SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15, 2022––Ethos, the largest term life insurance provider in the U.S., has hired Sheila Vashee as Chief Marketing Officer. Vashee joins from early stage investing firm Basis Set Ventures; prior to that she held high-profile roles at Opendoor and Dropbox. At Ethos, she will focus on building and scaling all marketing, growth, and brand efforts across B2B and consumer to support Ethos' rapid growth.
"The key role Sheila played growing Opendoor and Dropbox really impressed us," said Peter Colis, Ethos co-founder and CEO. "We're excited that she shares our enthusiasm about the market opportunity in front of Ethos as well as our commitment to protecting the next million families."
Vashee said, "I couldn't be more thrilled to join Ethos. I look for three main things when I'm joining a new company: size of the opportunity, strength of the team, and acuteness of the customer need. Ethos meets all of these and more; it's the challenge I've been waiting for."
As VP of Marketing and Growth at Opendoor, Vashee was responsible for marketing, growth operations, and agent partnerships across both sides of the buyer and seller marketplace, helping to take the company to 20+ markets. Prior to Opendoor, she was the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she was responsible for all new product launches, including the launch and growth of Dropbox Business and Dropbox Enterprise, as well as brand, product, social, events, and corporate marketing teams. In over five years, she helped grow the Dropbox user base to 600m users and over $1 billion in revenue.
Ethos recently acquired Seattle startup Tomorrow, which democratizes access to critical financial instruments for free, such as legal wills and trusts. The company has been growing at a significant rate and issued over $13 billion of life insurance coverage last year. In 2021, Ethos was valued at $2.7 billion after raising over $400 million from Sequoia Capital, Accel, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, GV, General Catalyst and Jay-Z's Roc Nation. Revenue and users grew by more than 600 percent year-over-year in 2021.
Clearly signaling its focus on growth and scale, Ethos has significantly strengthened its executive bench recently, adding Anan Kashyap from Poshmark as CFO, Troy Thompson from Legal & General America as Chief Actuary, and industry veteran Marty Schafer as its first Chief Distribution Officer, as well as promoting Vipul Sharma to Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Lingke Wang to President.
Ethos has offices in Austin, San Francisco, and Singapore, and team members in 35 states and four countries.
About Ethos Ethos is a technology company. We make it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families with life insurance. Ethos has created the insurance industry's most advanced proprietary technology, eliminating the traditional barriers to life insurance by developing instant and accessible products that make it easy for everyone to protect their families with life insurance online, in minutes without any medical exams. We issue billions in coverage each month and an invaluable amount of peace of mind for our families every single day. Ethos is a global company, with offices in Austin, San Francisco, and Singapore. To learn more, visit www.ethoslife.com.