Twitter Adds First Female Board Member, Marjorie Scardino

Twitter has appointed its first female board member: Marjorie Scardino.
Scardino has a strong media background, having served as CEO of The Economist Group and more recently, as CEO of Pearson, a role she held for nearly 16 years, helping to grow Pearson into a leading publishing and education company. She stepped down from that position in late 2012.
This isn't the first time Scardino has served on the board of a technology company. She was a member of Nokia's board of directors for more than a decade as well.
Twitter announced the news in a tweet Thursday morning and provided more details in an SEC filing.

We're pleased to welcome @marjscar to our board of directors.
— Twitter (@twitter) December 5, 2013

"Ms. Scardino will serve in the class of directors whose term expires at the annual meeting of stockholders to be held in 2014," according to the SEC filing. "In addition, Ms. Scardino was appointed as a member of the audit committee of the Board (the “Audit Committee”), effective immediately."
In the leadup to Twitter's IPO last month, some criticized the company for not having any women on its board. Reports suggested that the company was interested in big names like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but would wait until after going public to make an announcement.
Facebook, like Twitter, didn't appoint its first female board member — COO Sheryl Sandberg — until the month after it went public in 2012. Facebook added a second female board member in March of this year: Susan Desmond-Hellman, chancellor of University of California at San Francisco.
Ironically enough, Scardino appears to have joined Twitter in October but only tweeted for the first time on Thursday. She had fewer than 100 followers at the time of the announcement.
@twitter Thank you. There couldn't be a more exciting time in Twitter's history to join!