Twitter Names Marjorie Scardino Its First Female Board Member

Twitter has appointed its first ever female board member. Marjorie Scardino, CEO of publishing and education outfit Pearson, will join not only Twitter’s board but its audit committee. The move deepens Twitter’s ties with the media world and diversifies a board that has been all male and mostly white for six years.

Scardino is a highly qualified and welcome addition to Twitter. But her hiring doesn’t change the fact that the company spent the last year making a mockery of calls to diversify its board, and completely bungled the issue of gender diversity. While the company’s microblogging service has provided a new way for the socially conscious to organize and launch public debates, its executives have been slow to action with regard to board diversity, and more egregiously, they actively turned their nose up at people who called for change.