Uber's Jill Hazelbaker Lands at OpenAI as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer

Jill Hazelbaker, who spent more than ten years in senior communications and corporate affairs roles at Uber, is joining OpenAI as chief corporate affairs officer — the highest-profile comms move of the week and a signal of how seriously AI companies now treat reputation management.

Hazelbaker joined Uber in 2015 as VP of policy communications and climbed steadily from there. In May, she was promoted to president and chief corporate affairs officer, a post that put her in charge of global teams across marketing, communications, public policy and safety — plus human resources, recruiting and real estate.

Before Uber, she held senior communications posts at Snapchat and Google, and her political résumé runs deep: press secretary for Michael Bloomberg's 2009 mayoral campaign and national communications director for John McCain's 2008 presidential run.

At OpenAI, her remit will cover communications and reputation, corporate brand and positioning, social media, and cultural and community partnerships and convenings, according to a report in Axios.

OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman said: "Jill brings exceptional judgment, seasoned leadership, and a deep understanding of the opportunities and responsibilities that come with building technology at global scale."

That's a corporate compliment, obviously, but the word choice tells you something: a company building globally deployed AI knows its biggest communications challenge is public trust, not awareness. Hiring someone who ran comms through Uber's most turbulent decade is the mechanism at work here.

Where else are senior comms people moving?

The Hazelbaker hire tops a busy week of appointments across agencies, in-house teams and nonprofits:

• Edelman hires Melissa Mackreath, most recently a managing director at Teneo, as head of corporate affairs, North America — a newly created role.
• Ruder Finn promotes Tejas Totade to global chief technology officer and chief data & AI officer.
• INFINITE names Cristina LiBassi as VP and Michael Rose as account director, legal writing and strategy.
• SolComms, which works with startups and scale-ups across healthcare, consumer and technology, hires Alyssa Handschuh as associate VP of lifestyle PR, another newly created role.
• SourceCode Communications names Troy Kelley EVP, integrated marketing and consumer technology.
• Bully Pulpit International appoints former maslansky + partners president Lee Carter as partner, leading the agency's message intelligence and predictive communications capabilities.
• FTI Consulting brings on Hun Quach as a managing director in its strategic communications segment.
• Lambda Legal, the national civil rights organization advocating for LGBTQ+ people and everyone living with HIV, hires Nydia Sahagun as chief marketing & communications officer.

What's happening in-house?

Corporate and brand-side moves kept pace with the agency shuffle:

• Sol, an IT transformation firm that uses AI to redesign how companies operate, appoints Dan Silberman as head of marketing & communications.
• Angel City Football Club, the National Women's Soccer League team in Los Angeles, brings on CrossFit's Jenna Hauca as CMO, effective Nov. 2.
• Scale Computing, which provides edge computing and network solutions, names Cooper Briscoe as CMO.
• B&P Advertising, a Las Vegas-based advertising and PR firm, names Fletcher Whitwell as president and CEO.
• LaVoie Strategic Communications Group in Boston names Zina McGowan-Thomas director of strategic communications & media in its government relations group.

Two patterns stand out. First, several of these roles are newly created — at Edelman and SolComms — which usually means the business has outgrown its current structure rather than simply backfilling a departure. Second, data and AI responsibilities are being folded into senior titles, as with Totade's combined CTO and chief data & AI officer promotion at Ruder Finn.

For practitioners, the throughline is straightforward: corporate affairs is consolidating brand, policy and reputation under one roof, and the people winning these jobs combine political campaign instincts with in-house scale experience. Hazelbaker's move is the headline; the pattern behind it is the story.