Twitter recently announced that Jack Dorsey is the new permanent CEO, but he is also the CEO of Square, a digital payments company. This means he will be handling double duty. Apart from Dorsey, there is one more Twitter executive who will be holding two important posts.
Gadde’s main challenge – to covey Dorsey’s vision
Vijaya Gadde has been Twitter’s General Counsel for the past two years, and now she has taken on the role of director of communications as well. Since mid-July, Gadde has been leading communications at the company since Gabriel Stricker was pushed out. Now her appointment has become permanent, and the announcement was made at Twitter’s weekly Tea Time Meeting on Monday afternoon, says a report from Re/code.
Many close to the company, including investor Chris Sacca, believe that the company has not been successful at telling its own story, and this is the reason the post of communications is important for Twitter. Dorsey’s reputation is that of an internal motivator who has the ability to convey Twitter’s long-term vision, but this has not been presented clearly to outsiders.
Gadde’s greatest challenge in the new role will be to figure out the best way to do that. A spokesman informed investors Gadde will continue to serve the company as general counsel and will report directly to the company’s CEO.
Double duty, single executive at Twitter
Since Monday, the executive team at Twitter has really started to take shape. The company named interim CEO Jack Dorsey as its permanent CEO and at the same time named revenue boss Adam Bain as COO. Anthony Noto will continue to serve the company as its CFO and will report directly to Dorsey.
Initially, Twitter was hesitant at hiring Dorsey as full-time CEO due to his other commitments. But the dropping share price and stagnant user growth may have pushed the search committee to bend the rules. The micro-blogging site has 316 million users compared to Facebook’s 1.5 billion.
The idea of a single person running two companies did seem unacceptable to many, but now both the media and traders are supporting the idea. “Big investors in both companies have grown comfortable in recent months with the idea of Mr. Dorsey juggling both jobs,” The New York Times said.
