Head of The Walt Disney Company’s Direct-to-Consumer and International business is leaving Disney to become CEO of TikTok and COO of parent company ByteDance.

Founder Yiming Zhang will remain as CEO of ByteDance. President of TikTok Alex Zhu moves to ByteDance as Vice President of product and strategy.

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to join the amazing team at ByteDance. Like everyone else, I’ve been impressed watching the company build something incredibly rare in TikTok – a creative, positive online global community – and I’m excited to help lead the next phase of ByteDance’s journey as the company continues to expand its breadth of products across every region of the world.

Kevin Mayer – TikTok CEO

Mayer oversaw the very successful launch of Disney+ last year. Such success in a streaming role, makes Kevin Mayer a great choice for short-form video app TikTok. This and a high-profile American running the app is a great move at a time where politicians and the public are raising concerns about the Chinese companies privacy and security issues.