Elon Musk, the founder & CEO of SpaceX, has named the new CEO of Twitter, six months after he took over the micro-blogging site.
Linda Yaccarino, who was the advertising head at NBCUniversal, would be looking after the business operations at the site, which was having a hard time making money. She will start in six weeks. The billionaire, Elon Musk will transition to the Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” he tweeted, hence confirming his decision a day after he had fueled speculation by tweeting that he had found a new CEO without revealing her identity.
Mr. Musk purchased the micro-blogging platform last year for $44bn & was under pressure to replace the company head so that he may refocus his attention on his other businesses, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Ms. Yaccarino will become one of the few women heading a major tech company. There are less than 10% of Fortune 500 tech firms led by women. She has risen steadily in some of the US’ biggest media companies.
Who is Linda Yaccarino?
Ms. Yaccarino was raised by a father who was a police officer and a mother who never to college in an Italian-American family.
She graduated from Penn State and then went on to work for Turner Entertainment for 15 years.
She then joined NBCUniversal, where she was involved with the launch of its streaming service and supervised around 2,000 people.
She has worked closely with big brands, convinced them to advertise in TV shows, and found opportunities for product placement.
She also has relationships in Apple News, Snapchat, & Youtube, the new age media.