Long Island High School Graduate Appointed CEO Of Twitter

DEER PARK, NY — Long Island has a lot to Tweet about.

Business magnate Elon Musk announced on Friday that Deer Park native Linda Yaccarino is officially the new CEO of Twitter.

Yaccarino will focus primarily on business operations, while Musk will work on product design and new technology on the social media platform, Musk said.

She is Twitter's first first female CEO.

"Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app," he said.

Yaccarino grew up in Deer Park and graduated from Deer Park High School in 1981, the Deer Park Library confirmed with Patch.

She then attended Penn State University and worked at Turner Entertainment for 15 years, taking the network's ad sales operation into the digital era, Reuters said.

Yaccarino then was employed at NBC for more than 11 years, her most previous role being chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships. There, she played a key role in the launch of the Peacock streaming service.

In 2018, Yaccarino was appointed by former President Donald Trump to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

She resigned at NBC effective immediately on Friday, NBC said on its website.

" Thank you @elonmusk!" Yaccarino said on social media in response to his announcement. "I’ve long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I’m excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together!"

Twitter has been besieged by layoffs since Musk acquired it last fall for $44 billion, going from 7,500 workers in October to about 1,800 as of late February, The New York Times reported.

Nearly 2,000 former employees have filed legal claims against Twitter in arbitration, according to Reuters, although lawsuits alleging sexism and discrimination based on disability have been dismissed.

"The 51-year-old barreled in with ideas about how the social media service should operate, but with no comprehensive plan to execute them," the Times reported in November. "... Some top executives were summarily fired by email. One engineering manager, upon being told to cut hundreds of workers, vomited into a trash can. Others slept in the office as they worked grueling schedules to meet Mr. Musk’s orders."

Musk has long insisted he is not the company's permanent CEO. In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying the platform, he told a Delaware court that he did not want to be the CEO of any company.

More than half of 17.5 million users voted that he step down as head of the company on a Twitter in December, created by Musk himself.

"I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" he wrote on social media. "After that, I will just run the software & servers teams."

NBC, Twitter and the Deer Park School District did not immediately return a request for comment.