Following Co-Founder Jack Dorsey’s departure as Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer (CEO), the social media behemoth announced Parag Agarwal’s appointment through a unanimous board election. The Indian-Origin tech maven has quite the story.
Early Life
1984:
Parag Agarwal is born to Ram Gopal Agarwal, a worker at the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India and Shashi a schoolteacher in 1984.
Education
2000: A student at Atomic Energy Central School 4, Parag later joined the Atomic Energy Junior College. His teachers remember him as a front-bencher who was innovative in his thinking. “His teachers Omita Mandal and Smita Bobhate rated his problem-solving skills and thinking ability to be the highest in the class”, said Principal Anand Kumar. He was felicitated for scoring high marks in Class XII exams and for bagging the gold medal in the International Physics Olympiad.
2001:
Parag cleared the extremely competitive exams for aspiring engineers, The Join Entrance Examination (JEE) with a rank of 77 and secured a seat at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT B) ’s Department of Electrical Engineering but later ‘upgraded’ to Computer Science.
Typical "Topper Material"
2005:
Parag graduates from IIT B with a B.Tech in Computer Science (CS) and a number of impressive internships. Professor Supratim Biswas of IIT Bombay, a former teacher of Parag Agarwal, delineated his academic background by remarking “I distinctly remember him as being the topper of the department. He was a typical topper…material…extremely organized, very well-behaved”.
NRI Phase
2005-2010:
Fitting the classic IIT B CS graduate stereotype, Parag moves to the United States for better job opportunities and bags internships at leading tech firms such as Microsoft and AT&T.
2011:
Parag completed his post-doctorate from Stanford University. His excellent educational and working experience had tailored him into a widely accepted Artificial Intelligence connoisseur in the Bay Area. Parag joined Twitter in 2011 when the company employed less than a thousand people.
Marriage
2016:
Parag Agarwal marries Vinita Agarwal; a tech whiz like him. The couple met at Stanford University. Later, their daughter Anamika is also born.
The Chosen One
2018:
Parag had worked exponentially at Twitter which earned him praises from Jack Dorsey himself amongst other board members, publicly, repeatedly. Parag was chosen by Twitter’s board as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) a position he shone at for three years
2021:
After a decade of successful and creative endeavours Twitter’s board unanimously decided appoint Parag as their new CEO.
Conclusion
What lies ahead for Parag is unknown, however with ever changing technological dynamics, his life ought to change as the CEO of one of the world’s integral companies.
~ Lorik Yadav
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