Meta just promoted Nick Clegg to a top policy role. Meet the 13 other execs working to repair the company's image.
- Facebook parent Meta's Nick Clegg just got a bigger policy role while David Ginsberg was appointed PR chief.
- Clegg's shift will give CEO Mark Zuckerberg more time to focus on the metaverse.
- Insider identified 12 other top PR people at Meta in charge of shaping its narrative.
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Facebook parent Meta just shook up its PR operation, promoting Nick Clegg to president for global affairs and elevating David Ginsberg to head of communications and public affairs.
Ginsberg will continue to run the choice and competition team, which builds products that keep Meta compliant with more stringent regulation around issues like data transfer and portability features, Bloomberg reported. Meta also expanded VP Tucker Bounds' role.
The changes come as the company confronts an onslaught of stories based on leaked documents that showed how Meta knew its platform enabled the spread of harmful content like hate speech and misinformation.
To fix its reputation, Meta's PR department transitioned into what company insiders call a "wartime operation," hiring hundreds of tech wonks and Washington politicos.
Much of this strategy is designed by Meta's strategic-response-communications team, which launched in 2018 and serves to rush out crisis responses and avoid getting blindsided by situations like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the deadly violence in Myanmar.
Insider spoke with sources including nine current and former employees to identify Meta's top PR execs in addition to Ginsberg working to put out fires and influence the public.
Read the full list below, sorted alphabetically.
Nissa Anklesaria, VP of business communications
Meta is trying to pull Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Zuckerberg out of the spotlight by refocusing the public's attention on the company's biggest source of revenue — small and medium-size businesses.
To pull that off, insiders said Sandberg relied on Anklesaria, who has become one of her closest PR advisors.
Anklesaria isn't best known for crisis management — she usually speaks with trade publications and advertisers to pitch them on Facebook's ability to target consumers through advertising. But Apple's recent privacy change has thrust that issue to the forefront, and Anklesaria has been tasked with proactively reaching out to the ad industry to allay their fears around Facebook's measurement systems.
Tucker Bounds, VP of communications
Bounds, who reports to Ginsberg and was recently given a new global affairs function, masterminded Meta's "strategic-response-communications" team.
After the Cambridge Analytica fallout, Clegg directed Bounds to organize and build strategic-response communications in 2018. Today, that team is the tip of the spear when it comes to the company's crisis communications.
The strategic-response team includes corporate- and policy-communications PR pros, as well as legal, product, and marketing employees. Its objective is to devise swift answers to questions from the media and lawmakers.
For example, Bounds organized the press rollout for Meta's announcements on how it was going to clamp down on misinformation and foreign interference in the 2020 US general election.
A tech reporter who spoke on the condition of anonymity referred to Bounds as "sharp-elbowed" and "somebody that no reporter is particularly excited about working with." But internally, Bounds is one of the most admired operatives inside the communications department.
"Tucker is like the funny uncle," a person familiar with Meta's PR said. "He has open office hours. He throws out a joke or two. And he's affable and charismatic."
Bounds, a spokesperson for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, recently became the subject of media scrutiny himself. He was named in an affidavit submitted by an unidentified former Meta employee who alleges the PR exec downplayed the effects of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, according to The Washington Post.
The affidavit says Bounds said: "It will be a flash in the pan. Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move onto something else. Meanwhile we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine."
Ana Brekalo, communications director
Brekalo oversees the rapid-response unit, which is composed of three groups, including the rapid-response media team and some of Meta's most active tweeters, like Andy Stone, Dani Lever, Joe Osborne, and Drew Pusateri. She reports to Tucker Bounds.
Brekalo's purview also includes project management, a critical function since it coordinates the PR team's review process. It also helps facilitate information sharing, which allows PR to get all the input it needs from Meta before it publishes a statement or speaks with journalists.
The final piece of her remit is media reports, which monitor news coverage of the company.
Brekalo coordinated the company's response to "The Facebook Files" since The Wall Street Journal published its initial investigation. She joined the company in 2013.
Nick Clegg, president of global affairs
Clegg, who has been the face of the social-media giant's crisis response, was just promoted to oversee all policy matters, including interactions with governments.
His comfort with being in the spotlight — thanks to his tenure as deputy prime minister of the UK — marks a radical departure from his predecessor, Elliot Schrage, who preferred to remain behind the scenes and talk to policymakers instead of journalists.
Insiders said Clegg hit the ground running. He sat through daily briefings from the product and policy teams to learn what Facebook was doing to prevent misinformation and increase transparency around its political ads leading up to the 2020 general election.
They also said Meta management especially appreciated Clegg's knowledge of global affairs, particularly in Europe, which has become a hotbed of tech regulation.
"There's a way to overstep pushback against the media where you come off as combative and not productive," a person familiar with the company's PR operations said. "Nick is of the former, and not the latter.
"You can be a douchebag as a spokesperson and toe the company line — and that's not him. More people would like him to be more forceful and direct, but I don't think that's in his nature as a political creature."
Marc Johnson, VP of corporate communications
Johnson leads a 100-plus-person corporate-communications team, whose goal is to focus the public on its own messaging.
Despite spending time on parental leave, Johnson has established his presence by launching a 15-person corporate media-relations team. He's also ramping up efforts to publish Meta's homegrown content on its newsroom and social-media accounts — something Johnson specialized in while working at APCO and a big reason he was hired.
In addition to overseeing the usual corporate-communications functions like financial and internal comms, he oversees creative services, which create graphics and video for events like Facebook Connect (formerly known as Oculus Connect), an annual conference for virtual-reality developers, and writing team.
Michael Kirkland, VP of technology communications
An insider referred to Kirkland as a "peacetime communications person," and as Meta tries to shift from being known as a social-media company by breaking into the metaverse, it'll need a tech wonk like Kirkland to help.
