Lisa Jackson, senior vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple Inc., speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt 2017 in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Apple’s general counsel, Kate Adams, and its vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, will retire from Apple, the company announced on Thursday.
Apple said that Jennifer Newstead would become Apple’s new general counsel in March next year and that Jackson’s government affairs staff would report to her.
The two executives previously reported to Apple CEO Tim Cook and represent the latest sign that Apple’s senior leadership is seeing a slew of exits.
In recent weeks, Apple’s head software designer said he was leaving to go to Meta, Apple said that its AI chief was retiring, and Apple’s chief operating officer retired.
Adams joined Apple and became general counsel in 2017, and oversaw legal matters including litigation, global security, and the company’s privacy initiatives. Under Adams, Apple grappled with rising antitrust scrutiny and regulation around the world, including major lawsuits in the U.S. over the iPhone App Store’s restrictions and fees.
Jackson joined Apple in 2013, and led the company’s diversity programs as well as much of its policy work in Washington, D.C.
Prior to joining Apple in 2013, she spent four years as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a position she was appointed to by President Barack Obama.
Jackson is a Democrat, and her retirement shows a shift in Apple’s approach to Washington DC in the second Trump administration. Apple has faced increased tariffs from the Trump administration, and Cook has met with President Trump several times to tout the company’s American manufacturing plans in an effort to limit policy changes that could hurt the company.
She also led Apple’s environmental initiatives.
In her role, Jackson “focused on reducing greenhouse gases, protecting air and water quality, preventing exposure to toxic contamination, and expanding outreach to communities on environmental issues,” according to her bio on Apple’s website.
Jackson was instrumental in Apple’s launch of its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative following the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
She then helped expand the company’s equity and justice efforts to other countries, including the U.K., Mexico and New Zealand, according to a report on the initiative in 2023.
“At Apple, we pledge that our resolve will not fade,” Jackson wrote in a section of that report. “We won’t delay action. We will work, each and every day, on the urgent task of advancing equity.”
Jackson also accompanied Cook to several official functions in Washington, including state dinners.
Since 2019, Newstead, who will become Apple’s top lawyer, has overseen Meta’s legal and regulatory matters pertaining to its family of apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and others.
Prior to her stint at the social media giant, Newstead served as a Trump-appointed legal advisor at the State Department during the president’s first administration in 2019.
Before that, she was a partner at Davis Polk & Wardell and a general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, among other roles in the U.S. government.
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