Apple Shuffles Executive Team as Two Longtime Leaders Prepare to Exit

The game of musical chairs for executives continues at Apple. The iPhone maker is making major changes to its leadership ranks, with two senior executives set to retire and a new general counsel on the way.

The company says Jennifer Newstead will take over as general counsel on March 1, 2026. She will join Apple in January as a senior vice president, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Newstead previously served as chief legal officer at Meta and has held multiple senior roles in the U.S. government.

Kate Adams, who has led Apple’s legal team since 2017, will retire late next year. Until then, she will oversee Government Affairs, which will later move under Newstead when she formally takes the role. At that point, her title will include Government Affairs as the two groups are combined.

Apple is also preparing for the retirement of Lisa Jackson, the longtime vice president overseeing Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. She is set to leave in late January 2026. Her teams will report to chief operating officer Sabih Khan.

Cook thanked Adams and Jackson for their work and described Newstead as someone who brings “extraordinary depth of experience and skill” to the company. The executives leaving Apple offered similar praise for their teams and said they were proud of their work. Of course they are.

Here’s a timeline of executive shuffles and departures for 2025 at Apple so far:

• January 1, 2025 – CFO Luca Maestri transitioned out of the finance role to lead corporate services internally, with Kevan Parekh taking over as CFO.

• July 7, 2025 – Ruoming Pang, head of Apple’s AI Foundation Models Team, was poached by Meta’s Superintelligence group with a multi-million-dollar offer, departing with around 100 engineers who worked on Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji.

• July 8, 2025 – COO Jeff Williams announced retirement after 27 years, stepping down at the end of July and fully exiting on November 15, with operations duties shifting to Sabih Khan and continued advisory input on design, Watch, and health until his departure.

• September 2, 2025 – AI robotics lead Jian Zhang left after 10 years to join Meta’s Robotics Studio, part of a broader AI talent drain that also saw departures to Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

• October 2025 – Ke Yang, newly appointed to lead the Answers, Knowledge, and Information team for Siri and AI search, was poached by Meta to strengthen its user experience AI initiatives.

• December 1, 2025 – SVP John Giannandrea retired from machine learning and AI strategy after nearly eight years, shifting to an advisory role until spring 2026 and succeeded by Amar Subramanya reporting to Craig Federighi.

• December 3, 2025 – Human Interface Design VP Alan Dye was poached by Meta to become Chief Design Officer, departing December 31, with deputy Billy Sorrentino also joining Meta and Stephen Lemay taking over internally.

• December 4, 2025 – SVP and General Counsel Katherine Adams announced retirement for late 2026 after nine years, with ex-Meta executive Jennifer Newstead set to replace her in a combined legal and government affairs role starting March 1, 2026.

• December 4, 2025 – VP Lisa Jackson announced her retirement for late January 2026 after 12 years leading environmental, DEI, and policy work, with duties divided between Sabih Khan and Jennifer Newstead.