• TikTok advertising executive Khartoon Weiss is leaving the company.
• Weiss, who spent almost six years at TikTok, oversaw its North America ads business for the past year.
• Weiss is one of several advertising and marketing execs to leave TikTok this year.

TikTok's advertising team is undergoing another big shake-up.

Khartoon Weiss, the lead exec for TikTok's North American ads business, is exiting the company, four people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

Weiss, who pitched TikTok's suite of ad products to marketers onstage at its NewFronts event last month, joined the company almost six years ago from Spotify. She oversaw TikTok's global agency and accounts teams before being promoted to lead the North America division of the global business solutions team in March 2025, following the departure of advertising head Blake Chandlee.

Digiday first reported on Weiss' exit.

Weiss' exit is the latest in a string of advertising and marketing team departures at TikTok.

Zuber Mohammed, TikTok's global head of consumer marketing, left the company in March. Sofia Hernandez, the global head of business marketing and commercial partnerships, and Rema Vasan, who headed up business marketing in North America, left the company last quarter.

Other teams at TikTok have also seen leadership changes this year, including the company's content division, which lost its global head of creators, Kim Farrell, in January.

Some of the executive exits have shifted control of North America teams to leaders from Singapore or China. When Chandlee left last year, oversight of the sales team, known as global business solutions, moved to Singapore-based executive Will Liu, for example.

TikTok's US team restructured in January while forming a new joint venture to transfer certain work, like US user data management, to a separate group that includes Oracle and investment firms MGX and Silver Lake. Its advertising and marketing teams remain under the control of parent company ByteDance.

As part of the structural change, Adam Presser, a trust and safety executive, became CEO of the US joint venture. Presser appeared alongside Weiss at TikTok's March NewFronts presentation to assure advertisers that the company's ads experience would not be disrupted amid internal changes.

• Taylor M. LaSane built a career coaching side hustle while working at Google.
• Last year, she accepted a voluntary buyout to focus on her business full-time.
• She shared why she made the leap — and her advice for others weighing major career moves.

Last June, Taylor M. LaSane faced a decision she'd been weighing for years: whether to walk away from her six-figure salary at Google to go all in on the career coaching business she started three years earlier.

Google had just offered voluntary buyouts to some US-based employees, including those in the finance organization where she worked, positioning the program as an option for workers who didn't feel "all in" on the company's direction.

LaSane said her buyout offer included just under six months of severance pay. While the payout would help ease her transition to entrepreneurship, the risk was still significant. She said her income from the business was roughly 10% of what she earned at Google — and she had to weigh the financial implications for her husband and their twin toddlers.

Around this time, LaSane learned about the unexpected death of her uncle at the age of 62. She said he had recently retired and been looking forward to having time to "relax and actually live." His death, coupled with the buyout offer, made her question how long she was willing to wait to pursue her own plans.

"It was a reminder that life is too short to wait for permission," said LaSane, who is 32 and lives in Atlanta.

She ultimately decided to apply for the buyout and, after being accepted, took the offer — with her employment formally ending in October.

Over the past year, I've interviewed more than a dozen workers like LaSane, many of them from Big Tech companies, who chose to quit their jobs without having another role lined up. Some eventually landed at another large company. Others stepped away from the corporate world entirely — joining smaller firms, launching their own ventures, pursuing career pivots, or focusing on personal priorities, such as parenting.

These people have become outliers in an economy where workers are quitting at one of the lowest rates in the past decade — a trend fueled by a hiring slowdown across tech and other sectors that has left many holding tightly to their jobs with few appealing alternatives.

Those who walked away told me they did so for a range of reasons: concerns about job security, changes in workplace culture, entrepreneurial ambitions, or a desire for more meaningful work. The common theme: they were seeking greater long-term control over their careers.

TikTok visibility and motherhood slowed the business

In addition to LaSane's main role at Google, she volunteered as a career coach through an internal program for Google employees. She said she enjoyed the work and led as many as eight 40-minute coaching sessions in a given week.

In 2022, after seven years with Google, her growing interest in coaching — among other factors — began laying the foundation for her eventual exit.

That February, she began making career-focused TikTok videos. Around the same time, she began questioning whether her role was the right fit for her after she worked hard for a promotion, earned it, and still felt an "empty feeling."

"I was taking meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning, my hair was falling out, it was not a great time," she said. "And then I got the promotion, and I felt worse than I did before."

After reassessing her priorities, she took another step toward career coaching. In May 2022, she formally launched SHYNE, a coaching company focused on helping corporate professionals navigate career transitions. Later that year, in October, she earned a certification in leadership and performance coaching from Brown University.

From there, LaSane began taking on clients in her spare time and generating a modest income. But two factors held her back from pursuing the business more aggressively: the time constraints of juggling a full-time job and her growing concerns about the visibility of her growing TikTok presence.

LaSane said a few Google colleagues mentioned seeing her videos, and while she was never discouraged from posting, she worried about the potential career implications of being so visible online. So she decided to scale back her posting.

"I think I was trying to balance having a business on the side, but also managing the internal corporate brand," she said.

In 2023, another development pulled her away from her side business: she became pregnant with twins. In May of that year, LaSane took a break from the business that lasted until around September 2024 — spanning her pregnancy and about 10 months away from work, including eight months of company-provided maternity leave and two months of vacation and medical leave. When she returned to Google in the fall, she also refocused on growing her business.

Going all in on entrepreneurship

LaSane decided to trade TikTok for LinkedIn as her primary platform — and leaned more into group coaching and live events. Then in early 2025, she began questioning more seriously whether her position at Google was still the right fit, as organizational changes — including a growing emphasis on AI — left her increasingly uncertain about her responsibilities and long-term path.

