Amazon’s Policy Head Jay Carney Departs For Airbnb

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Jay Carney, Amazon’s top policy executive and a former White House press secretary in the Obama administration, is quitting the company to join Airbnb as its global head of policy and communications, Airbnb said Friday, making him the latest senior executive to depart the company following Jeff Bezos’ handover of the CEO job to Andy Jassy in 2021.

Carney speaks during a GeekWire Summit in Seattle, Washington.

Key Facts

Carney, who has served as senior vice president of global corporate affairs at Amazon, is the “perfect person” to lead policy at Airbnb because of his work at “the highest levels of both government and technology,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in a statement.

Carney—who will begin his role at Airbnb in September—started working for Amazon in 2015, after serving as press secretary to former President Barack Obama from 2011 to 2014 after working 20 years as a journalist for Time magazine.

Carney—who will replace Chris Lehane, who left to join a crypto firm in early 2022—will help ensure that “as Airbnb grows, we strengthen the communities we are in,” the company said.

Key Background

In his role, Carney, who reported directly to the CEO, ran the company’s public relations and attempted to forge relationships with lawmakers and other influential figures in Washington, D.C. Carney reportedly turned off some with his bare-knuckle approach in D.C., while Jassy is now seeking to take a more diplomatic approach with lawmakers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some of Amazon’s biggest fights on Capitol Hill include combatting Congress’s growing desire to pass antitrust legislation. The company has also faced criticism from lawmakers who allege it has attempted to interfere in workers’ efforts to unionize. In an email to his team at Amazon obtained by the Forbes, Carney said “everything about” his time at Amazon “exceeded my expectations.” In a memo obtained by CNBC, Jassy told employees he would “begin a search immediately” to replace Carney. Carney’s departure comes a month after Amazon’s consumer chief, Dave Clark, left to join a supply chain software start-up company. It also follows the departures in June of Alicia Boler Davis, the senior vice president of Amazon’s fulfillment operations and David Bozeman, the vice president of transportation services, two of Amazon’s most senior Black executives, according to the New York Times, and a slew of other exits in 2021.

Tangent

Carney’s time at Amazon was marked by a handful of public controversies. In 2019, he sparked a backlash when he called major league baseball umpires “a bunch of overweight, diabetic, half-blind geriatrics” on Twitter. He also softened his remarks after slamming the Trump administration at a tech conference in 2019.

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