Lorraine Twohill

Lorraine Twohill is an Irish marketing executive who has worked for Bord Fáilte, Opodo and Google, where she has been head of marketing since 2009.

Twohill was born in Carlow, Ireland.^[1] She gained a degree in international marketing and languages from Dublin City University in 1992.^[2][3]

After graduating, Twohill worked for Burns Philp during the 1990s. She left the company to join the Government of Ireland's Bord Fáilte, where she managed operations for Italy from Milan and later oversaw operations for Northern Europe from Amsterdam.^[4] Her first big advertising campaign was for Tourism Ireland, and she was part of the team responsible for developing what became an award-winning tourism website for the Irish government.^[5][6] Twohill was the head of marketing of the online travel agency Opodo until April 2003.^[4][7][8]

In 2003, Twohill was hired as Google's first marketer located outside the United States. She held various roles in the company, including running Google's marketing in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, becoming head of marketing in 2009.^[9]

Google agreed to destroy billions of records to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked the internet use of people who thought they were browsing privately in its Chrome browser’s incognito mode. In 2019, Twohill wrote to CEO Sundar Pichai, "We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it's not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging."^[10]

Twohill has worked from Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley, California,^[2][11] since 2009.^[12][13] She is married and has two children.^[14][15] She speaks five languages,^[16] and her hobbies include playing basketball with her family as well as board games and using a Peloton. Twohill was diagnosed with stage two cholangiocarcinoma in 2016 and has since recovered.^[17] She credits Nikesh Arora, Pichai, Jane Rosenthal, and Steve Stoute as some of her most trusted advisors.^[17]

Twohill joined the board of directors of Telegraph Media Group in 2008,^[18] and became a director of Williams-Sonoma, Inc. in 2012.^[12] She was appointed to the board of directors of Palo Alto Networks in 2019.^[19]