Here’s everything we know about the former NBCUniversal executive.

Linda Yaccarino’s NBCU resignation

Yaccarino announced on Friday that she had resigned from her role as chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCUniversal “effective immediately”.

“It has been an absolute honour to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” Yaccarino said in the statement. Later that day, Musk announced that Yaccarino would be taking over for him as Twitter CEO.

“@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology,” Musk tweeted. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”

Musk previously said that his replacement would be taking over the role of CEO in about six weeks.

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Yaccarino is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University

She was a liberal arts student who studied telecommunications from 1981 to 1985, according to her LinkedIn. In an interview from 2021, Yaccarino said her mother, who is a first generation Italian-American immigrant, has been an “incredible inspiration” to her.

“She didn’t have the good fortune to go to college,” Yaccarino said. “She raised three daughters and made sure that each of her daughters focused on an education, so we could each be financially independent. I continue to think that I owe her and it helps push me and drive me.”

She started out as an intern at NBCU

Long before she became NBCU’s ad chief, Yaccarino started out as an intern at the company. Yaccarino told Salesforce in a video interview that she showed up to NBCU as a “bright new cheery intern” but quickly learned the company had no record of her and was eventually put on the media planning team.

“That’s where the love affair was born,” Yaccarino said of her desire to work in the media industry.

Yaccarino worked at Turner Broadcasting for nearly 20 years before she joined NBCU in 2011. She was executive vice-president/COO of advertising sales, marketing and acquisitions at Turner before she left.

She spent 11 years working up the ladder at NBCUniversal and eventually became the company’s advertising chief. She oversaw about 2,000 employees that produced over US$100 billion in ad sales, according to her profile on the company’s website, which has since been taken down. She was a major proponent of NBCUniversal’s push into digital streaming, including the roll-out of Peacock in 2020.

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Yaccarino has also worked to keep NBCU competitive with major tech companies like Meta and Google, and her team created partnerships with major companies, including Apple News, Snapchat and Twitter.

She was scheduled to speak at an NBCU event before resigning

Before she announced her resignation on Friday, Yaccarino had been scheduled to speak at NBCU’s annual Upfront event. The event serves as a preview for new NBCU features and is designed to lure in advertisers.

Yaccarino was also involved with the World Economic Forum, an event Musk has been critical of in the past. Her LinkedIn profile says she has been the executive chair on WEF’s task force on the future of work since 2019. It also says she is on WEF’s Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee.

WEF is an event that takes place every year in Davos, Switzerland, where executives and influential figures meet to discuss a global issues, including climate change and cost-of-living. Earlier this year, Musk took a dig at the event in Davos, calling it “boring AF”. At the time, he said he was invited to the event but chose to skip it. However, WEF organisers claim Musk hasn’t been invited in years.

Yaccarino served on a sports fitness and nutrition council for two years

She was appointed to the role on the sports fitness and nutrition council by former President Donald Trump in 2018. She also worked with the Biden Administration in 2021 on an educational Covid-19 vaccine ad campaign that included Pope Francis.

Yaccarino has interviewed Musk in the past

She appeared on stage with Musk in April to interview the billionaire about his plans for Twitter 2.0. The event took place in Miami Beach and was focused on “the future of marketing on Twitter”.

At the time, she shared the interview in a tweet: “We can all agree … this freedom of speech deserves a bit more reach,” she wrote. During the interview, Yaccarino told Musk he should be more careful about his tweets.

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Yaccarino told Musk that there are days she isn’t happy with his tweets and asked if he thinks he should be “held to a different or higher standard” as the owner of Twitter, as well as due to his popularity on the site. “For example, you’ve said you probably shouldn’t tweet after 3am,” Yaccarino said. “Will you commit to being a little more specific and not tweet after 3am?”

Musk told Yaccarino that he would “aspire to tweet less after 3am” but it would be “wrong” for him to allow other people to influence what he tweets. “That would be a diminishment of freedom of speech,” Musk said.

The onstage event wasn’t the first time Yaccarino has engaged with Musk

Earlier this month, she tweeted about a partnership between NBCU and Twitter.

“Hey @elonmusk here’s an idea for our new partnership: Periscope for #Paris2024,” she wrote. Two days later, NBC Sports announced it was expanding its partnerships with Twitter and Snapchat for the 2024 Olympics.

Yaccarino has told friends in the past that she wanted to be CEO of Twitter, as previously reported.