Who is Linda Yaccarino, the next CEO of Twitter? | CNN Business

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Twitter could have an ad sales veteran at the helm, after months of hemorrhaging advertisers under owner Elon Musk.

Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s president of global advertising and partnerships, is leaving the company amid reports that Musk has tapped her to take over as CEO of Twitter.

“It has been an absolute honor to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” he said in a statement Friday. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry.”

Musk said Thursday he had found a new CEO to take over Twitter, months after he first promised to step down from the role. He said the CEO would start in about six weeks.

Musk did not name the potential CEO, but the Wall Street Journal reported that Yaccarino was in talks for the role.

Here’s what you should know about Yaccarino.

Musk has clashed with the mainstream media and also said he hates publicity. But Yaccarino represents both of these worlds.

Yaccarino has been with NBCUniversal for more than 11 years, returning to the company where she started as a college intern. Prior to that, she was Executive Vice President/COO of Advertising Sales, Marketing and Acquisitions at Turner Broadcasting, which included CNN at the time.

At NBCUniversal, he oversees a global team of 2,000 members, according to his company profile. That would be more people on his team than are left working at Twitter, which Musk said in an interview with the BBC last month is down to 1,500 people after several layoffs under his watch.

NBCUniversal’s ad sales team has generated $100 billion in ad sales since joining in 2011, according to its profile, and forged partnerships with many new media companies including Twitter as well as Apple News, Buzzfeed, Snapchat and YouTube.

Last month he appeared with Musk at an industry conference for a session titled “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships.”

Yaccarino’s most notable achievement at NBCUniversal is creating unified ad sales teams instead of having 15 different sales teams approaching the same advertisers.

“It’s hard to do business with us,” he said in an interview with Salesforce where he described the consolidation.