Lime wants to be more than a scooter startup - and its hired an executive from one of the world's most well-known luxury fashion companies to help it get there

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Lime's France director Arthur-Louis Jacquier poses near a dock-free electric scooter Lime-S by California-based bicycle sharing service Lime on their launch day in Paris, France,

• Lime's latest high-profile hire is hoping to bring her experience at one of the world's most famous luxury brands to the bike and scooter startup.
• After more than six years at LVMH, Paloma Castro Martinez is hoping to be part of a technological and urban revolution, she told Business Insider, with inspiration from British suffragettes and her own childhood.

Lime wants you to think of it as more than just bike and scooter startup. To help with that charge, 15-month-old company has hired former LVMH executive Paloma Castro Martinez to help with that charge.

As the director of former director of global corporate affairs at the luxury holding company - whose portfolio includes timeless names like Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy, and Christian Dior - Martinez has managed image and crisis communications for one of the world's most-watched luxury brands in a time of extraordinary upheaval.

In an interview with Business Insider, Martinez said she was eager to join Lime at such a pivotal time in its growth. She points to an imminent technological revolution, one that will empower citizens and fundamentally change the way we interact with cities and urban architecture, as her inspiration for the career shift.

Lime

Paloma Castro Martinez is joining Lime as head of communications for global launches and expansion

"We are all humans, we need to move," she said by phone from Cordoba, Spain. "There is a revolution coming up, and thankfully it is a revolution that will be powered by technology."

And at Lime, she'll bring much-needed "outside of Silicon Valley" expertise to her new role as head of communication for global expansion, the company said in a statement. "Lime is more than the products," Martinez added. "It's really about empowering people and giving them that access."

Specifically, her experience as a woman has drawn her to scooters for a purely logistical reason - much like the British suffragettes and their iconic scooters in the early 20th century. "As a woman, biking is great," she said, "but a scooter allows me to wear a skirt. It's liberating."

"It's important to me to have one foot in the past and one point in the mega-future," she continued. "I think that future is the electric scooter because it really links what we are doing. There is a huge tradition in bikes and scooters - and technology allows you to be in the past, but in a much more comfortable way."

Lime is currently operating in more than 100 cities across seven countries, and has its eye on many more. Singapore, for example, is launching soon, Martinez said. There are currently 290 job postings on Lime's website, many of which seek operations managers everywhere from Wroclaw, Poland to Lubbock, Texas.

Read more: Lime recalls thousands of scooters after reports of some catching fire

Martinez is the latest in a string of high-profile hires for Lime. Earlier this week, the company announced it had hired two former Uber executives: David Richter, previously a VP at Uber, will serve as Lime's chief business officer and interim CFO, while Wayne Ting, Uber's former chief of staff, will lead operations and strategy.

Lime isn't the first transportation upstart to bring on outside experts to help change their image from rogue, scooter-dumping, companies into a more professional image. Lyft, which owns Motivate and its bike-share programs in cities like New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco and more, recently hired former US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx as policy chief.

But for Martinez at Lime, the focus is all on branding as she begins her new role.

"We are not transport," she said, "because mobility is much more than transport. And we are not disruptive - we are innovative, because we are creating new business opportunities that were not there before."