Alibaba makes leadership changes to HR and tech divisions

Alibaba Group Holdings has announced the promotion of Jane Jiang Fang to the role of Chief People Officer. She will succeed Judy Tong Wenhong, effective 1 April 2023.

Jiang is one of Alibaba’s 18 original co-founders and has been a senior executive in the human resources team responsible for personnel management, including community building, as well as the safety and satisfaction of employees.

Other leadership changes at the Chinese e-commerce giant include the appointment of Wu Zeming as CTO, replacing Cheng Li. Wu, who became a partner at Alibaba in 2017, will retain his other role as CTO of local services.

Cheng, who will transition to an adviser role, is one of several Alibaba veterans who joined payment services Alipay in 2005. He was promoted to CTO of Ant Group, the current operator of Alipay and an affiliate of Alibaba, in 2014 and then to CTO in late 2019.

As part of the new leadership structure at Alibaba, Daniel Zhang Yong, Chairman and CEO of the Chinese e-commerce giant, will also assume the role of Acting President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, as well as its enterprise communications app, DingTalk. Meanwhile, Jeff Zhang Jianfeng has stepped down as Cloud Business Chief, but will continue to lead Alibaba’s Damo Academy, an in-house science and technology research unit, as well as the organisation’s chip development team T-Head and its Internet of Things initiatives, reported South China Morning Post.