Facebook hires Joe Lockhart

[Geee]

Politico:


SAN FRANCISCO — Joe Lockhart, who helped build the press office during the second Clinton term in the White House, is joining Facebook.

A former TV reporter, Lockhart joins Facebook as vice president of communications and will manage the company’s corporate, policy and international communications team. He starts July 15 joining the social networking firm at a time when the company has found itself under increasing scrutiny over privacy concerns.

He announced his departure to his firm with an email titled “Joe Lockhart wants to be friends on Facebook.”

An ability to handle crisis has long been Lockhart’s trademark and was put to the test in the last years of the Clinton presidency when he was often the person speaking to the press as the Monica Lewinsky news broke and during the impeachment proceedings. A 1998 profile in The Washington Post described him as “a mixture of hard-driving defense, provocative analysis and barbed humor.”

"Joe's arrival brings new skills and greater depth to our incredibly busy team,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy.