When Uber announced last year that Ms. Huffington had joined the board, it released a video
that featured a softer side of Mr. Kalanick and a warm, maternal voice-over from Ms. Huffington.
A year later, Ms. Huffington met Mr. Kalanick at a technology conference in Munich,
and the two bonded over Uber’s potential to solve big urban problems.
It now falls to Ms. Huffington, Ms. Martello and Bill Gurley, another board member
and a partner at the venture capital firm Benchmark, to complete some of the urgent tasks at Uber, like vetting candidates for a chief operating officer.
(Ms. Huffington recently visited the hospital where Mr. Kalanick’s father, who was injured
in a boating accident, was staying, according to two people with knowledge of the event.)
“Her guidance has been invaluable to me personally over the years, and I know
that in this new role she’ll help take Uber to the next level,” Mr. Kalanick said in the announcement.
Some Uber executives have grown wary of her close ties with Mr. Kalanick, according to three employees close to executive deliberations.
After divorcing Mr. Huffington in 1997, Ms. Huffington became known for switching allegiances from Newt Gingrich
and the Republican Party to the world of left-wing satire.
“I was interested in not just what Uber had achieved,
but in its future,” said Ms. Huffington, who later founded Thrive Global, a health and wellness business, in 2016.