Meditation Retreats

Jack Dorsey once reportedly tried to give Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai a seat on Twitter’s board

  • According to the Wall Street Journal, Jack Dorsey attempted to give Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai a seat on Twitter’s board of directors in 2016.
  • The idea met with internal opposition, as did the idea of ​​adding civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, the journal reports.
  • Dorsey and Mckesson seem to be good friends, and Dorsey has admired Yousafzai for several years, calling her the person who inspired him most in a 2015 interview with Recode.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter, is known for being an unusual CEO: he walked five miles to the office every day, has done silent meditation retreats, and making friends with thought leaders and humps in industries outside of technology is important.

Those relationships seem to have sparked an attempt to add new faces to the Twitter board a few years ago, according to a new profile of Kirsten Grind and Georgia Wells of the Wall Street Journal.

In 2016, Dorsey tried Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl education activist and Nobel Prize winner, to secure a seat on the Twitter board. The idea met with internal opposition because, according to the Journal, Yousafzai had very little business experience. That same year, Dorsey also tried to give civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson a seat on the board. according to the journal.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

Dorsey and Mckesson have been friends for several years. Mckesson praised Dorsey’s “curiosity outside of technology” and commitment to racial equality in an interview with the Journal.

advertising

It’s not clear how close Dorsey and Yousafzai are friends, but in April Dorsey donated $ 1 billion of his equity in Square to help fund coronavirus relief efforts, girls’ health and education, and universal basic income. The move was praised by Yousafzai on Twitter, who praised Dorsey’s commitment to educating girls.

—Malala (@Malala) April 7, 2020Dorsey previously promoted the Malala Fund with a hashtag on his Twitter bio. In a 2018 interview with NBA star Harrison Barnes for The Players’ Tribune, Dorsey named Yousafzai as one of three people alive he’d like to have dinner with. Dorsey also named Yousafzai the person who most inspired him in a 2015 interview with Recode.

Related Articles