Right after UI chief Alan Dye quit Apple, two more executives are poised to leave the company. Next out the door are Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, and Kate Adams, Apple’s general counsel, the company said Thursday.
Jackson will retire in late January 2026, according to Apple. Adams will retire late next year.
In the meantime, Apple said Jennifer Newstead, Meta’s chief legal officer, will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026.
Kate Adams and Lisa Jackson are retiring from Apple
These latest departures come at a time when Apple appears to be bleeding talent. UI design chief Alan Dye just quit to join Meta, which has been poaching other Apple higher-ups all year. Former Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams retired last month. And Apple announced AI chief John Giannandrea’s retirement earlier this week.
This all comes on top of rumors about CEO Tim Cook retiring soon, and the undeniable fact that many of Apple’s other top executives are fast approaching retirement age.
Apple is known for its orderly operations, but the current changing of the guard has a chaotic feel to it — I don’t think I’ve ever seen such turnover in the upper ranks, even after Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs died in 2011.
Lisa Jackson makes a mark at Apple
Jackson joined Apple in 2013 to oversee the company’s environmental efforts and went on to lead Apple’s $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. She reports directly to Cook.
“I am deeply appreciative of Lisa’s contributions,” Cook said in a press release about the executive transitions Thursday. “She has been instrumental in helping us reduce our global greenhouse emissions by more than 60 percent compared to 2015 levels. She has also been a critical strategic partner in engaging governments around the world, advocating for the best interests of our users on a myriad of topics, as well as advancing our values, from education and accessibility to privacy and security.”
Before joining Apple, Jackson headed up the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama.
Under Jackson, Apple achieved remarkable progress in going green. In 2020, the company became carbon neutral for its corporate operations worldwide, and is on track to make its enormous global supply chain carbon neutral by 2030. The company ditched leather in its products, and uses high proportions of recycled materials in its newest gadgets.
Kate Adams leads Apple’s legal efforts
Katherine Adams, Apple’s senior vice president and general counsel, joined the company in October 2017 and also reported directly to Cook. She came aboard after the retirement of Bruce Sewell, Apple’s longtime top lawyer.
Previously, Adams worked at Honeywell for 14 years. At the start of her career, she served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
As general counsel, she oversaw all Apple’s legal matters, including things like intellectual property, corporate governance and securities compliance.
Adams mostly flies under the radar, but in 2024 she made headlines for being among the highest-paid legal executives. She raked in a cool $27 million that year, according to Bloomberg.
“Kate has been an integral part of the company for the better part of a decade, having provided critical advice while always advocating on behalf of our customers’ right to privacy and protecting Apple’s right to innovate,” said Cook in the press release. “I am incredibly grateful to her for the leadership she has provided, for her remarkable determination across a myriad of highly complex issues, and above all, for her thoughtfulness, her deeply strategic mind, and her sound counsel.”
Jennifer Newstead will handle Apple’s legal and governmental activities
Photo: Meta
Because neither executive is retiring immediately, Apple is doing some shuffling of responsibilities, according to the press release.
When she moves from Meta to Apple, Jennifer Newstead will get a new title: senior vice president, general counsel and government affairs. This reflects the combining of Jackson’s and Adams’ two organizations within Apple.
In a funny twist of fate, Apple poached Newstead from Meta, where she served as chief legal officer. Before Meta, Newstead held several high-profile legal government jobs, including legal adviser to the Department of State.
Cook said Newstead’s background in government is particularly valuable in an era of intense regulatory scrutiny of the tech industry.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
