Seemingly out of nowhere, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that he will be stepping from his position to enter a more backseat role with the company. In a tweet posted on Thursday afternoon, Musk declared he will take on the new role of Chief Technology Officer and has already selected a new CEO to start six weeks from now. The new CEO will be Linda Yaccarino, who recently resigned from her position at NBCUniversal as Global Advertising Chief. While Musk seems optimistic about Twitter’s future with Yaccarino at the helm, many are skeptical about what the future of free speech will look like on the platform under new leadership.
Elon Musk names Linda Yaccarino as Twitter CEO
By Daniella Genovese; May 12, 2023
Longtime NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino will replace Elon Musk as Twitter’s top boss.
“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter,” Musk tweeted Friday.
Yaccarino, who served as the global chair for advertising and partnerships at NBC, announced her resignation from NBCUniversal on Friday morning, a day after Musk said that he hired a new, female CEO for the social media platform. He did not name a successor at the time.
The billionaire said in a Thursday tweet that the new CEO would start in about six weeks, and that he will become executive chair and chief technology officer, “overseeing product, software and sysops.”
Yaccarino is a graduate of Penn State per her LinkedIn profile.