• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 7, 2014

As Instagram seeks to cement its position as a top digital platform, the photo-sharing network has found its first Chief Operating Office in Marne Levine.

Formerly Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, Levine helped Instagram’s parent company manage policy efforts for the last four years.

Reporting directly to Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom, Levine faces a number of challenges, from monetization issues and product innovation to talent recruitment (and retainment) and international growth.

“Marne will play a key role in setting up the company for our next stage of growth,” Systrom stated on Tuesday. Presently, Instagram boasts roughly 200 million users, according to Systrom.

Earlier in her career, Levine served as chief of staff for Larry Summers at the White House National Economic Council and during his tenure as president of Harvard.

“Marne also knows the product world, having managed a payments service at Revolution Money (sold to AMEX) and through her work at Facebook,” a Facebook spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Going forward, “Marne will be responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the [Instagram] business side of the company are prepared to keep pace with Instagram’s enormous growth,” the spokeswoman said. “She will be managing everything from HR, partnerships, marketing, monetization and business operations to policy and communications.”

This year, along with various efforts by Levi’s, Mercedes-Benz, Ben & Jerry’s, and other partners, a $40 million ad deal with Omnicom showed Madison Avenue’s confidence in Instagram. Still, since introducing advertising late last year, the Facebook unit has been careful not to inundate its users with brand messages.

On the product side, Instagram is slowly rolling out a Snapchat-like service named Bolt. Launched this summer in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa, Bolt is a one-to-one messaging app that lets users shoot and send photos and videos with a single tap. Like the popular messaging service Snapchat, once recipients swipe away a Bolt message, it effectively disappears.   

Facebook has shown a penchant for filling top positions at Instagram with its own executives. This summer, for example, the social giant moved its Regional Director James Quarles into the role of Instagram’s global head of business and brand development.

Levine is expected to transition over to Instagram in a number of months.

U.S. social media advertising revenues will exceed $11 billion in 2017, almost double last year’s total of $6.1 billion, according to the latest forecast from Mintel.