Exclusive: Joel Kaplan leaving Meta after 15 years as policy chief
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Mark Zuckerberg walks with Joel Kaplan on Capitol Hill in 2019. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, will leave Meta next year after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top Washington adviser.
- Kaplan — a Harvard Law graduate and former Marine artillery officer who was deputy White House chief of staff for President George W. Bush — built Facebook's U.S. policy team from scratch. Kaplan led the global policy team through years of massive growth and controversy.
Why it matters: Kaplan, who helped Meta build a strong relationship with the incoming Trump administration, was a leading internal advocate for consistency on Zuckerberg's free-expression principles, even when that was unpopular, associates tell Axios.
Zuckerberg, Meta's founder and CEO, told Axios in a statement: "Joel has worked on virtually every tough issue Meta has faced for more than 15 years."
- "When he arrived," Zuckerberg added, "there was no playbook for ensuring our products would be available to the billions of people around the world who now rely on them. And throughout all of it, he's been a strong advocate for our policies, and a friend to me."
Zoom in: Kaplan protected the company's personalized-ads business model from regulatory attacks worldwide, starting in Europe.
- Kaplan helped guide Zuckerberg and his senior leaders through multiple party-control changes in Congress and the White House.
- Zuckerberg moved his desk to work with the coders of Meta's fast-growing Muse and its first frontier model, Muse Wonder. Meta is trying to strike an optimistic tone on AI's potential with its "The Future Is for Everyone" message, and to convince communities 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 executives from both sides of the aisle, many of whom recently joined the leadership team. The key players include:
- Dina Powell McCormick, president and vice chairman, will add external affairs to her wide-ranging portfolio, which includes serving on the management committee and helping Zuckerberg with strategic priorities. She spends most of her time at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, co-heading the Meta Compute initiative on building AI infrastructure. A Bloomberg profile last month was headlined: "Zuckerberg Has an AI Empire to Build. Meet the Adviser Who Handles the Details."
- C.J. Mahoney, who became Meta's chief legal officer in January, will also gain policy responsibilities. He's a former Trump trade official and Microsoft general counsel, and recently led Meta's landmark social media settlement on teen safety with a bipartisan group of 52 attorneys general from U.S. states and territories.
- Brian Rice, a former aide to Secretary of State John Kerry, was promoted earlier this year to Meta's head of U.S. government affairs.
- Tucker Bounds, a former spokesman for the late Sen. John McCain, was named last month to be Meta's global head of communications and public affairs after more than a dozen years with the company.
