Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk is expected to try and make significant changes to Twitter after joining its board of directors Tuesday, but he’ll have to sway the rest of the board and company management to do so.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and a vocal critic of Twitter’s handling of free speech issues and banned accounts, appears poised to shake up the social media giant after buying 9.2% of the company earlier this week.
Here are the other board members at Twitter that Musk may need to persuade:
Parag Agrawal, CEO, Twitter
Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and became its chief technology officer in October 2017. As CTO, he was responsible for the company’s technical strategy, with a focus on machine learning. Agrawal was named CEO in 2021.
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Bret Taylor, Co-CEO, Salesforce
Taylor has been the co-CEO of Salesforce, a customer relationship management company, since November 2021.
Mimi Alemayehou, Senior Vice President for Public – Private Partnerships at Mastercard
Prior to joining Mastercard, Alemayehou was the managing director and a board member of investment platform Black Rhino Group, a portfolio company of Blackstone, where she focused on energy and infrastructure assets across Africa. She was previously appointed by former President Barack Obama as the executive vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder, Twitter; CEO and Co-Founder, Square
Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and co-founded Square, a digital payments company, where he is the CEO and chairman.
Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake
Durban is the co-CEO of Silver Lake, a private equity firm that specializes in technology investments. He also sits on the boards of directors of City Football Group, Learfield IMG College, UFC, Unity Technologies, Verily Life Sciences, Waymo, and several other public companies.
Martha Lane Fox, Founder and Chairwoman, Lucky Voice Group and Former Co-Founder and Managing Director of lastminute.com
Lane Fox has been the chairwoman of Lucky Voice Group, a private karaoke company, since founding the firm in 2005. She was the chairperson of MakieWorld, a 3D printing and game company, from 2012 to 2016. Lane Fox was also the co-founder and managing director of lastminute.com, a travel and leisure website.
Omid Kordestani, Former Executive Chairman, Twitter
Kordestani was the executive chairman of Twitter between October 2015 and May 2020. He was the senior vice president and chief business officer at Google from 2014 to 2015.
Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Computer Science Professor at Stanford
Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the computer science department at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. She was the director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. Dr. Li was the vice president at Google and the chief scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud from 2017 to 2018.
Patrick Pichette, General Partner, Inovia Capital and Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Google
Pichette is a general partner at Inovia Capital, a Canadian venture capital firm. He was the senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google from 2008 until 2015.
David Rosenblatt, CEO, 1stdibs.com
Rosenblatt has been the CEO of 1stdibs.com, an online luxury marketplace, since 2011. He was the president of global display advertising at Google from October 2008 to May 2009.
Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank Group and former Chairman of International Advisors at Goldman Sachs
Zoellick was the chairman of the Board of International Advisors at Goldman Sachs from 2013 to 2016. He was the president of the World Bank Group from July 2007 to June 2012. Zoellick was also the deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of State from 2005 until 2006 and the U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2005 under former President George W. Bush.
Musk promised on Tuesday to “make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months,” but the company pushed back, saying he would not have much control over its structure and practices.
“Our policy decisions are not determined by the Board or shareholders,” Twitter spokesman Adrian Zamora said in a statement to the Verge. “As always our Board plays an important advisory and feedback role across the entirety of our service. Our day to day operations and decisions are made by Twitter management and employees.”
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Twitter is also “committed to impartiality in the development and enforcement of its policies and rules,” Zamora said, implying that Musk will be subject to the same Twitter rules as everyone else and therefore could still be banned or suspended for breaking its content moderation rules.
