Jay Carney, the head of policy and communications at Amazon and a former White House spokesman, has been named the head of policy at Airbnb. This is another high-profile departure for Amazon, which is dealing with changing consumer habits and more scrutiny from regulators.
The company said in a blog post on Friday that Carney, who was President Barack Obama’s press secretary, will join Airbnb’s executive team and work with co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky.
Chesky said in the post, “Jay has worked at the highest levels of both government and technology. He was a strategic advisor to the President and worked at one of the world’s largest tech companies.”
Carney will work for Airbnb in Washington, DC, starting in September
Since last summer, when Andy Jassy took over as CEO from founder Jeff Bezos, a lot of people have left Amazon. This month, Dave Clark, the head of Amazon’s consumer business, left the company after 23 years. He was in charge of a huge expansion of Amazon’s logistics footprint. Clark was replaced by Doug Herrington, another executive who helped launch Amazon Fresh in 2017. Clark is going to work for a new logistics company called Flexport, which will open in September.
Carney started working for Amazon seven years ago. He ran the company’s global corporate affairs organization and reported directly to the CEO. He was in charge of Amazon’s public relations and policy, focusing on how the company worked with lawmakers and the White House.
Carney was the press secretary for the White House from 2011 to 2014. Before that, he was Vice President Joe Biden’s director of communications.
Amazon didn’t answer right away when asked for a comment.