At the same time, she believed in her business's potential — and felt the eight to 20 hours a week she could devote to it outside work and family obligations were limiting its growth. She also weighed her job security at Google, which she felt wasn't guaranteed.

"Big Tech layoffs are happening everywhere, so it wasn't like staying there was necessarily any more stable than leaving," she said.

So when she learned about Google's buyout option and mulled it over, she decided to apply and was approved. After assessing her family's financial situation — which included her husband's income and her business earnings — she accepted the offer.

LaSane said that, on the whole, Google was a "great company to work for," adding that the community she built there is what she'll remember most fondly.

In recent months, LaSane said her business has evolved from a focus on one-on-one coaching into a "career studio" with workshops and group coaching programs. She's not currently taking a personal salary from the business, but said individual events and programs have generated revenue. She said last year's Dream Day event — a live coaching workshop — brought in about $3,000 in revenue.

LaSane said she wants to give herself at least a year to pursue the business full-time before considering a pivot back to the corporate world.

"I thought about the story I wanted to tell my kids," she said. "That she took this kind of risk and was willing to bet on herself in this way — that's the story I want them to know. So I think bailing out too soon wouldn't fit the narrative."

Among her top pieces of advice for people navigating their careers: Chase the purpose and future you want — not the one you think you're supposed to have.

"If you get clear about that, everything else will fall in place," she said. "That's what happened for me."

• Allison Sheehan ran a baking business while working in private wealth at Goldman Sachs.
• She left Goldman after she said the firm told her she couldn't keep her online brand.
• Now, she's using her Wall Street skills, like capital allocation, to scale her cake business.

This as-told-to is based on a conversation with Allison Sheehan, 26, a former analyst for private wealth at Goldman Sachs and student at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, where she's building her baking brand, Alleycat. Business Insider has verified her roles at Goldman and her current school enrollment. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Baking cakes started out as a college hobby — I'd make them for my sorority sisters and, once word got out, the broader Dallas community. When I landed a job in operations at Goldman Sachs in Utah, I stopped baking entirely, though I still longed to build up my cake empire. I had no family, no friends, no nothing in Utah, and was focused on getting transferred to New York.

I eventually got a job in the wealth management unit in New York. It was a part operational, since I was opening accounts and managing money, but also client-facing, which I loved.

As soon as I got to New York, I restarted my baking social media accounts, which had around 500 followers at the time, and announced that I was back in business. Orders picked up, but I didn't have time for all of them, so I capped it at three cakes a week, creating a scarcity model. I sold out weekly for about 6 months before expanding to up to 10 cakes.

That's when I started struggling to fit everything in, but I was getting good traction, making cakes for companies and fashion houses, like Goop. A typical day meant waking up at 5 am to frost a cake, going to the gym, going to work, baking a cake, going to dinner with friends, and going to sleep. I spent all my spare moments invoicing clients or editing videos. In 2023, my friend's boyfriend said I should post under the handle "investment__baker," but I was careful not to mention anything about where I worked or my exact job.

I learned valuable skills at Goldman

Goldman's high-stakes hustle culture has helped me build the brand — I had to be responsive, communicative, and accurate, all skills I use now. I always quickly consolidate my notes and immediately flag any concerns to product developers or suppliers. On the communication front, I'm able to connect people across the supply chain, from technical food scientists to more creative-minded brand designers. And when it comes to accuracy, I'm precise about costs, even on volatile products like cocoa, and margins.

In wealth management, I learned a lot about capital allocation, helping clients balance their portfolios and plan for expenses. But I learned just as much from my own failures.

After I started taking on more orders, I rented a commercial kitchen on the Lower East Side to bake and teach workshops. It solved logistical problems but drained my bank account. Every penny I made from baking went toward rent, and I eventually had to return to my apartment. That was definitely not a good capital allocation strategy, since it almost left me broke.

Goldman gave me an ultimatum

At that point, I knew I needed to go all in on my business and decided to apply to business school. Studying for the GRE while working and running the business was unsustainable.

My health deteriorated, and I broke down at work, having a panic attack and sobbing to my very understanding VP. I went home to Wisconsin for two weeks, shut down all of my social media accounts, and brought my brand to an awful, screeching halt.

Six months later, I reopened the account, with 2,000 fewer followers and almost no DMs. The momentum came back quickly, though, until, boom: Goldman's compliance team called me in and asked me to delete all of my content or leave the firm. They said the word "investment" on my social handles alluded to my job, and I had to delete everything. After finishing my business school interviews a few months later, I un-archived all of the content, got called in again, and quit.

I couldn't waste the five years of time and energy I'd poured into this business.

Goldman is still helping me now

I've scaled back my custom cake business and am focused on building my consumer packaged goods products: dry cake mixes and frosting, like the kind you can scoop out of the jar. I've finished the formulation, secured suppliers, and gotten my nutritional label approved, but I'm still struggling to find a manufacturer.

Small brands have to convince manufacturers they're a worthwhile investment. From their perspective, why spend time onboarding a tiny Instagram baker who could easily fail?

That's where Goldman has come in. Beyond knowing how to build a nice deck and balance a budget, my background at such a prestigious firm lends me credibility. It comes up in conversations, and I'll include it in presentations, since I'm proud to have worked there. The firm is relevant to my online brand, too, since I still post as the investment baker and share investing advice.

I'm making a fraction of my Goldman salary, but I'm fundamentally a creative person. I couldn't spend my life behind a desk. When I started, my goal was to make a cake for a celebrity, which I've done multiple times, including for Brooke Shields. Now, I want to bring home baking back — and revolutionize the grocery aisles.