CEO Jack Dorsey, other top executives

After setting ambitious user growth and revenue goals last month, Twitter is gearing up for what could be the most transformative period ever.

After CEO Jack Dorsey’s leadership was scrutinized by activist investors last year, Twitter has stepped up development of new features, made numerous changes, and prepared for even more. This change comes as the company emerges from the era of former President Donald Trump, who eventually started off the service in January.

As it enters a new phase, this is the one leading Twitter in 2021.

Despite being CEO, Dorsey often comes across as signed out on Twitter. Blame his dual role as Square’s CEO, his tendency to go on meditation retreats for weeks on end, his story of moving to Africa, and his peculiar looks, including tattoos, piercings, and a wizard-like beard. A recent example came when the platform decided to permanently ban Donald Trump – Dorsey was reportedly vacationing on an island in French Polynesia when the fateful decision was made.

People at Twitter say Dorsey is anything but checked out. He is known for empowering and engaging with his lieutenants on important issues, as well as taking care of smaller details not normally expected of a CEO, such as writing his own comments before testifying before Congress.

Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 while working as one of the few employees at Ob Ancestors Corporation, the company that preceded it. Dorsey was Twitter’s original CEO, but was forced to step down in 2008, then returned to the helm of Twitter in June 2015 as interim CEO. A few months later, he was named permanent CEO.

Since his return, the company has had its ups and downs, but in general it is on the rise. The company’s stock price is up more than 70% since June 2015, and annual revenues are up nearly 68% from $ 2.22 billion in 2015 to $ 3.72 billion in 2020.

Dorsey’s leadership came under fire in early 2020 when activist hedge fund Elliott Management launched a campaign to remove him as CEO. The challenge was resolved when Twitter struck a deal with Elliott Management and Silver Lake, giving every investment firm a seat on the board.

Since then, Twitter has ramped up product development, most notably with the launch of short-lived Fleets in 2020 and testing a virtual audio room feature called Spaces.

More importantly, the company announced ambitious goals last month to double its revenue to at least $ 7.5 billion and reach 315 million daily active users (mDAUs) by the end of 2023.

Unlike many CFOs, Segal is an active leader for the company and one of the most outspoken executives. Segal is a common presence at all hands gatherings, and externally he is one of the company’s top communicators, both on his Twitter account and at earnings and other corporate events.

Before joining Twitter, Segal was senior vice president of finance for Intuit’s small business group and was CFO at RPX, a patent risk management company. That experience with finance, technology and the combination of both makes him an ideal tech CFO.

Segal may have most proven its worth in 2020 and was instrumental in closing the deal with Elliott Management, a former employee said.

As the top-ranked woman on Twitter, Gadde is responsible for handling some of the company’s most difficult tasks, including legal matters and everything to do with public policy and trust and safety on the platform. That means if the company has issues with harassment, misinformation, or Washington, the Gadde folks deal with it.

Gadde is said to hate public speaking, but has stepped up more in the past year. In particular, Gadde has stepped up the use of her Twitter account to announce and explain the company’s decisions regarding public policy.

She was instrumental in determining what to do with former President Donald Trump’s report following the January 6 uprising at the Capitol. The company eventually decided to ban Trump permanently.

Former employees say Gadde does not have the final say on what the company decides to do with regard to its policies. Dorsey retains that power. But 99% of the time, Dorsey follows Gadde’s recommendations, former employees said.

Agrawal is one of Twitter’s top technical executives. According to his biography, he is in charge of the strategy with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Agrawal is leading Project Bluesky, an independent effort to build an open standard for social media. That means creating technology and protocols that allow content posted to a single social media service to work across multiple social networks, similar to how emails can be read by an email service.

Bluesky is a priority and visionary project for Dorsey, according to former employees. Therefore, he entrusted its leadership to Agrawal.

Twitter has overhauled its technical infrastructure in recent years so that it can build new products faster. Montano, the company’s technical leader, has been critical to that overhaul. The company sees the modernization of its technical infrastructure as the catalyst behind the creation of new features, such as Fleets and Spaces.

Montano is Agrawal’s right-hand man, and with the overhaul complete, Montano is focusing on hiring more experienced executives to lead Twitter’s burgeoning tech organization so it can build even faster, an employee told CNBC.

As a product leader, Beykpour is responsible for the strategy and development of Twitter’s features and products. He joined Twitter through the acquisition of Periscope, an app that will allow users to live stream from their smartphones in 2015.

Under Beykpour’s leadership, Twitter has sparked some of the most revolutionary product changes in the company’s history.

The company launched full-screen Fleets, images and videos last year that disappear from users’ pages after 24 hours, as did Stories on Snapchat and Facebook’s Instagram. The company has also begun publicly testing Spaces, which are virtual audio rooms where users can congregate for live conversations, similar to the popular Clubhouse app. Looking ahead, Beykpour announced that Twitter will be testing subscription features that allow creators to post exclusive content for their paying followers.

While Beykpour leads the software development of Twitter user products, Falck is its counterpart for products used by marketers. His team is tasked with developing the tools that the company’s customers use to serve ads on Twitter and target them to the users of the service.

Falck’s team recently revamped Twitter’s mobile application promotion. MAP is used by marketers to serve direct-response ads on Twitter, a pool of ad dollars that the company has barely used. The output of Falck’s team will be critical to Twitter meeting its goal of doubling its annual revenues by the end of 2023.

While Falck makes the ad products, Derella is the one who brings in the customers who use them. As Twitter’s clients lead, Derella leads the company’s customer-centric organization, including the sales group and partnership teams. Among other things, Derella is responsible for devising Twitter’s sales strategy and increasing revenues.

Davis leads the team that decides what the company’s products look like, and is responsible for the teams that conduct product research to determine what kinds of products the company should build next and how consumers use the company’s products, an employee said. Before Twitter, Davis led product design for Facebook’s stories, news feeds and video features, according to his executive bio. He previously worked at Netflix.

The longest-connected person on the executive team after Dorsey is Berland, who heads the company’s marketing and people organizations, including communications, recruiting and human resources.

Berland often makes the rounds as a company spokeswoman at various conferences. She is also loved by Dorsey, former employees said.

The latest addition to Twitter’s management team is Zatko, which is referred to as ‘Mudge’. He was brought in in November to review and improve the company’s cybersecurity. Mudge is a well-respected hacker in the cybersecurity world and has previously worked at Stripe and special projects at Google.

His hiring comes after Twitter weathered an unprecedented hack in July, when many of its most followed accounts, including those of then-candidate Joe Biden, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, were taken over by hackers who posted a scam asking for bitcoin.