Claire Hughes Johnson

Claire Hughes Johnson is the chief operating officer of Stripe and a board member at Hallmark Cards. Previously, she was a vice president and the director for online sales and operations at Google.

Stripe creates back-end systems that allow startups and small businesses to accept and receive payments online. Claire Hughes Johnson, who joined the company in 2014 after leading Alphabet’s self-driving-car initiative, helped take Stripe global in February 2016 with the launch of Atlas, a tool kit that enables any business, anywhere in the world, to incorporate in the United States.

For $500, Atlas eliminates expensive and time-consuming legal and logistic hurdles to quickly allow startups to accept payments through a U.S. bank account—and use Stripe’s merchant services. So far, thousands of businesses have signed up for Atlas, a number that has the potential to grow exponentially, according to Johnson: “Less than 5% of commerce globally happens online,” she says. “This is a huge frontier.” Plus, it isn’t just about facilitating transactions: “[Stripe’s] core products are really about economic access,” she adds—helping people realize their business ideas and catalyzing job growth.

Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University and master’s degree in strategy and marketing from Yale School of Management.

Johnson lives in San Francisco, California, United States.