Elon Musk's former trust and safety chief says working at X was ‘hardest experience’ of her...

Ella Irwin wasn’t always a public person. Before joining Twitter, she had worked in lower-profile roles, including in loss prevention at banks and then in trust and safety at companies like Google, Amazon and Twilio.

That all changed in November 2022. Just five months after joining the company, she took on one of the most contentious jobs in all of tech: head of trust and safety for Twitter.

She would last just seven more months. In June, Irwin resigned from the company after Musk publicly criticized moderation actions that had been taken at the company around the issue of misgendering.

“It absolutely was the hardest experience that I’ve gone through in my career,” Irwin, 48, said.

In an interview with NBC News — her first since leaving the company — Irwin discussed why she left, what she thinks of Elon Musk’s leadership and his attacks on former employees, and what her next steps might be. She recently released the first episode of her new podcast, “The CryRoom,” which she co-hosts with Jess Anderson, who had a long career at tech companies like Salesforce but now runs an independent consulting firm and serves as vice president of cloud foundations at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.