American ride-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc. has faced a tumultuous past year, to say the least: widespread sexual harassment accusations, a lawsuit from Alphabet (GOOGL  ) over self-driving car technology, the resignation of CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick, and, as announced last week in the New York Times, an investigation by the Department of Justice on the matter of international bribery.

Last week, however, the Uber board was able to make some progress on stabilizing the company's management by settling on a new CEO (after 70 full days of being leaderless, according to CNN). The man they chose for the role is Dara Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi, 48, is an Iranian-American businessman residing in Seattle, Washington and has been the CEO of travel company Expedia (EXPE  ) for the past 12 years, as well as a board member of the New York Times Company (NYT  ). Though by no means a celebrity in the tech world, Khosroshahi is respected by many for turning Expedia into the largest online travel agency in the United States. As reported by Business Insider, he oversaw revenue growth from $2.1 billion in 2005 to $8.7 billion in 2016, and is credited with smartly managing sites for car rental and hotel bookings, such as Orbitz (OWW  ), Hotels.com, and Trivago (TRVG  ). He will remain on Expedia's board when he moves to Silicon Valley and transitions to leading Uber.

© Phocuswright / flickr.com

Evident in leaked audio by Yahoo Finance, Khosrowshahi was not at first interested in the position when approached by Uber headhunters, but changed his mind on advice given to him by Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify. Among the candidates for Uber's CEO, Khosrowshahi was the only one to not publicly campaign for the position, and was at first an unlikely pick for the company due to his low public profile. However, the board finally chose him as the most reliable leader; his likeability and Glassdoor approval rating of 93% certainly strengthened his candidacy.

Uber announced that the board was "confident that Dara is the best person to lead Uber into the future building world-class products, transforming cities, and adding value to the lives of drivers and riders around the world while continuously improving our culture and making Uber the best place to work." Khosrowshahi looks forward to his Uber role because he believes the company is "reinventing the transportation industry and is one of the most powerful brands in the world... I'm excited to shape that unfinished story." He says his main priority is helping employees get back "to running a company they can be proud of," according to The New York Times.

Khosrowshahi is facing many obvious challenges. Uber is still looking to fill its positions of chief financial officer and chief operating officer, which also became vacant during recent resignations amidst the scandals. Though it is currently the most valuable privately-held tech startup (calculated at more than $60 billion according to Business Insider), Uber investors have been marking down investments. According to CNN, the company reported a loss of $645 million in one quarter.

The new CEO, however, is optimistic despite this. Last week he made the bold surprise announcement that he plans on Uber going public on the stock market; aiming for initial offerings to begin within 18-36 months, according to the Financial Times. Khosrowshahi believes that this will make up for the app's market share losses, and maximize its potential to not only bounce back, but expand to unprecedented greatness.