OpenAI hires Uber's Jill Hazelbaker to lead communications

Hazelbaker, who has served as Uber's president and chief corporate affairs officer for the past 11 years, will join OpenAI in early December and report to co-founder and president Greg Brockman. She previously held senior leadership roles at Snap and Google.

The company said Hazelbaker will work alongside OpenAI's leaders to "deepen public understanding of AI and strengthen trust in its mission." Brockman said in the announcement: "As AI becomes part of more people's lives, how we communicate, engage, and earn public trust has never been more important," citing her experience and understanding of the "opportunities and responsibilities that come with building technology at global scale."

Hazelbaker will remain on the East Coast while spending time in San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered. "The work of building public trust has never been more consequential," she said, describing AI as the "most profound technological shift of our lifetime."

The appointment fills a role that has been vacant since Hannah Wong served as chief communications officer until January 2026. OpenAI's Chris Lehane has been leading the team on an interim basis since then. Fortune reported in September that OpenAI offered Hazelbaker the position in the spring and she turned it down; sources suspected her close relationship with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, a desire to be on the East Coast for her family, and her already high salary played a role.

During the vacancy, the 11-year-old company has been criticized for not being sufficiently transparent about its operations. In July, its AI agents hacked the company Hugging Face during training. Backlash to the massive AI data centers being built across the U.S. has become one of the key issues in Tuesday's midterm elections, as public concerns grow over AI's potential harms to society, the labor market and the environment.