After a long year (or two) of public relations crises, one of Facebook’s top PR execs announced that she is leaving the company Wednesday.
“I spent a lot of time over the winter holiday reflecting, and with the New Year, and after 8 years at Facebook, I’ve decided to step down as leader of the communications group,” Caryn Marooney wrote in a Facebook post.
But in spite of the company’s recent dramatic headlines—covering everything from Russian trolls to data breaches, accusations of allowing anti-Semitic opposition research to a former employee’s public post about Facebook’s “black people problem”— Marooney’s departure appears to be relatively drama-free.
Though her end date hasn’t been announced, Marooney wrote, “I will work with Mark, Sheryl, and Nick to identify a replacement and get them up and running,” without identifying the date of her departure. She also thanked her coworkers for being, “the smartest, kindest, most dedicated people I have ever worked with.”
Although Facebook didn’t provide Coins2Day with an official statement about her departure, executives including COO Sheryl Sandberg and CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly replied to Marooney’s post to express gratitude for her contributions to the company.
“We started working together when Facebook was just a website,” Zuckerberg, who Recode reports worked very closely with Marooney, wrote. “You should feel proud of everything you’ve helped to build.”
Marooney isn’t the only communications lead to recently leave the company.
Wired also reported Wednesday that Debbie Frost, Facebook’s longest tenured communications employee, is retiring from her post as vice president of international policy and communications.
Marooney first started working with Facebook in 2008 as an outside consultant from OutCast, the PR firm she’d co-founded. Three years later, she moved in-house to lead Facebook’s tech PR.
Furthermore, former U.K. Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg took over as Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications in October.
According to Recode, Clegg said in a statement that “Caryn inspires great loyalty in the communications team she has led so brilliantly, through good times and bad.”
