The most recent skirmish in the ongoing battle between Lyft and Uber played out in the finance and internal audit executive offices of the ride sharing services.
Today, Lyft announced in a blog post that it had hired away Michelle DeBella, who, until last month, had been global head of internal audit at Uber. At Lyft she will fill the post of vice president of finance strategy. According to the blog, she will be responsible for “architecting Lyft’s finance organization for rapid scale and growth.”
She was mostly recently the chief audit executive at Uber, where she nearly doubled the size of the internal audit team during her time there starting in September 2017. Before Uber, she spent eight years at Hewlett-Packard (and later Hewlett-Packard Enterprises), where she was vice president of internal audit overseeing a global team of nearly 250 people.
“I had the pleasure of working with Michelle for several years at HPE and am excited to partner with her once again at Lyft,” said Maggie Wilderotter, chairwoman of Lyft’s audit committee and a member of the board of directors. “Michelle’s pragmatic and collaborative approach to financial leadership is exactly what we need to position Lyft for future success and grow the business responsibly.”
The move comes at a crucial time for both companies as they both work to prepare for an initial public offering. As of press time, Uber had yet to name a replacement to head its internal audit function. 