Meta's Joel Kaplan to Leave in 2027, Axios Reports

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer and Mark Zuckerberg’s most senior political adviser, will leave the company next year after more than 15 years, Axios reported on 20 October in an exclusive. He will stay through the US midterm elections and into 2027 to oversee a handover, according to the report.

The departure matters because Kaplan has been Meta’s chief link to Washington through changes of party control, and Axios credits him with defending the personalised-ads business model from regulators. His exit reshapes who speaks for Meta to governments. No exact leaving date has been given.

In brief

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, will leave next year after more than 15 years, Axios reports.
President and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick will add external affairs to her role, and chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney will gain policy duties, according to Axios.
No exact leaving date has been given, and it is not yet clear whether anyone will take Kaplan’s title.

Kaplan confirms he is moving on

Kaplan confirmed the news himself. “After more than 15 years at Meta, I’ve decided the time is right for me to move on from my role as Chief Global Affairs Officer,” he wrote in a post on Threads, which The Verge linked in its follow-up. He gave no date.

Zuckerberg paid tribute in a statement to Axios. “Joel has worked on virtually every tough issue Meta has faced for more than 15 years,” he said. “When he arrived, there was no playbook for ensuring our products would be available to the billions of people around the world who now rely on them. And throughout all of it, he’s been a strong advocate for our policies, and a friend to me.”

That record is long. According to Axios, Kaplan, a Harvard Law graduate and former Marine artillery officer who served as deputy White House chief of staff to President George W. Bush, “built Facebook’s U.S. policy team from scratch” and led the global policy team through years of growth and controversy.

The ads model and the Trump relationship

Axios credits Kaplan with two big jobs. It says he “protected the company’s personalized-ads business model from regulatory attacks worldwide, starting in Europe”, and guided Zuckerberg and senior leaders through several changes of party control in Congress and the White House.

More recently, Axios says, Kaplan helped Meta build a strong relationship with the incoming Trump administration. That work now passes to a team that, by Axios’s account, deliberately spans both parties.

Who takes over

Rather than a single successor, Axios describes a shared transition. “Kaplan will stay through midterms and into 2027 for a transition that will include Meta external affairs executives from both sides of the aisle, many of whom recently joined the leadership team,” it reported.

Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president and vice chairman, “will add external affairs to her wide-ranging portfolio”, according to Axios. C.J. Mahoney, who became chief legal officer in January, “will also gain policy responsibilities”. Axios describes Mahoney as a former Trump trade official and Microsoft general counsel who recently led Meta’s teen-safety settlement with 52 US state and territorial attorneys general.

Two other executives feature in the plan. Brian Rice, a former aide to Secretary of State John Kerry, was promoted earlier this year to head of US government affairs, and Tucker Bounds, a former spokesman for the late Senator John McCain, was named last month as global head of communications and public affairs, Axios reports.

The change comes as Meta pushes hard into AI with its Muse models, which Axios notes Zuckerberg has moved his desk to work on.

Executive	Role in the transition, per Axios
Dina Powell McCormick	Adds external affairs
C.J. Mahoney	Gains policy responsibilities
Brian Rice	Head of US government affairs
Tucker Bounds	Global head of communications and public affairs

Source: Axios, 20 October 2026.

Our read

This is TSN’s analysis. Splitting Kaplan’s job between a president, a lawyer and a bipartisan bench suggests Meta wants its Washington voice to rest less on one person. For regulators in Brussels and London as much as Washington, the question is whether Meta’s line on ads and AI changes once Kaplan has gone. Watch for a formal Meta announcement and a firm leaving date.