Erin Elofson helped build Pinterest’s Canadian operations from the ground up. Now she’s tasked with doing the same in Australia and Japan. After studying communications at the University of Calgary and completing a co-op with an oil and gas company, the Alberta native landed an internship at Microsoft, and Elofson says once she got a taste of the tech industry there was no going back.
Soon after she joined Microsoft’s Toronto office, then took on a role at Facebook (now Meta), before being tapped to help establish Pinterest’s presence in Canada. In 2018, Elofson became one of six original hires in the company’s Canadian operation that now counts more than 200. Less than three years after establishing Pinterest’s foothold in Canada, Elofson’s territory was expanded to include the Asia-Pacific region as well.
Today Elofson leads three national markets as Pinterest enjoys a wave of growth fuelled by younger users looking for a respite from the toxicity and negativity that defines so much of their online experience — and with them, a growing crop of businesses seeking to reach that demographic. Pinterest, meanwhile, continues to lean into that more positive user experience, onboarding new technologies to make its users feel better about themselves and more optimistic about their futures, and the strategy appears to be working. In January, Pinterest that its monthly active users jumped 12 per cent last year to 518 million, 42 per cent of who are members of generati.
