Q&A with DoorDash’s CPO, Mariana Garavaglia

Our new Executive Function series features perspectives from leaders driving transformation through AI.

DoorDash is one of the world's leading local commerce platforms that helps businesses of all kinds grow and innovate, connects consumers to the best of their neighborhoods, and gives people fast, flexible ways to earn. We spoke with Mariana Garavaglia, Chief People Officer about measuring AI literacy, using AI to augment human judgment, and how it is helping employees make an even deeper impact. 

You’ve previously described HR operating more like a product team or R&D lab. How has AI enabled or accelerated that kind of transformation at a company like DoorDash?

First, it helps to understand how we operate at DoorDash overall—it’s an operator culture. 

Everyone is expected to deeply understand the consumer experience and move with the speed and mindset of a product team. Long before AI advances, we were already constantly running experiments—from conversion rates to marketing campaign efficacy. AI now supercharges that by accelerating how quickly we can learn, test, and iterate.

Tooling is a core responsibility for my HR and IT teams, and AI plays a key role across three layers. First, we focus on access and literacy—ensuring everyone, including non-technical roles, can use frontier tools like co-pilots through enterprise rollouts, hackathons, and tutorials. Second, we integrate internal data to break down silos, enabling AI-powered search and smarter content delivery. Third, we’re exploring where AI agents can take on tasks in a smart, trusted way. The goal is not just automation but also enhancement of core workflows that improves the way our employees experience their work.

What AI tools or capabilities have been most impactful to your operations or for employees day-to-day?

“Across all teams, we’re super excited about how AI is enabling us to accelerate building these experiences. It really accelerates the speed with which we can learn and test and iterate.”

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