Leading with heart and soul, Parag Agrawal takes charge as Twitter CEO

There is a change of guard at Twitter as India-born Parag Agrawal takes over from Jack Dorsey as the new CEO. Dorsey announced his decision to step down in a letter to his team, where he stated, “After almost 16 years of having a role at our company...from co-founder to CEO to Chair to Exec Chair to interim-CEO to CEO...I decided it’s finally time for me to leave.” The reason that Dorsey provided for his decision was that he believed that a company being “founder-led” was severely limiting and a single point of failure.

On Parag Agrawal taking over as the new CEO of Twitter, Dorsey said, “My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.” He further said, “He’s been my choice for some time, give how deeply he understands the company and its needs. Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He’s curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily.”

Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) since October 2017. As CTO, he was responsible for the company’s technical strategy, leading work to improve development velocity while advancing the state of Machine Learning across the company.

Prior to being appointed CEO, Agrawal had risen to be Twitter’s first Distinguished Engineer due to his work across revenue and consumer engineering, including his impact on the re-acceleration of audience growth in 2016 and 2017.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

In a letter to the Twitter team on taking charge as the CEO, Agrawal said, “I’ve walked in your shoes, I’ve seen the ups and downs, the challenges and obstacles, the wins and the mistakes. But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s incredible impact, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead of us.”

He further added, “The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news... Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential.”

Indians across the world have been rejoicing on social media over another Indian taking charge at a global tech major, joining a growing list – Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna - Arvind Krishna (IBM), Anjali Sud (Vimeo), Jayshree Ullal (Arista Networks), among others.
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