OpenAI has appointed Jill Hazelbaker as chief corporate affairs officer, bringing a veteran of Uber’s regulatory and reputation challenges into a role overseeing its global communications and corporate positioning. The company announced the appointment on November 3, 2026.
Hazelbaker most recently served as Uber’s president and chief corporate affairs officer. She will report to OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and start in early December, Fortune reports, citing OpenAI.
The hire gives OpenAI a senior executive whose experience spans technology companies, political campaigns, public policy and reputation management. It also follows a roughly 10-month gap in permanent communications leadership, according to Fortune. Those two details make this more consequential than a routine change of spokesperson: OpenAI is adding an experienced executive to coordinate how it explains itself and engages with the public.
What Hazelbaker Will Oversee
OpenAI’s announcement gives Hazelbaker two explicit responsibilities: global communications and corporate positioning. The company says she will work with leaders across the organization to improve public understanding of AI and build trust in its mission.
Axios provides a more detailed account of the portfolio, reporting that it includes:
- Global communications and reputation.
- Corporate brand and positioning.
- Social media.
- Cultural and community partnerships.
- Events and gatherings through which OpenAI engages with outside audiences.
That is a wider remit than handling press inquiries or announcing products. Corporate positioning concerns how a company presents its purpose, priorities and place in the market. Community partnerships and events give it additional ways to engage with people beyond its own product announcements.
For a frontier AI developer, those responsibilities have practical consequences. Explanations of a system’s capabilities, descriptions of its limitations and responses to criticism all contribute to the public’s understanding of the company. The person coordinating those messages occupies an important position between technical leaders and outside audiences, even when the underlying product decisions sit elsewhere.
Brockman framed the appointment around that challenge, saying that “how we communicate, engage, and earn public trust has never been more important.”
My view is that the breadth of the portfolio is the most useful detail in the announcement. It suggests OpenAI wants more coordinated public engagement across several channels, with a senior leader responsible for the company’s overall presentation. That is a more specific reading than treating the appointment as a generic effort to improve its image.
A New Role After a Long Communications Gap
Fortune reports that Hannah Wong left her position as OpenAI’s chief communications officer in January 2026. Chris Lehane subsequently led the team on an interim basis.
That history needs a careful distinction. Axios describes Hazelbaker’s chief corporate affairs officer position as a new role, while Fortune describes the appointment as filling the communications leadership vacancy. Both accounts can fit: the hire addresses the gap, but Hazelbaker is arriving under a different title with a broader documented public-facing portfolio.
Calling this the replacement of one identical position would obscure that change. Equally, describing the communications operation as leaderless for 10 months would overlook the reported interim arrangement.
Fortune also reports that OpenAI offered Hazelbaker the job in the spring and she declined. The company later brought in an executive recruiting firm as it stepped up its search over the summer. The reasons for her earlier decision are not confirmed in the supplied evidence, so the sequence is useful as hiring context, not as a basis for guessing about compensation or negotiations.
The practical change is clearer: OpenAI is moving from interim oversight to a named executive with a defined, company-wide communications brief and a reporting line to Brockman.
Why Her Uber Experience Matters
Hazelbaker spent a decade at Uber, according to OpenAI’s biography. Her most recent position combined the president and chief corporate affairs officer titles, with responsibility for global communications, marketing, public policy, safety and people teams.
OpenAI credits her with helping Uber navigate regulatory and reputational challenges while building the capabilities needed for international growth. That is the hiring company’s assessment of her record, not an independent measurement of her contribution to Uber’s performance.
Still, the responsibilities themselves explain the relevance. Uber’s business required public communication across markets where regulators, customers, workers and local communities had different concerns. Hazelbaker’s remit put her close to both the company’s public presentation and the organizational functions that could affect its reputation.
Her earlier career adds another part of the picture. OpenAI says she led communications and public policy at Snap, held senior communications and government-relations roles at Google, and worked in US politics. Her political positions included national communications director and chief spokesperson for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, as well as press secretary to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
That background helps explain why OpenAI would choose her for a position concerned with institutions and public trust. It combines experience explaining technology businesses with experience operating in political environments, where messages are scrutinized by audiences with conflicting interests.
The comparison between her Uber and OpenAI jobs also sets an important boundary:
| Area | Hazelbaker’s Uber portfolio | Documented OpenAI remit |
|---|---|---|
| Communications | Global communications | Global communications and reputation |
| Brand | Marketing | Corporate brand and positioning |
| Public engagement | Public policy among her responsibilities | Social media, partnerships and events |
| Other functions | Safety and people teams | No equivalent responsibilities specified in the appointment |
The Uber column comes from OpenAI’s biography; the expanded OpenAI scope comes from Axios. The distinction matters because the same corporate affairs title can cover different functions at different companies. Her previous responsibilities should not automatically be carried over to her new job.
Frequently Asked Questions
4 questions
1When Will Jill Hazelbaker Join OpenAI?
She is due to start in early December 2026, according to Fortune, which attributes the timing to OpenAI.