Insiders said Kirkland would work closely with former product communications lead Roberta Thomson and Ha Thai, who leads communications for Facebook Reality Labs.
The longest-serving VP in Meta PR, Kirkland joined the company in 2011.
Chris Norton, VP of international communications
Most of Facebook's users are outside the US, and Norton's job is to assuage the concerns international audiences might have about the tech giant's platforms.
For example, after "The Facebook Files" said the company wanted to expand encryption to boost user privacy, the whistleblower Frances Haugen said that expanding encryption would make it easier for the company to ignore countries conducting espionage through the platform.
It'll fall to Norton to handle PR strategy around the encryption debate as he works with the communications leads of each region and country to ensure the company's messaging goes over well there.
Meta's three regional PR leaders report to Norton, including Esteban Israel for Latin America, Charlene Chian for the Asia-Pacific region, and Rose Beaumont for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Sarah O'Brien, VP of executive communications
Before joining the company in 2019, O'Brien oversaw communications for Tesla, whose CEO and founder, Elon Musk, settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission when it alleged that Musk misled investors in a tweet. Insiders said after that experience, doing PR for Sandberg and Zuckerberg was light work.
Insiders said that O'Brien has since maintained a close relationship with both Sandberg and Zuckerberg.
Insiders also said she and former PR chief John Pinette played a key role in the strategy to pivot Zuckerberg from being the public face of the company's controversies to being an "innovator," as he started using his Facebook and Instagram profiles to showcase new company technologies, often with a nerdy twist.
Joe Osborne, strategic response communications, manager
A member of the rapid-response team, Osborne has taken the lead as a company spokesperson, fielding questions from the media around issues like misinformation. Like Andy Stone, Osborne has opted for a more aggressive approach, often calling out reporters on Twitter.
Osborne was previously a spokesperson for the company's ad business. An insider said Osborne still talked to advertisers and investors, allaying their concerns about the financial performance of the company.
"Facebook has a rare bright spot," a company insider said. "They can continue talking with advertisers and Wall Street and mostly maintain the faith of those audiences in spite of everything happening in DC and the media. It's a hard gig."
Osborne previously had PR stints at Google, IAC Applications, and E-Trade.
Lena Pietsch, policy-communications director
Pietsch leads the "narrative" team, which works with pollsters, research teams, and focus groups to fine-tune the language they use in their public statements, according to an insider.
Another insider said Pietsch, a Germany native, was sidelined at the start of her tenure since the PR team is dominated by US residents. But now, the company's PR leaders listen to her advice because she's proved her policy and tech chops, and they want input from employees that bring an international perspective. (Her fortunes were likely raised when her former boss Clegg was hired as vice president of global affairs.)
More recently, Pietsch issued a lengthy missive to CBS "60 Minutes" after the news program interviewed Haugen, the "Facebook Files" whistleblower and pushed back against claims that the company prioritized profits over the welfare of its users.
Brian Roehrkasse, VP of communications, choice, and competition
Roehrkasse sits on Bounds' policy-communications team and handles one of the most crucial PR duties: influencing public opinion over whether the government should break up the social-media behemoth.
Antitrust issues have hounded Facebook for half a decade, but the crisis reached an inflection point when Roehrkasse was hired in 2019. Forty-seven state attorneys general launched antitrust investigations. A year later, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 state attorneys general sued Facebook, seeking to force the divestiture of assets like WhatsApp and Instagram.
Roehrkasse, who previously served as a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, works behind the scenes and never attaches his name to any public statement from the company. But insiders said the Washington vet had a hand in all its antitrust communications. Meta has called the FTC's lawsuit "revisionist history" and says its ownership of WhatsApp and Instagram hasn't hurt competition or the consumer experience.
Andrea Saul, global head of communications, Instagram
Saul took over the top PR job at Instagram in November 2021 after serving as Facebook's policy communications lead for five years. The role had been vacant for a couple months after Elisabeth Diana left in September 2021.
Saul has the massive job of communicating to users, journalists, and lawmakers what Instagram is doing to curb the proliferation of harmful content. Still, Saul has plenty of experience to draw on.
As the former leader of policy communications, Saul played a key role on Bounds' strategic-response team. She's one of the Washington politicos Facebook poached in 2016 to tamp down the fierce criticism over how it handled the proliferation of misinformation after the US presidential election.
According to Insiders, Saul has a close relationship with Sandberg, thanks to her stint as the head of marketing and communications at Lean In, the female-empowerment nonprofit Sandberg started.
Saul cut her teeth in Washington by working for GOP politicians like Mitt Romney and McCain, having served as the national press secretary for their 2012 and 2008 presidential campaigns, respectively.
Despite her reputation for playing "hardball," one company insider said, a tech reporter praised her as a "straight shooter."
Andy Stone, strategic response communications, director
Stone is a go-to crisis wrangler who's become infamous in recent months thanks to his Twitter feed, where he's criticized journalists and downplayed the role that Haugen played at Facebook — and many journalists point to his tweets as evidence of the company's increasingly aggressive PR approach.
Much of that activity is designed to boost morale among employees, particularly PR staffers who feel the company needs to do more to tell its side of the story, one company insider said.
"Facebook is struggling to find red meat for their troops, and Andy is all about generating that red meat," this person said. "He will call people out. He will attack."
Another insider said of Stone: "There are reporters who grasp a little bit, or they hit us up for comment 30 minutes before their deadline, so he takes nontraditional approaches to correct the record and meet journalists where they are, namely, Twitter."
A tech reporter that regularly talks to Stone said his online persona didn't match his real-life personality.
"He's smart, he's good at what he does, and he's generally helpful on the phone — and he should stop tweeting," this person said.