Apple on Thursday announced the impending departure of two longtime executives, Lisa Jackson and Kate Adams. Jackson is currently the company’s VP of Environmental, Policy, and Social Initiatives. Jackson originally joined Apple in May of 2013 and, in recent years, has become something of a familiar face in Apple’s self-produced videos where it details its various environmental achievements. Kate Adams, meanwhile, has been Apple’s general counsel since 2017 and is planning to leave in March of next year. She will be replaced by Jennifer Newstead.
“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,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release. With respect to Jackson, Cook touted that Apple, under her environmental stewardship, managed to reduce its “global greenhouse emissions by more than 60% compared to 2015 levels.”
It’s worth noting that both Jackson and Adams are retiring and aren’t being pushed out or leaving for jobs at other companies. This is a point worth emphasizing, because Apple over the past few months has seen several significant corporate shakeups. The most prominent development was yesterday’s news that Apple design executive Alan Dye is leaving the company for Meta in 2026. Apple is a company that prides itself on best-in-class design, and losing its top user interface designer represents a monumental change.
All that said, news of Apple losing its environmental head and top lawyer wouldn’t ordinarily be noteworthy in and of itself. But given the larger context of Apple executives and several top engineers leaving over the past few months, the high level takeaway is that Apple is in the midst of a significant leadership transition at a scale we haven’t seen in quite some time.
Apple’s ongoing brain drain
Aside from the executive shakeup at Apple, an ongoing problem is that the company has been steadily losing top engineers and research scientists to Meta. In many cases, some of Apple’s brightest minds in AI are leaving for what are reportedly incredibly generous compensation packages. This is a particularly problematic phenomenon for Apple given that it’s already made a few missteps in the AI space and is currently trying to make inroads in a field dominated by companies like OpenAI and Google.
Over the last six months alone, Apple has lost more than 10 top AI engineers. And that, of course, only includes the departures we’re aware of. This past October, for example, fast-rising executive and engineer Ke Yang left Apple for Meta. Yang was said to be an instrumental part of Apple’s Siri team.
Prior to that, in August, engineer Ruoming Pang also left Apple for Meta. Similar to Yang, Pang’s departure was a significant setback, especially because several members of Pang’s team also left with him.And speaking to how motivated Meta is to hire the best engineers in Silicon Valley, it’s been reported that Pang was offered a pay package worth upwards of $200 million from Meta.
Tim Cook may also be departing Apple
Beyond losing top engineers, there are also reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook may step down next year. According to reports, the frontrunner to replace Cook is John Ternus, the company’s Senior VP of Hardware Engineering.
Despite all of the turnover, Apple today appears to be firing on all cylinders. Buoyed by impressive iPhone 17 sales, shares of Apple in recent days have hit an all-time high. What’s more, Tim Cook during Apple’s most recent earnings conference call uncharacteristically predicted that the company during the 2025 holiday quarter will see double-digit revenue growth year over year. If this pans out, Apple is currently in the midst of its most lucrative quarter in company history.
During the 2024 holiday quarter, Apple saw its revenue hit $124 billion. A double digit increase would see Apple generate a whopping $136 billion in quarterly revenue at a minimum. In light of that, there’s no reason to believe that Apple’s momentum is poised to slow down anytime soon, especially with the impending release of a foldable iPhone. Still, the corporate faces that make up Apple today will likely look drastically different over the next few years.
