Vivian Schiller Tweets That She Joined Twitter As First News Chief; More Women In Top Positions; Not Everyone Is Pleased

Vivian Schiller is joining Twitter. The NBC News chief digital officer will be the social networks’ first Head of News.

Twitter has been looking for their first news chief for months. Before she was at NBC, Vivian Schiller worked at CNN, the New York Times and NPR.

Vivian Schiller’s first duty as head of the news division at Twitter was to announce that she accepted the job via a tweet. She wrote "Excited to join @Twitter as Head of News in January. Leaving @NBCNews at year's end. Grateful to my beloved colleagues for 2+ great years."

According to the job description that Twitter posted in May, Vivian Schiller will be the liaison between news organizations and the social network. Executives at Twitter have long been interested in getting the site ready to help media companies distribute news.

Vivian Schiller’s new role comes on the heels of media criticism that Twitter’s board of directors is filled with white men. Twitter recently filed for an initial public offering, which restarted the debate about the lack of diversity at tech companies, especially at the highest levels.

Vivian Schiller worked for CNN for 15 years. She was also the senior vice president and general manager at the Discovery Times Channel from 2002 to 2006. After she left Discover Times, Schiller became senior vice president and general manager at NYTimes.com. Vivian Schiller worked at NYTimes.com for three years.

Vivian Schiller moved on to NPR to become its CEO and president. Schiller was only at NPR for two years before she came under fire in October 2010. The station fired its senior news analyst, Juan Williams, after he made controversial comments about people "in Muslim garb" boarding a plane. Vivian Schiller told media outlets that Williams’ comments should have stayed between with "his psychiatrist or his publicist." She later apologized for the remarks, but was ousted by the NPR board in March 2011. Three months later, Schiller started at NBC.

Not everyone is congratulating Schiller in her new role. Adrian Holovaty, the founder of EveryBlock, who criticized Schiller for not working hard enough to make the news startup work, tweeted "Attention @twitter management: hiring @VivianSchiller would be a huge mistake. Check your references!"

Schiller responded"@adrianholovaty I see you are still very upset that we had to close Everyblock. But I continue to have tremendous respect for your talent."