Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde is in the spotlight after Elon Musk criticized her in a series of scathing tweets, prompting a former corporate executive to accuse the billionaire of “bullying” and spearhead a harassment campaign.
Gadde, 47, has been a low-key power player in Silicon Valley for years and played a key role on Twitter in controversial decisions to ban Donald Trump and suppress news articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
After moving to the United States with her family from India as a toddler, Gadde and her family faced racism growing up in Beaumont, Texas, where she said her father had to get approval from the Ku Klux Klan to get insurance door to door sale.
Today, Gadde is a mother to a young child and has built a remarkable career. She spent a decade at elite Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and worked in the legal department of Juniper Networks before joining Twitter in 2011.
Federal records show that she has also been a regular contributor to Democratic candidates, giving more than $18,000 over the past two decades and most recently supporting Kamala Harris with a $2,700 check in 2019.
Twitter’s top lawyer Vijaya Gadde is in the spotlight after Elon Musk criticized her in a series of scathing tweets, prompting a former corporate executive to accuse the billionaire of “bullying” and spearhead a harassment campaign
Gadde, 47, has been a low-key power player in Silicon Valley for years and played a key role on Twitter in controversial decisions to ban Donald Trump and suppress news articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop
A Twitter spokesman did not immediately respond to a request from Thursday afternoon for comment from Gadde or the company.
As Twitter’s chief legal officer and general counsel, Gadde wields tremendous power at the company, where she’s long had essentially the final say over who’s allowed on the platform and what they’re allowed to tweet.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Gadde once said that Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey let her create and enforce content policies.
“He rarely considers an individual enforcement decision,” Gadde told the outlet. “I can’t even remember a time. I usually go up to him and say, ‘This is going to happen.’
Though restrained, that power has put Gadde at the center of some of Twitter’s most controversial moderation decisions, including the decision to permanently ban Trump after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021.
She also signed Twitter’s move to block the sharing of links to a New York Post article based on files from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop just before the 2020 election.
As Twitter’s Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel, Gadde wields tremendous power within the company
Gadde has signed off on Twitter’s move to block the sharing of links to a New York Post article based on files from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop
Gadde drew a backlash after banning the Post’s coverage under Twitter’s “hacked materials policy.”
The Post’s Twitter account was also suspended for about two weeks. Subsequent reports, including from , confirmed the laptop’s authenticity.
Gadde made headlines again this week after reportedly bursting into tears while updating her 350 employees on Musk’s successful $44 billion bid to take over Twitter.
When political podcast host Saagar Enjeti tweeted that Gadde was instrumental in the decision to temporarily suspend the New York Post account, Musk replied, “The suspension of a major news organization’s Twitter account for publishing a truthful story was obvious incredibly inappropriate.”
On Wednesday, he doubled down on criticism of Gadde by sharing a meme with his 86 million followers showing Gadde and suggesting that the company’s decisions are influenced by a “left bias”.
But Musk’s tweets sparked angry backlash from Dick Costolo, who was CEO of Twitter between 2010 and 2015.
Costolo replied to Musk, “What’s up? You are making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats.”
In a subsequent tweet, the former Twitter boss wrote, “Bullying is not leadership.”
Musk hit back: “What are you talking about? I’m just saying that Twitter has to be politically neutral.”
He seemed to elaborate on this point by tweeting, “For Twitter to earn the public’s trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means angering the far right and the far left alike.”
Current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal also appeared to react indirectly to the controversy, tweeting that he was proud of “our people” who managed to stay focused despite the “noise”.
Dick Costolo, who was CEO of Twitter between 2010 and 2015, accused Musk of bullying Gadde with his critical tweets
“I took this job to change Twitter for the better, correcting course where needed and strengthening the service,” he said. ‘Proud of our people who, despite the noise, continue to work with concentration and urgently.’
Despite being in the spotlight now, Gadde seems long intent on keeping a low profile. She was described in a 2020 Politico profile as “the most important executive in Silicon Valley you’ve never heard of.”
As the manager of a team of 350 employees, she made $17 million in 2021: a $600,000 base salary plus a $450,000 bonus and nearly $400,000 in personal security. The rest came from stocks.
She was born in India and moved to Beaumont, Texas at the age of two. She remembers that her father, an engineer, had to go to the KKK to ask permission to sell insurance door-to-door.
She later said that the unfair situation inspired her to become a lawyer.
The family later moved to New Jersey, and Gadde graduated from New York University with a law degree in 2000.
“I felt strongly that I needed to be in a position where I understood my rights or the rights of my community,” she told Politico. “I never wanted to be taken advantage of.”
Arianna Huffington (L) and General Counsel on Twitter Vijaya Gadde are seen in 2015
Although Gadde was previously married to fellow attorney Ramsey Homsany, the couple filed for divorce in 2014 in what appeared to be an amicable split
Though Gadde was previously married to fellow attorney Ramsey Homsany, the couple filed for divorce in 2014 in what appears to be an amicable split with no children, court records show.
It’s unclear if she later remarried, but Gadde has a young child who was born around 2017.
Gadde joined the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she worked for a decade before becoming a senior director in the legal practice of Juniper Networks in Silicon Valley.
Joining Twitter in 2011, she became co-founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey’s right-hand man, sitting next to him and accompanying him to his meetings in Congress and the White House.
In October 2019, she was the architect of the idea to stop political advertising on the platform, and just before the election she was instrumental in the decision to suspend the New York Post’s account when it was reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Twitter claimed it violated the company’s policy against promoting hacked material; Critics were angered by the persistence, and Twitter later apologized.
In January 2021, it was Gadde who called Dorsey – while on vacation in Hawaii – to tell him they were going to ban Donald Trump for violating guidelines on incitement to violence.
Gadde is also co-founder of #Angels, an investment collective that supports startups and helps ensure equal pay for women in successful companies. She is also on the board of directors of the medical charity Mercy Corps.