Who is Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino? Replacing Elon Musk, the NBCU ad titan once told the billionaire to stop tweeting after 3am, and worked with Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s administrations

May 16 , 2023

Advertising titan Linda Yaccarino is a respected veteran in the media industry – and she’s just been tapped by Elon Musk to become Twitter’s new CEO. Photo: AFP

Earlier this month, advertising titan Linda Yaccarino tweeted about a partnership between NBCU and Twitter – and as of last Friday, she’s going to take over as CEO in about six weeks

Before getting tapped by billionaire Musk, the former NBCU exec worked at Turner Broadcasting for almost 20 years and even served on a sports and fitness council during Trump’s administration

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter in an epic US$44 billion deal last year, it’s been a bumpy ride, from mass lay-offs to impersonation of brands and public figures on the social media platform that sent advertisers running. Twitter is currently valued at less than half of what it was originally: just US$20 billion.

In December 2022, Musk created a Twitter poll asking, “Should I step down as head of Twitter?” with “yes” emerging as the winning response. The poll received over 17.5 million votes.

Now, Musk is apparently following through: he said on Friday that NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino will take over as Twitter CEO. The billionaire who owns multiple companies previously said the new CEO will start in about six weeks.

Here’s everything we know about the former NBCUniversal executive.

Linda Yaccarino’s NBCU resignation

Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino. Photo: Getty Images

Yaccarino announced on Friday that she had resigned from her role as chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCUniversal “effective immediately”.

“It has been an absolute honour to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” Yaccarino said in the statement. Later that day, Musk announced that Yaccarino would be taking over for him as Twitter CEO.

“@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology,” Musk tweeted. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”