Twitter's General Counsel Alex Macgillivray has stepped down from his post and the company has already announced Vijaya Gadde as his replacement. She was earlier the legal director for corporate and international issues.
This is the second resignation from the technology industry's high-profile team members this week. Google's Android VP Hugo Barra announced Thursday that he was joining the popular Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi as Vice President. On Friday, Twitter's General Counsel Alex Macgillivray announced that he has resigned from his post at the company as he moves on to engage in "various internet passions from new and different perspectives."
Twitter will be losing Macgillivray at a crucial junction, just ahead of its plans to enter the market with an initial public offering. He will not become a complete stranger as he plans to stay on as a legal advisor for the company. His position in Twitter will be taken over by the well-respected legal director Vijaya Gadde, who handled corporate and international legal work for the social network.
Gadde, the new General Counsel is one of the very few female GCs in the tech industry. She has worked with Macgillivray for more than a decade and before joining Twitter, she worked as a senior director and associate general counsel at Juniper Networks.
"I will soon pass the Twitter General Counsel torch to Vijaya Gadde. Vijaya has been managing Twitter's corporate and international legal work, and I've gotten to know her well over the last fourteen years. I couldn't be happier with her appointment as General Counsel of Twitter," Macgillivray wrote in his send-off blog post.
He also shared the message with his thousands of Twitter followers with a link to his personal message on his blog.
Passing the torch. I care deeply about Twitter and our users, will continue to help while exploring other passions https://t.co/EBY6UZyN72
- Alex Macgillivray (@amac) August 30, 2013
Macgillivray is known as a champion of free speech. Macgillivray joined Twitter in 2009 after working as an associate general counsel for products and intellectual property for eight years at Google. Revealing his future plans, Macgillivray wrote in his blog that he is "looking forward to engaging my various internet passions from new and different perspectives, seeing friends and family without distraction, and just goofing off a bit. We should all do more of that."
