Elon Musk has appointed Linda Yaccarino as new chief executive of Twitter.
Yaccarino, a former head of advertising at NBC Universal, would oversee business operations and is expected to turn around the fortunes of the struggling platform.
Musk, who took over Twitter six months ago, said the new boss will start working in six weeks.
He will remain the executive chairman and chief technology officer.
“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Musk said on Twitter.
The billionaire had earlier said he had found someone to lead Twitter. He had, however, not declared her identity.
Musk – who bought the social media platform last year for $44 billion- had been under pressure to find someone else to lead the company and refocus his attention on his other businesses, which include electric carmaker Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX.
With fewer than 10percent of Fortune 500 tech companies headed by women, Ms Yaccarino will become that rare example of a woman at the top of a major tech firm, after rising steadily through the ranks of some of America’s biggest media companies.
According to BBC, Ms Yaccarino was raised in an Italian-American family. After graduating from Penn State, she worked at Turner Entertainment for 15 years before joining NBCUniversal, where she oversaw roughly 2,000 people, and was involved with the launch of its streaming service.
BBC says she has been working with mega brands, finding opportunities for product placement and convincing them to advertise alongside television shows – even ones with a reputation for “edgy content, such as Sex and the City when it first launched”.
She has also built relationships in new media with the likes of Apple News, Snapchat and YouTube.
