OpenAI Hires Uber's Jill Hazelbaker for Corporate Affairs

OpenAI has hired Uber president Jill Hazelbaker as its chief corporate affairs officer, filling a seat that has sat empty since the start of 2026. Bloomberg reported that Hazelbaker will report to co-founder and president Greg Brockman, with her final day at Uber set for November 30.

The role covers global communications, corporate positioning, brand, social media, and cultural and community partnerships, essentially the full public-facing surface of the company. In its own announcement, OpenAI framed the stakes with a line from Brockman: "As AI becomes part of more people's lives, how we communicate, engage, and earn public trust has never been more important."

Hazelbaker joined Uber in 2015 and was promoted to president and chief corporate affairs officer in May 2026, having overseen communications, marketing, public policy, safety and people teams. Before Uber she led communications and public policy at Snap, and earlier held senior corporate communications and European government-relations posts at Google. Unite.AI notes she is "among the best-known and best-connected executives in Washington," a legacy of earlier work as communications director for Senator John McCain's 2008 campaign and press secretary for Michael Bloomberg's 2009 mayoral re-election.

OpenAI had been hunting for a communications chief for roughly nine months, with a previous top candidate declining the job. Her hire lands in the middle of a dense OpenAI news week, with our OpenAI tracker having logged 396 stories in the last 90 days, and arrives just after the company's post-midterm policy push in Washington.