Parag Agrawal
Parag Agrawal (born 21 May 1984) is an Indian-American software engineer who is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Twitter. Early life and education. Agrawal was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India. In the 1980s, he lived in a rented house with his grandparents before moving to Mumbai. His father was a senior official in the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired Economics professor from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai. In 2001, he completed secondary and senior secondary studies at Atomic Energy Central School and Junior College No.4. In 2005, Agrawal obtained  his Bachelor of Technology degree in computer science and engineering from IIT Bombay. That year, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science from Stanford University under the guidance of Jennifer Widom. His Stanford doctoral thesis, published in 2012, is titled "Incorporating Uncertainty in Data Management and Integration". Career. Agrawal held research internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research prior to joining Twitter as a software engineer in 2011. In October 2017, Twitter announced the appointment of Agrawal as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Massinger. In December 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey  announced that Agrawal would be in charge of Project Bluesky, an initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol. In November 2021, Dorsey announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter and that Agrawal was replacing him immediately. As CEO, Agrawal was awarded annual compensation of $1 million as well as stock compensation worth $12.5 million. Views and policies on online speech. In an interview with "MIT Technology Review" in November 2020, when asked about freedom of speech, Agrawal said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve  a healthy public conversation ... [and to] focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed." Personal life. Agrawal is married to Vineeta Agarwala, general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. They have two children, born in 2018 and 2022 respectively. He took paternity leave as the CEO of Twitter for the birth of his second child.