On May 11, 2023, while working on an upcoming NBCUniversal event, Linda Yaccarino accidentally became the subject of a global breaking news story thanks to Elon Musk's tweet: "Happy to announce that I have hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will start in about 6 weeks."
A text message came to Yaccarino's phone: “Are you 'her'?”
According to the Financial Times, Yaccarino and Musk discussed the Twitter CEO position for several days. She told the Twitter boss that she would accept the job but would need a few weeks to transition to NBCUniversal. She was managing a team of thousands of people with annual revenue of more than $10 billion. So she had to handle things accordingly.
Another source revealed that Michael Cavanagh, Chairman of Comcast - the parent company of NBCUniversal - fully supported Yaccarino's decision. In early June 2023, she officially began the next chapter of what is considered "the most difficult job in the technology industry", which is to revive a company that seemed to be on the brink of collapse with mass layoffs, a sharp decline in advertising and many competitors launching similar competing products. To do that, she must bring advertisers back to Musk, who declared in 2019 "I hate advertising".
When looking for a CEO for Twitter, Musk admitted that he needed someone “dumb enough to do the job.” He remains chief technology officer, chairman, and owner of Twitter (now X). His stranglehold on X makes the new CEO’s job that much harder. Big announcements like rebranding from Twitter to X or proposing new features come from Musk, not Yaccarino. Musk even threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, even though Yaccarino said just days ago that the platform was developing a relationship with the organization.
In some ways, taking on the role of CEO X requires sacrifice and becoming Musk’s puppet. “If he says the sky is pink, you have to say you’re excited about it,” said Lou Paskalis, a former head of communications at Bank of America and a longtime confidant of Yaccarino’s.
Yaccarino, 60, said she was drawn to X’s freedom and relentless innovation. Unlike other Silicon Valley executives who believe that minimalism in every aspect of life, such as wearing the same outfit to the office every day, will lead to higher productivity, Yaccarino dresses up in fashion and wears a diamond necklace.
Yaccarino started working in marketing right after graduating from Pennsylvania State University, where she studied liberal arts and telecommunications. She landed an editorial internship at an NBC affiliate but was miscast in sales. People in the advertising industry call her a great networker, a friend, and a “good person to the core.”
Her career took off during a period of rapid media change that began in the 2000s. Digital companies like Google, Facebook, and Netflix disrupted traditional models and competed against each other. Her biggest challenge came when she was tasked with reshaping the advertising business after Comcast acquired NBCUniversal for $17 billion in 2013. She embarked on a strategy of merging separate network brands, and it paid off. Despite initial resistance, other media companies followed suit.
As the pace of change accelerated, Yaccarino had to keep up. She played a role in developing NBCUniversal’s programmatic advertising, helping to pitch and launch Comcast’s Peacock streaming service in 2020, which brought in $1 billion in revenue in just two years. “She took NBCUniversal out of the dark ages and into the 21st century,” Paskalis says.
According to multiple sources, she prepared acquisition proposals for Twitter on three separate occasions in 2015 and 2016, urging Comcast executives to buy the platform outright for around $3 billion. Despite initial discussions, the deal never closed.
It wasn’t just the power of Twitter that attracted her. She had long admired Musk for his leadership style. Sources close to her said she had her eye on the Twitter CEO position since Musk bought the company. She sought him out and even interviewed the Tesla boss at a marketing event in April 2023. A few weeks later, the two discussed the CEO role at another advertising conference.
Yaccarino and Musk have different responsibilities. Musk leads the product and engineering teams, while Yaccarino is in charge of business operations, including HR, partnerships, legal, sales, and finance. She describes herself as a “wanderer,” living in New York and frequently flying to meet with clients.
She also achieved some things in her first few months on the job: reorganizing a team of agency and marketing executives, signing a deal with Google to sell X’s ad space, and asking for more engineering resources to improve its ad technology—a bold request in a leaner era, but one that was approved.
By hiring Yaccarino as Twitter CEO, Musk “bought back trust” from advertisers, Paskalis says. The giant GroupM—which represents brands like Coca-Cola and Nestle—said it viewed X as less of a risk. But fixing the platform’s business won’t be easy. In addition to competing with bigger names, she’s also facing a slew of pressing issues: privacy and hate speech oversight; lawsuits from landlords, vendors, and former employees over unpaid bills; user complaints and technology glitches. The biggest problem, of course, is Musk, who has said he intends to remain involved in overseeing X’s products and technology.
Friends and former colleagues hope Yaccarino will use her TV expertise to improve advertising and expand the use of video on the platform. She calls Musk’s vision of X becoming “the app for everything” a “great opportunity” for advertisers.
Jacqueline Corbelli, founder and CEO of Brightline, a streaming ad technology company, says she “has the courage to take big risks.” If Twitter gives her the space to act, she will combine her past successes with what advertisers are looking for to regain trust in X.
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