Vijaya Gadde

Some Lesser Known Facts About Vijaya Gadde

• Vijaya Gadde is an American attorney of Indian origin who worked at Twitter as the general counsel and the head of legal, public policy, and trust & safety lead from August 2013 to October 2022. On 27 October 2022, Elon Musk (soon after Musk took over the ownership of Twitter) fired her from her position at Twitter for misleading Musk and other investors about real figures on bots and fake accounts on Twitter.

• Vijaya was born in Hyderabad, Telangana, India, and when she was three years old, her family shifted to Beaumont, Texas, where her father had earlier moved to pursue his graduation.

  

• After a few months, her family moved to the east coast and got settled in New Jersey, where Vijaya received her school education.

• Gadde began her career as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, an American law firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, in October 2000. As a part of WSGR, Vijaya Gadde worked on the 2006 acquisition of McClatchy Co.-Knight Ridder Inc., which was worth $4.1 billion. Gadde also served as the attorney to the New York Stock Exchange’s Proxy Working Group and Committee on Corporate Governance. She resigned from her position at the firm after working there for almost a decade.

• She has also briefly worked at Juniper Networks, a network hardware company in California, as a senior director and associate general counsel (corporate).

• She joined Twitter in San Francisco, California, in July 2011 as director and legal head. At Twitter, she initially worked on matters including general corporate, securities, M&A, and international.

• Two years later, she was promoted to the position of general counsel and the head of legal, public policy, and trust & safety lead in the company.

  

• As the legal and policy head, Vijaya dealt with tweets involving harassment, harmful speech, and fake news. She played a crucial role in blocking false propaganda and the accounts of people involved in such matters. Vijaya also took several high-profile decisions on Twitter.

• Although she operated in the background, mounding policies, her influence helped shape Twitter a lot during her tenure as the legal and policy head.

  

• In 2021, Gadde was instrumental in permanently putting a ban on the Twitter account of former US President Donald Trump.

• Vijaya Gadde is the co-founder of an investment collective named Angels based in San Francisco. The company’s motive is to provide support to start-ups. It also helps ensure that equal remuneration is provided to women employees at successful companies in America.

• Vijaya Gadde is spotted consuming alcohol on various occasions.

  

• As the legal and policy head at Twitter, Vijaya was often called the ‘censor chief‘ of Twitter.

• During an interview, Vijaya Gadde revealed that her initial years in the US were very much affected by the Ku Klux Klan. Adding that when her family was residing in Beaumont, her father’s boss ordered him to seek permission from a local Ku Klux Klan leader to collect insurance premiums door to door (as her father was an Indian). She further said that she took the incident to her heart and decided that she would become a lawyer one day to fight racism.

• In April 2022, after making a winning bid for the social media platform Twitter, Musk attacked Vijaya Gadde for her “left-wing bias” and criticised her for blocking several renowned people on the platform. Calling himself a free speech absolutist during the acquisition, Musk condemned Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump. Reportedly, it was Gadde who spearheaded the decision to permanently put a ban on Trump’s account on the platform after the Capitol Hill riots in 2021. In one of his tweets, Musk even shared a meme about Twitter’s “left-wing bias” featuring Vijaya Gadde and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey during a discussion on a podcast show The Joe Rogan Experience with American YouTuber Tim Pool.
  

  

  Musk even criticised Gadde for suspending the account of the New York Post for covering an exclusive story on Hunter Biden’s (son of the US President, Joe Biden) laptop.

• On 27 October 2022, soon after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk announced the termination of top executives of Twitter including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy head Vijaya Gadde. ^[4]The Indian Express

• According to the severance policy, after her involuntary termination during the applicable COC (Twitter’s Change of Control period), Gadde was reportedly eligible for Golden Parachute Compensation worth $54.7 million (roughly Rs 450 crore). ^[5]India Today

• Apparently, Vijaya held 623,156 direct stocks on Twitter worth $33,775,055 at the time of her dismissal from Twitter.

• In one of her tweets, Gadde shared that her fondest childhood memory was visiting India during the summer vacations and complaining about the limited number of books that she was allowed to carry with her from the library.

• While Gadde was serving as the legal and policy head at Twitter, the platform failed to remove child pornography content despite repeated requests from the victim and his family. After several requests to remove the content, Twitter responded to the victim that such videos were not in violation of the company’s policies and could not be removed. Twitter took action against the user who posted the content only after the victim registered a formal complaint at the Department of Homeland Security. By the time Twitter took any action, the videos were watched over by lakh users and were retweeted several times. Apparently, the victim also had to suffer bullying and harassment by his classmates due to the videos.

• As one of the top executives of Twitter, Gadde has joined Jack Dorsey in many crucial visits. In 2018, Vijaya was a part of Dorsey’s meeting with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She also accompanied Dorsey on his meetings with Donald Trump and Dalai Lama.

  

• As the legal and policy head of Twitter, Gadde joined Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, on several important meetings. In 2018, Gadde accompanied Dorsey on his visit to India to meet the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She also joined Dorsey in his meeting with Dalai Lama. Vijaya coexisted in Jack Dorsey’s meeting with US President Donald Trump.