Parag Agrawal – Twitter’s new CEO
37-year old IIT-Bombay and Stanford University alumnus, Parag Agrawal, took over as the CEO of Twitter on Monday, after its co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down.
He is the latest Indian origin person to head a leading US-based tech company after Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen.
“I’m grateful for the service that you built, the culture, soul, and purpose you fostered among us and for leading the company through really significant challenges,” Parag posted on Twitter thanking Jack Dorsey.
“The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different views about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and our future, and it’s a signal that the work we do matte. Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential,” he further added.
Deep gratitude for @jack and our entire team, and so much excitement for the future. Here’s the note I sent to the company. Thank you all for your trust and support 💙 https://t.co/eNatG1dqH6 pic.twitter.com/liJmTbpYs1
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 29, 2021
Parag expressed his gratitude towards Jack Dorsey for his mentorship and friendship.
“The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of People are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and future, and it’s a signal that the wire we do here mater. Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential,” he further started.
Agrawal joined Twitter more than a decade ago as a software engineer and was appointed chief technology officer in October 2017. He is incharge of Twitter’s technical strategy and was responsible for improving the pace of software development while advancing the use of machine learning across the company.
At 37, Agrawal is the youngest CEO of an S&P 500 company.
He is the latest CEO of Indian origin, joining a list that includes Alphabet Inc’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Corp’s Satya Nadella and IBM Corp’s Arvind Krishna.
Agrawal has a doctorate in philosophy in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the IIT, Bombay.
Congratulations to our alumnus Dr. Parag Agrawal for being appointed the new CEO of Twitter. Dr. Agrawal obtained his https://t.co/KI2VMHsUbi. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2005. He started working at Twitter in 2011 & became the CTO in 2017.#iitb pic.twitter.com/A0yt37pfUR
— IIT Bombay (@iitbombay) November 30, 2021
Agrawal, since December 2019, has also been working on Project Bluesky which is aim to combat abusive and misleading information on Twitter.
Before joining Twitter, Agrawal worked at Microsoft Corp , Yahoo and AT&T Labs Inc in their research units.