Nick Clegg. Image: Moritz Hager/Flickr
Clegg announced he will step down from his role, which he took up in 2022.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, will be replacing its current global affairs president, Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican and Meta’s current VP of policy.
Clegg, who is the former UK deputy prime minister and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced on Facebook that he will step down from the tech giant.
“As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as president, global affairs at Meta,” he said.
“It truly has been an adventure of a lifetime! I am proud of the work I have been able to do leading and supporting teams across the company to ensure innovation can go hand in hand with increased transparency and accountability, and with new forms of governance.”
Clegg initially joined the company in 2018, the same year in which it faced immense controversy over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and its role in the 2016 US presidential election. In 2022, Clegg replaced Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, as its global affairs chief, where he was tasked with handling the political storms that have affected the company over the years.
Kaplan, who joined Facebook in 2011, previously served as the deputy chief of staff for policy under former US president George W Bush. Clegg commended Kaplan on his appointment, saying that he is “is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time”.
The change comes just weeks before the 20 January inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump. Days after Trump was elected, Meta was among the tech giants who donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund and Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property.
According to Semafor, Meta also has other former Republicans in high-ranking roles. Its VP of global public policy, Kevin Martin, previously served under Bush and its general counsel, while Jennifer Newstead was the top legal adviser to the Trump state department from 2017 until 2019.
Nick Clegg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Image: Moritz Hager/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
