Alphabet’s X hires Impossible Foods alum Jessica Appelgren as it builds out marcomms team

X, a research and development facility and organization founded by Google, has hired Impossible Foods alum Jessica Appelgren as marcomms adviser for mature projects, a newly created role.

X works to invent and launch breakthrough technologies and businesses to solve major problems. Some of the companies and platforms that X has produced include Waymo autonomous cars, Verily Life Sciences, Wing delivery drones and artificial intelligence research team Google Brain. 

Appelgren joined the company in mid-April, reporting to Jodi Olson, head of marketing and communications for X. 

Olson, who has been in her role since last May, noted that X, formerly called Google X before the 2015 formation of Alphabet, launched 13 years ago and is starting to “experiment” with taking its marcomms work in new directions. 

More than half of X’s projects are focused on climate-mitigation and adaptation efforts, including supply-chain moonshot Chorus, global internet access company Taara and ocean protection organization Tidal. This year, X launched Alphabet’s newest company, Mineral, which focuses on making agriculture more sustainable. 

“We want to make X’s comms and marketing as creative and innovative as the other projects at X,” said Olson. 

Appelgren, who was most recently VP of marketing, experience and partnerships at Impossible Foods, will focus on X’s climate projects. 

She spent nearly seven years at Impossible Foods, building the brand from scratch “to the point it is now, which is on the global stage around sustainability,” Appelgren said. Impossible Foods’ portfolio of plant-based beef, chicken and pork products are sold in more than 30,000 grocery stores and 45,000 food-service locations nationwide. 

Appelgren said that one of the reasons she wanted to join X because it has a similar ethos to Impossible. 

“X is a place where science and technology and that optimistic mindset we harnessed at Impossible are being leveraged to change the world for the better,” she said. “We have never needed these breakthrough technologies more to help us solve these huge world problems, and X has been incubating this portfolio of projects and I am excited to be part of the team that brings those to the world.”

X’s marcomms team has two other staffers aside from Appelgren and Olson. It is planning to fill three other roles: digital marketing lead, internal communications lead and marcomms adviser for early stage projects. 

Appelgren said that the company is building out a team of marcomms experts to provide comms and marketing leadership for X's increasingly climate-focused projects. X does not work with a PR firm.

Google Ventures, an independent venture capital firm launched out of Google, was an early partner and investor in Impossible Foods. The company also served the product on Google campuses as a customer and provided support to the growing company, Appelgren said. In her role as Impossible Foods’ VP of communications, later VP of marketing, she met and worked with Olson, who led comms at Google Ventures for a decade.  

Impossible Foods declined to comment on Appelgren’s replacement.