Joshua Roberts/Reuters
- Jack Dorsey tried to give a seat on Twitter’s board of directors to Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai in 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- The idea was met with opposition internally, as was the idea to add civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, the Journal reports.
- Dorsey and Mckesson appear to be good friends, and Dorsey has admired Yousafzai for several years, calling her the person who inspires him the most in a 2015 interview with Recode.
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Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is known for being an unusual CEO: he used to walk five miles to the office every day, has gone on silent meditation retreats, and makes it a point to befriend thought leaders and moguls in industries outside of tech.
Those relationships seem to have led to an attempt to add new faces to Twitter’s board several years ago, according to a new profile by the Wall Street Journal’s Kirsten Grind and Georgia Wells.
In 2016, Dorsey tried to give a seat on Twitter’s board to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girls’ education activist and Nobel Prize laureate. The idea was met with opposition internally, as Yousafzai had very little business experience, according to the Journal.
The same year, Dorsey also tried to give a board seat to civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson — Dorsey faced internal pushback on that idea as well, according to the Journal.
A spokesperson for Twitter did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Dorsey and Mckesson have been friends for several years, with Mckesson praising Dorsey's "curiosity outside of tech" and commitment to racial equality in an interview with the Journal.
It's not clear the extent of Dorsey and Yousafzai's friendship, but in April, Dorsey committed $1 billion of his equity in Square to funding efforts around coronavirus relief, girls' health and education, and universal basic income. The move drew praise from Yousafzai on Twitter, who commended Dorsey's commitment to girls' education.
—Malala (@Malala) April 7, 2020
Dorsey previously promoted the Malala Fund with a hashtag in his Twitter bio, and in a 2018 interview with NBA star Harrison Barnes for The Players' Tribune, Dorsey named Yousafzai as one of three living people he'd like to have dinner with. Dorsey also named Yousafzai as the person who inspires him the most in a 2015 interview with Recode.