Elon Mask On new Twitter CEO
Elon Musk was replying to a tweet on Indian-origin persons. Leading some of the world’s top tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft and IBM.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday gave a shout out to Indian talent in America. After Parag Agrawal was appointed the chief executive officer of Twitter. “USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!” Mr Musk said in a tweet. The entrepreneur was replying to a tweet. On how Indian-origin persons are now at the helm of some of the top tech companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM.
Mr Agrawal, 37, is the latest Indian-origin person to head a major US-based tech company, following the likes of Google-parent Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
On Monday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that he would be leaving the company. Mr Dorsey steered the social network during the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency and survived an activist investor’s ouster bid in 2020.
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Mr Agrawal takes over the reins of Twitter at a time when the company is looking to steer towards growth and away from free speech battles.
He joined Twitter in 2011 and became the Chief Technical Officer in 2017. In his message to the staff, Mr Dorsey said that Parag Agrawal has been behind every critical decision and has helped turn the company around. “He leads with heart and soul and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” Mr Dorsey said about Mr Agrawal.
About Parag Agrawal
Parag Agrawal was born 1983/1984 is an Indian-American technology executive and the chief executive officer (CEO) of Twitter since November 2021. Agrawal joined Twitter as a distinguished software engineer in 2011 and became the chief technology officer in 2017. On 29 November 2021, Jack Dorsey announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter and that Agrawal was replacing him, with immediate effect.
Education
Agrawal was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. His father was a senior official in the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired school teacher. He studied at Atomic Energy Central School No.4. He was a classmate of singer Shreya Ghoshal.
Agrawal won a gold medal at the 2001 International Physics Olympiad held in Turkey. He earned 77th rank in the Joint Entrance Exam in 2000 and received an undergraduate degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2005. Agrawal then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science from Stanford University.
Career
In October 2017, Twitter announced the appointment of Agrawal as chief technology officer (CTO). Following the departure of the CTO, Adam Massinger. Agrawal had joined the company in October 2011 as a distinguished software engineer. Before joining Twitter, Parag held leadership positions at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research. According to Agrawal’s biography on the Twitter leadership page, he is responsible for “Twitter’s technical strategy and overseeing machine learning and AI across the consumer, revenue, and science teams”.
In December 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Agrawal would be in charge of Project Bluesky. “An independent team of open source architects, engineers and designers. To develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. That would help better control abusive and misleading information on its platform”.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review in November 2020. When asked about balancing the protection of free speech. As a core value and the endeavour to combat misinformation, Agrawal said: “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment. But our role is to serve a healthy public conversation. Focus less on thinking about free speech. But thinking about how the times have changed.”
