OpenAI appoints Jill Hazelbaker as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer

Jill Hazelbaker joins OpenAI as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, leading global communications and corporate positioning. She comes from Uber, where she was President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, overseeing communications, marketing, public policy, safety and people teams over a decade.

Before that she led communications and public policy at Snap and held senior communications and government relations roles at Google. She started in politics, including as national communications director for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and press secretary to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Who runs a company's public voice shapes how it talks to regulators, communities and users. That matters for an AI lab under this much scrutiny.

Read this hire as a statement of priorities. OpenAI's announcement talks about deepening public understanding of AI and earning trust. Its pick is someone whose resume is built on navigating regulatory and reputational battles at a company that grew fast and often clashed with cities and governments.

That experience is genuinely relevant. OpenAI faces questions about data centers, power, copyright, safety and its own structure, and it needs people who can engage institutions instead of talking past them. Greg Brockman's quote frames the job around public trust, and we think that's the right frame.

But trust is earned by conduct, not communications. The Uber comparison cuts both ways. Uber's playbook in its growth years was often to move first and negotiate the rules later. If OpenAI's version of that is to scale aggressively and manage the backlash with better messaging, the public will notice. The better outcome is a corporate affairs function that brings outside concerns back inside and changes decisions, not just narratives.

We'll judge this hire by what OpenAI does, not how it sounds. Clearer disclosures, real engagement with communities hosting its infrastructure, and straight answers on safety would tell us the role is about trust. Smoother talking points would tell us it's about positioning.

The announcement says Hazelbaker brings nearly two decades of experience advising technology companies and political leaders. Her role spans communications and corporate positioning; the announcement does not say whether policy or other teams she oversaw at Uber will report to her at OpenAI.