Sarah Personette, Twitter’s head of advertising sales for more than four years, has resigned after firing a string of top executives at the company once Elon Musk completed the purchase of the social network last Friday.
Personette is the first Twitter executive to resign from the company since Musk took over, as his first decision last Friday was the dismissal of: “Parag Agrawal” CEO of the platform, “Ned Segal” chief financial officer, and “Vijaya Gadi” legal officer and Shawn Edget, the general counsel, and there are still reporting that he plans to lay off employees from all departments.
Personette is highly respected in the advertiser community and seen as a trusted partner within Twitter to help marketers address brand safety and misinformation concerns, so her departure will leave a huge void in Twitter for brands, some of whom have expressed concerns about the direction of the platform under Musk.
Personette announced in a tweet that it resigned from Twitter last Friday and is officially out of business on Monday, and has tried to reassure advertising partners that the new management is committed to brand integrity, noting that it has spent the past few days at the company continuing its commitments to brands.
Her departure comes as Musk’s team prepares to meet with advertisers this week in New York, where the meetings will be crucial to reassure advertisers who are concerned about the platform.
Personette began her career at Twitter in October 2018 as Vice President of Customer Solutions and was promoted to Chief Customer Officer in August 2021. Prior to that, she served as Facebook’s Vice President of Marketing for three years before becoming COO at Refinery29, a position she held For only nine months.
Personette‘s departure is another development in the eventful days since Musk officially took over Twitter. But this departure raised a lot of concerns among advertisers at Twitter under the supervision of a fickle owner indifferent to ads.
As a result, General Motors, Musk’s main rival, Tesla, has paused its Twitter ads, and as more employees are fired, it may become more difficult to edit content and crack down on misinformation.
Cases of discriminatory rhetoric across the platform have also increased over the past few days, all making advertisers more nervous about their presence on the platform.
Thus, Elon Musk became the sole director of Twitter after its board of directors was dissolved, and according to documents filed yesterday, Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the entire board of directors, including the CEO, was abandoned.
Musk had indicated during his initial offer to buy Twitter in April that he wanted to withdraw the company from trading in the stock market because it would help him to provide less public disclosure to regulators.
