Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s new CEO, has had decades of experience with the advertising industry and has a position at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Billionaire Elon Musk, who has been running Twitter since he bought it last fall, said he is “excited” to welcome Yaccarino to the post, which she will take on in about six weeks. Musk added that Yaccarino “will focus primarily on business operations” while he will “focus on product design & new technology.”
Yaccarino graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1985. She lives in Sea Cliff, New York, with her husband, Claude Madrazo. They have two children, Christian and Matthew.
Extensive Advertising Background
Yaccarino, 60, has a wealth of relationships with top chief marketing officers and other advertising executives, which can potentially benefit Twitter as it tries to reverse a plunge of billions of dollars in ad revenue since Musk’s takeover.
Yaccarino has pushed the ad industry for change on several fronts, including advocating for relying less heavily on Nielsen ratings for measurement and introducing a digital platform called One Platform that makes it easier to buy ads across a variety of different media in an effort to better compete for ads against social media companies and traditional media companies.
1. NBC Universal
Yaccarino’s most recent post was chair of global advertising and partnerships at the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal. She oversaw all market strategy and advertising revenue for NBCUniversal’s entire portfolio of broadcast, cable, and digital assets. The revenue totaled nearly $10 billion.
On Friday, prior to Musk announcing Yaccarino’s new position at Twitter, NBCUniversal said she would step down immediately from her position, and Yaccarino confirmed she was departing the network, where she had spent a little under 12 years.
Yaccarino joined NBCUniversal in 2011, around the time when Comcast was completing its merger with NBC. Besides overseeing the network’s advertising strategy across television and digital properties, she also played a key role in launching the network’s ad-supported streaming service Peacock in 2020.
A company profile at NBCUniversal showed that she oversaw a 2,000-member team, likely more people than those who work at Twitter. Musk told a BBC reporter that the company is down to 1,500 people after several layoffs under his watch.
