Erica Anderson

Anderson heads up news partnerships for Twitter, a vital element in its push to be a go-to news service for its users. She has also worked for NBC, MTV and CBS, where she helped Katie Couric with her digital strategy.

As Katie Courics digital media strategist, Anderson was charged with helping to incorporate social media into Couric's daily routine and reporting. Anderson says she never tweeted for Couric, but instead looked for ways the journalist could adapt what she was learning, reading about and working on to spark conversations online, which meant pitching tweets and crafting emails late into the night so her ideas were the first Couric saw each morning.

This was how Anderson launched a career that would soon make her something of a modern-day pioneer in both the television and tech worlds, using social media to transform how reporters research, share and make news.

Anderson arrived at CBS News by way of Washington, D.C. After graduating from Indiana University in 2006, she took a job in public affairs in D.C., left to cover the election for MTV News, then returned to her company in a new role she crafted for herself teaching colleagues, executives and clients (from Procter & Gamble to Johns Hopkins University) how to use social media. She quit her job in late 2009 -- to my dads dismay, she noted -- and started pitching herself to media companies. In June 2010, she joined Courics team, and the following February moved to Twitter, where she now focuses on expanding use of the service inside news organizations.