Uber President Jill Hazelbaker to Join OpenAI as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer

The Information reported that the role has been vacant since the start of the year. Hazelbaker will be responsible for OpenAI's global communications and brand strategy. Axios said her remit will also cover corporate positioning, social media, and cultural and community partnerships, and that she will report to Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder.

Bloomberg described her as the latest long-serving executive to leave Uber this year. The reports did not say who will take over her responsibilities at Uber.

A Long Search

OpenAI has been without a top communications executive since Hannah Wong, its chief communications officer, left in January. Fortune reported in September that Hazelbaker had been OpenAI's first choice for that job and had turned it down in the spring. The company then brought in the executive search firm Daversa Partners, according to that report. In July it hired Josh King as vice president of communications to handle financial messaging.

The Information said Hazelbaker will try to steady a team that has lost a large number of senior managers in recent years. She arrives as investors grow more nervous ahead of a possible OpenAI IPO.

Her Background

Hazelbaker spent more than a decade at Uber. Before that she held senior roles at Google and Snap. She started her career in politics and was national communications director for Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. At Uber she ran communications through the 2017 removal of founder Travis Kalanick. In May she was promoted to president, with a portfolio that Axios said included marketing, communications, public policy, safety, human resources, recruiting and real estate.

Why It Matters

OpenAI's public profile now goes well beyond consumer products. In recent weeks the company has rolled out a new AI policy pitch to lawmakers, pledged to cut power use at its data centres during grid emergencies, and set up an election operations centre for the US midterms. It has also signed government and energy-sector deals abroad, including four agreements in Abu Dhabi this week.

That work brings regular contact with regulators, utilities, local communities and foreign governments, and much of it falls within a corporate affairs remit. Hazelbaker comes with experience of politics, Washington and running communications through a crisis. She takes over a function that has gone without a permanent leader for most of a year in which OpenAI's public scrutiny has grown.

The hire also adds to OpenAI's recent run of appointments from government and big companies. On Monday it named former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to a national security role.

OpenAI and Uber had not commented publicly in the reports available at the time of writing.