Who is Linda Yaccarino, reportedly Twitter’s next CEO?

Twitter may soon have an ad sales veteran in charge, after months of hemorrhaging advertisers under owner Elon Musk.

Linda Yaccarino, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, is leaving the company amid reports that Musk has selected her to take over as CEO of Twitter.

“It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” she said in a statement Friday. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry.”

Musk on Thursday said he had found a new CEO to take over Twitter, months after he first promised to step back from the role. He said the CEO would be starting in about six weeks.

Musk did not name the potential CEO, but the Wall Street Journal reported that Yaccarino was in talks for the role.

Here’s what you should know about Yaccarino.

A seasoned media executive

Musk has clashed with mainstream media outlets and also said he hates advertising. But Yaccarino represents both those worlds.

Yaccarino has been at NBCUniversal for more than 11 years, returning to the company where she started as a college intern. Before that she was executive vice president/COO of advertising sales, marketing and acquisitions at Turner Broadcasting, which included CNN at that time.

At NBCUniversal, she oversees a 2,000-member global team, according to her company profile. That would be more people on her team than are left working at Twitter, which Musk said in an interview with the BBC last month is down to 1,500 people after multiple layoffs under his watch.

NBCUniversal’s ad sales team has generated $100 billion in ad sales since she joined in 2011, according to her profile, and forged partnerships with many new media companies including Twitter as well as Apple News, Buzzfeed, Snapchat and YouTube.

Last month she appeared with Musk at an industry conference for a session entitled “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships.”

Yaccarino’s most notable achievement at NBCUniversal is creating unified ad sales teams rather than having 15 different sales teams approach the same advertisers.

“We we difficult to do business with,” she said in an interview with Salesforce describing the consolidation.

The-CNN-Wire
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