Twitter appoints Marjorie Scardino as its first female board member

6 Dec 2013

After raising the wrath of its own social network back in October over the lack of female representation on its board, Twitter has finally appointed its first female board member: former Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

Scardino’s experience at the helm of Pearson – whose properties include The Financial Times, Penguin, Random House and The Economist – could prove invaluable to Twitter as she would have connections with major advertisers and publishers around the world.

Twitter describes itself as a media company, rather than a social networking or technology business.

Twitter successfully floated on the New York Stock Exchange last month, valuing the seven year-old company at US$31bn.

However, in the run-up to the company’s IPO, a controversy emerged over the fact the board of Twitter was an all-male affair.

In October, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo made a joke about Twitter needing to expand its governing body beyond “three Peters and a Dick”, a reference to the then-make-up of four members of its eight-strong all-white, all-male board.

Costolo was referring to the inner circle on the board that encompasses Costolo; investor Peter Currie, also CFO at former Netscape; former News Corp COO Peter Chernin; plus the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital.

With a publishing doyen of Scardino’s calibre now on board, Costolo’s ambition of Twitter being taken seriously as a media rather than a tech company may finally be realised.

Twitter hatches image via Shutterstock

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John Kennedy
By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years. His interests include all things technological, music, movies, reading, history, gaming and losing the occasional game of poker.

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