The executive shuffle at Twitter continued on Tuesday, but at least this time it was a bit of good news for the company, which has recently seen many of its executives departing for greener pastures.
The company has hired Leslie Berland, Executive Vice President, Global Advertising, Marketing & Digital Partnerships at American Express, as its new Twitter chief marketing officer, it was revealed in a Tweet from CEO Jack Dorsey, as well as one from Berland.
Welcoming @leslieberland to Twitter! She will join as our CMO to help tell the stories of our iconic product!
— Jack (@jack) January 26, 2016
Thanks @Jack! Excited to join you and the amazing teams to bring to life the power, uniqueness and magic of Twitter! https://t.co/cjlVcCtMjs
— Leslie Berland (@leslieberland) January 26, 2016
Berland had been with American Express since 2005, where she led a global team responsible for creating marketplace demand and driving commerce through products, marketing and customer experiences. She was also a member of the company’s Global Management Team, where she oversaw advertising, media, sponsorships, content, brand identity and digital partnerships for the enterprise.
Prior to American Express, Berland led PR and online communications strategies for global brands on the agency side.
Rumors of Berland’s hiring began spreading earlier this week.
“Twitter is a service like no other. It has and continues to change the world, shaping how we communicate and connect, how we’re entertained, informed and inspired. It represents everything that’s relevant at each and every moment – to me, there’s nothing more powerful,” Berland said in a statement provided to VatorNews.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Jack and the Twitter teams to bring the magic of Twitter to life, broaden its reach, and deepen its impact as the company enters this incredibly exciting new chapter.”
Getting a big, splashy hire come on board is a nice change of pace for Twitter, which has lately been seeing the exact opposite happen.
Twitter lost five high profile employees on Sunday: Katie Jacobs Stanton, the company’s VP of global media; Kevin Weil, it’s SVP of product; Alex Roetter, who is and SVP of engineering, and Brian “Skip” Schipper, Twitter’s Vice President of Human Resources, and Jason Toff, general manager at Vine, all of whom chose to leave Twitter.
As a result of that news the company saw itself get downgraded, and its stock sink.
Those were far from the only recent departures for Twitter. Mike Davidson, Twitter’s Head of Design, announced he was departing in December. In the two weeks prior to that Twitter had also lost engineer Utkarsh Srivastava, who helped the company build its ads business, and it also saw the departure of Glenn Otis Brown, who has been heading up Twitter’s video ad program. Srivastava left for Google, while Brown went to Betaworks.
The biggest departure of the past year, was, of course, that of CEO Dick Costolo in June. After struggling mightily to get Twitter back on its feet, and to get its user numbers back up, he was forced to resign his position over the summer.
Twitter’s stock has taken a big hit as a result of all of this, losing over a quarter of its value since the beginning of the year. This latest news doesn’t seem to be moving the needle much, though, as Twitter’s stock is only up 0.65 percent on Tuesday, sitting at $17.13 a share.
