Brands
Dina Powell McCormick joins Meta as president and vice chairman
CALIFORNIA: Meta has brought in a heavyweight from the worlds of finance and public policy, with Dina Powell McCormick joining the company as president and vice chairman, effective immediately.
Powell McCormick is no stranger to Menlo Park. She previously served on Meta’s board and has been closely involved as the company pushes deeper into frontier AI and the race for personal superintelligence. Her new role comes as Meta scales up what it calls the backbone of the next decade of computing, from vast data centres and energy systems to global digital connectivity.
Announcing the appointment, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Powell McCormick’s mix of global financial expertise and international relationships makes her “uniquely suited” to guide the company through its next phase of growth.
As part of Meta’s management team, she will help shape overall strategy and execution. A key focus will be ensuring Meta’s multi-billion-dollar investments in compute and infrastructure stay on track, while also delivering economic benefits to the communities where the company operates. She will also lead efforts to forge new strategic capital partnerships and expand Meta’s long-term investment capacity.
Powell McCormick brings more than 25 years of experience across global finance, national security and economic development. She spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, rising to partner and serving on the firm’s management committee. There, she led its global sovereign investment banking business and helped drive high-profile initiatives such as 10,000 Women, 10,000 Small Businesses and One Million Black Women.
Her public service record spans two US administrations. She served as deputy national security advisor under president Donald Trump and earlier worked as a senior White House adviser and assistant secretary of state under president George W. Bush. Most recently, she was vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT and MSD Partners.
With Powell McCormick stepping into a senior operational role, Meta is signalling that its next growth push will be as much about financial muscle and global partnerships as it is about code and algorithms.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
