the company’s business in China, Australia and New Zealand.
International experience and history with China could be an important asset as TikTok’s U.S. joint venture tries to protect American users’ data without compromising on offering a “global TikTok experience,” according to the company’s announcement.
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The new company, called TikTok USDS Joint Venture, was announced on Thursday and will be majority controlled by American investors. Under the new structure, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese controller, will have just a 19.9% stake, in line with The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law approved by Congress in 2024. Oracle, the investment manager Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, MGX, will each have 15% of the joint venture, according to a company statement.
Although global CEO Shou Zi Chew sits on the board of the new American company, Presser becomes the day-to-day face of the US business, at a time when every detail of governance must be closely scrutinized. Representatives from Silver Lake, Oracle, MGX, among others, will also be part of the board.
Presser’s promotion “has all the appearance of a decision that seeks continuity and credibility,” Shawn Cole, president and co-founder of Cowen Partners Executive Search, told Fortune. Cole described Presser as an in-house executive with in-depth knowledge of the media industry, a direct connection to TikTok’s global CEO and someone who “understands the ins and outs of regulatory oversight in the US,” thanks to previous experience as the platform’s head of trust & safety.
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The creation of TikTok’s American entity is the culmination of an effort that went through the Donald Trump administration and successive administrations in Washington to force the removal of Chinese influence over the company — under the threat of a total ban — amid fears that the platform could be used to access American data or influence public opinion.
Still, with Presser at the helm, Cole believes TikTok’s U.S. joint venture will be more of an evolution of the current model than a complete departure.
“The agreement was designed to alleviate the concerns of the American government, and Presser is a logical choice to carry that message,” he said.
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