Joel Kaplan, Meta’s director of global affairs, will leave Meta next year after more than 15 years as Mark Zuckerberg’s top adviser in Washington.
- Kaplan — a Harvard law graduate and former Marine artillery officer and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush at the White House — built Facebook’s U.S. politics team from scratch. Kaplan led the global policy team through years of massive growth and controversy.
Why it’s important: Kaplan, who helped Meta build a strong relationship with the new Trump administration, was a key internal advocate for keeping Zuckerberg’s free speech principles consistent, even when doing so was unpopular, his associates told Axios.
Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO told Axios in a statement: “Joel has worked on virtually every difficult problem Meta has faced for over 15 years. »
- “When he arrived,” Zuckerberg added, “there was no strategy to ensure that our products would be available to the billions of people around the world who now depend on them. And through it all, he has been a staunch defender of our policies and a friend to me.”
Zoom: Kaplan has protected the company’s personalized ads business model from regulatory attacks around the world, starting in Europe.
- Kaplan helped Zuckerberg and his top leadership navigate multiple changes in party control in Congress and the White House.
- Zuckerberg moved his office to work with coders at the fast-growing Muse, Meta and his first frontier model, Muse Wonder. Meta is trying to set an optimistic tone about the potential of AI with its message “The future is for everyone” and to convince communities that they can benefit from data centers.
What’s next: Kaplan will stay through midterms and into 2027 for a transition that will include Meta external affairs leaders from both sides of the aisle, many of whom recently joined the leadership team. The main players include:
- Dina Powell McCormick, president and vice president, will add external affairs to her broad portfolio, which includes serving on the executive committee and helping Zuckerberg with strategic priorities. She spends most of her time at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, where she co-leads the Meta Compute initiative to build AI infrastructure. Last month, a Bloomberg profile headlined: “Zuckerberg has an AI empire to build. Meet the advisor who handles the details.”
- CJ Mahoney, who became Meta’s legal director in January, will also gain political responsibilities. He is a former Trump trade official and general counsel for Microsoft, and recently led Meta Social Media’s landmark teen safety deal with a bipartisan group of 52 U.S. state and territory attorneys general.
- Brian Rice, a former aide to Secretary of State John Kerry, was promoted earlier this year to head Meta’s U.S. government affairs.
- Tucker Limits, a former spokesperson for the late Sen. John McCain, was named Meta’s global head of communications and public affairs last month after more than a dozen years with the company.
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