NOVEMBER 1, 2022
Sarah Personette and Elon Musk. – Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Advertising Week New York; Carina Johansen/Getty Images
- Twitter’s CCO said she quit her job just hours after Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover.
- Her access to company accounts was cut off around 72 hours later, she said.
- On Thursday, Personette tweeted that she’d had a “great discussion” with Musk. She quit the next day.
A top executive at Twitter said she quit her job just hours after Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the social-media company and then fired at least four other execs at the company.
Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer and one of its most senior female employees, quit on Friday after around four years at the company. Her access to company accounts was cut off around 72 hours later, she said.
“Hi folks, I wanted to share that I resigned on Friday from Twitter and my work access was officially cut off last night,” she tweeted on Tuesday morning.
—Sarah Personette (@SEP) November 1, 2022
Personette is the first executive publicly known to have resigned from the company since Musk took charge. One of the tech mogul’s first moves on Thursday night was to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Personette didn’t state why she had resigned from Twitter. Staff at the company say they’ve been in a state of confusion since Thursday night, with uncertainty over layoffs and pressure from Musk’s team to develop new features on tight deadlines.
“Remember that we create the organization we want to be a part of,” Personette tweeted. “No one else.”
Personette started at Twitter in October 2018 as its vice president of global client solutions, and was promoted to chief customer officer in August 2021. Prior to that, she had worked as Facebook’s vice president of global business marketing for three years before becoming Refinery29’s COO, a role which she only kept for around nine months.
Personette tweeted on Thursday, just hours before the deal went through, that she’d had a “great discussion” with Musk the prior evening.
“Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” she tweeted. “Looking forward to the future!”
Personette resigned the day after posting the tweet.
In a string of tweets on Tuesday, she assured Twitter’s advertisers about her confidence in the company’s new leadership.
“I want everyone to know I do believe the new administration understands the importance of holding up the standards of GARM,” Personette posted, referring to the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
