Twitter’s board of directors unanimously appointed Parag Agrawal as CEO and a member of the board, effective immediately, following Mr. Dorsey’s decision to step down.
Agrawal has been at Twitter since 2011 and was previously Chief Technology Officer.
‘I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said. “My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead.’
Dorsey will be stepping down from the board in 2022 when his term expires.
Dorsey tweeted a screenshot of the email that he sent to staff about his departure. ‘There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’
Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure,’ he added, ‘I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.’
Parag Agrawal did his graduation from IIT-Bombay and PhD in computer science from Stanford University. He joined Twitter in October 2011 as an ads engineer and soon after held the title of the company’s ‘Distinguished Software Engineer’.
With this promotion, Agrawal has joined the group of elite Indian-origin Silicon Valley CEOs, which includes names like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella.