Meta has named Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chair, promoting to a top post at the company a Wall Street and Washington veteran with extensive corporate and policymaking experience. She comes to a leadership team charged with working on strategy and execution across a company that reaches billions of people, at the center of global discussions about technology, speech and artificial intelligence.
Meta leadership, in announcing the move, emphasized Powell McCormick’s mix of high-level government and global finance experience, signaling an effort to further strengthen the corporate bench in diplomacy and risk management — and for long-horizon growth initiatives.
Who Is Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s New President and Vice Chair
Powell McCormick was the deputy national security adviser for the White House, requiring rapid crisis coordination, cross-agency alignment and high-stakes negotiations — skills that are directly transferable to Meta’s path through complex policy and market landscapes every day. She previously served in the State Department under Ms. Rice.
She spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs in senior leadership, where she helped shape global client strategy and led philanthropic and economic mobility efforts, including initiatives widely cited for widening access to capital and training for entrepreneurs. That combination of corporate governance, capital allocation know-how and network-building is likely to be at the center of her brief at Meta.
Her hire also comes with political symbolism: Former President Donald Trump noted his approval of the hire on Truth Social. And while the plaudits may make headlines, the substance of Powell McCormick’s portfolio will be shaped less by partisan alliances and more by Meta’s business and regulatory challenges in its crucial markets.
Meta’s Strategic Crossroads Amid AI, Ads and Regulation
Meta is trying to do all of those things at once while scaling artificial intelligence, defending its core ads business and absorbing regulatory pressure in the United States, Europe and India. The company rolled out open-source models under the Llama banner, has woven generative AI into consumer products and doubled down on hardware bets such as Ray-Ban smart glasses — all of which require careful capital planning and stewardship of the brand.
And on the policy front, it is contending with an ongoing antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, as well as obligations under things like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and its Digital Services Act.
It also faces new safety and privacy regimes — like those in place through the U.K.’s Online Safety Act or a larger quilt of U.S. state laws that are increasingly being passed. Each rule-making affects how Meta can target ads, rank content and deploy A.I. — and carries with it the risk of heavy fines or product changes if it steps out of line.
Meta also retains a grip on the world’s advertising as a bellwether, with about 20% of the global digital ad dollar, according to eMarketer. It’s leverage, of course, but that scale also creates risk: any change in which targeting rules prevail, whom brand-safety tools protect or what constitutes a measurement standard can ripple through the business. At the same time, Reality Labs is pouring money into what it’s betting on as the future of computing — a vision that investors have had to be patient in waiting for it to speak loud and clear past its huge operating losses.
A Pattern of Policy-Seasoned Hires Shaping Meta’s Strategy
McCormick’s hiring follows Meta’s appointment of Curtis Joseph Mahoney, a former legal executive at Microsoft who also served as deputy U.S. trade representative. With veterans like Nick Clegg already in place, the hires suggest a deliberate buildout of senior talent who know their way around the world of geopolitics, trade and high-risk legal issues — areas that are becoming ever more deeply enmeshed with product strategy and growth.
This wider team structure implies that Meta anticipates more dialogue with regulators, more teamwork with big enterprise and government clients, and a closer relationship between policy risk and commercial opportunity. In other words, the company is treating political and regulatory complexity as a fundamental operating variable, not an ancillary constraint.
What Her Mandate Might Mean for Meta’s Next Phase
As president and vice chair, Powell McCormick can help steer how Meta balances near-term execution against multiyear bets: scaling AI infrastructure; aligning messaging and monetization across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads; signing new partnerships that open new distribution or payment avenues. Look for focus on relationship-driven growth in regions where regulatory certainty and local partnerships will be catalysts for product adoption.
Look for early warnings in the form of broadened enterprise collaborations around AI tools and safety frameworks, new cross-border initiatives that presage DMA and DSA enforcement and clearer guardrails around nascent experiences like augmented reality. Another litmus will be the company’s capacity to sustain investment in AI and the metaverse while being disciplined on costs — a balance that will depend on board-level support and strategic pacing.
The throughline is simple but significant: Meta is promoting a leader whose advantage lies not so much in shipping code as in building coalitions, shaping the operating environment and clearing obstacles before those become crises. If that translates into fewer regulatory surprises and tighter relationships at a high level, the hire will appear prescient.
