NBCUniversal veteran will replace Elon Musk as Twitter CEO

Elon Musk announced his departure as Twitter CEO on May 11, suggesting his replacement would be a woman who would take over within roughly six weeks.

NBCUniversal’s chair of global advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino, will follow Elon Musk as the next CEO at Twitter.

According to a May 12 tweet from Musk, Yaccarino will leave her position at NBCUniversal, where she has worked for more than 11 years. As the next CEO of Twitter, she will “focus primarily on business operations,” as Musk handles product design and other technology.

I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.

Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

On May 11, Musk announced that he would be stepping down as CEO to become the social media company’s executive chair and chief technology officer. He did not specifically name his replacement, providing no details other than the fact she would be a woman and start within roughly six weeks.

The key leadership role at Twitter has a major influence on international discourse and digital assets. Yaccarino’s tweets include some praising Musk’s appearances in interviews and discussing how the social media platform handles tweets containing hate speech and calls for violence. In April, the NBCUniversal veteran interviewed Musk at a Florida conference, where the two discussed Twitter’s policies.

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Twitter 2.0 – @elonmusk are you ready to talk shop with me @PossibleEvent? See you in Miami! https://t.co/EgBmZDGa47 pic.twitter.com/l9stPeQADn

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) March 24, 2023

During Musk’s time as CEO since taking over the platform in October 2022, he fired key members of the company’s executive team and phased out the platform’s legacy verification system in favor of various paid checkmarks. He has also impacted the price of Dogecoin (DOGE) by briefly changing Twitter’s logo to the memecoin’s dog symbol and caused the price of Milady nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to surge after tweeting a meme of the NFT.

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Update (May 12, 4:08 PM UTC): This article has been updated to include confirmation from Elon Musk on Linda Yaccarino’s appointment as Twitter CEO.