Frederique Covington leaves Twitter for CMO role at Visa

Frederique Covington is taking on the senior vice president and chief marketing officer role for Visa, ending a two and a half year run with social networking group Twitter.Reporting to Visa’s newly appointed EVP and global chief marketing officer Lynn Biggar, Covington takes over from Rajiv Kapoor who is retiring from his position at Visa after almost 19 years. She officially starts her new role from 23 May.From her base in Singapore, Covington has served as Twitter's international marketing director for Asia Pacific, Russia and the Middle East, overseeing significant growth for the site. "Twitter was an incredible role," she told Marketing. "I was brought in to create international marketing for Twitter and it was truly a start-up position. We built teams in the Middle East, Canada, Latin America and Asia Pacific. I really loved it." Covington described Visa as a very ambitious global brand with a great team. Just last week the company opened its first Asian innovation centre in Singapore to support the creation of the next generation of payments software.She added that her time with Twitter and previously with Microsoft, where she held the role of Asia Pacific CMO would be a natural fit for Visa.In a statement, Twitter said Covington had done an amazing job as Twitter’s international marketing director."She has built up the the marketing function across the region and successfully led our efforts to educate and inspire our customers about Twitter’s platform as the live connection to culture. We thank Freddie for her contributions and wish her well in her next adventure."As Freddie will be joining a major consumer brand and one of our top global clients, we look forward to working closely with her to leverage Twitter in her brand and marketing campaigns."The company added that an immediately search was underway for her replacement. "We have strong country marketing teams who will continue to engage with our customers across the region and help them see the power of Twitter’s live, influential communications platform."