Meta taps Wall Street dealmaker Dina Powell McCormick

Meta has landed one of Wall Street’s most connected dealmakers.

Dina Powell McCormick, the former Goldman Sachs executive with deep ties to large pools of capital, and leaders around the world, who has advised two US presidents, is joining as the company’s first-ever president and vice chairman.

Powell McCormick, who spent decades cultivating relationships with sovereign wealth funds at Goldman Sachs, is expected to focus on securing strategic partnerships and overseeing Meta’s $600 billion infrastructure buildout over the next decade.

And that is welcome news to investors. The deal signals that Meta — which has been spending billions on AI talent over the last year — is now open to global partnerships and capital. 

“Dina’s experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth as the company’s President and Vice Chairman,” said Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

The move comes as the company aims to keep pace in the AI arms race.

Meta has shelled out billions — including a nearly $15 billion deal with Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang for data labeling and other major AI investments — but investors want to see Meta tap into outside capital and prioritize the kind of strategic partnerships that its competitors are pursuing.

Over the last year, Nvidia, OpenAI, and xAI have aggressively pursued high-stakes partnerships and investments in the Middle East, capitalizing on the region’s sovereign wealth funds, energy resources, and ambitions to become AI hubs amid a global scramble for compute power and rare earths. 

Powell McCormick began working with Zuckerberg after she joined the Meta board — which includes Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen and UFC president Dana White — in April 2025. She left the board last month ahead of taking on her new role. 

She is leaving her position as vice chairman, president and head of global clients services at BDT & MSD Partners but will remain on the firm’s advisory board. Powell McCormick is married to David McCormick, the former CEO of Bridgewater Associates who is now a republican Senator from Pennsylvania. 

Powell McCormick immigrated to the US from Egypt with her family at age six, not speaking a word of English. She went on to serve in two presidential administrations — as Deputy National Security Advisor during President Trump’s first term, when she worked on the foundations that led to the Abraham Accords, and in the George W. Bush administration — before rising to partner at Goldman Sachs.

There, she ran the firm’s sovereign wealth fund business and played a key role in launching Goldman’s 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses initiatives, which provide entrepreneurs with business education, mentorship, and access to capital. 

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Powell McCormick is widely respected by her peers on Wall Street. When she received the ABANA Achievement Award earlier this year, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde called her “the fearless woman who acts on the global scene as a bridge between the East and West.”

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said she has been “invaluable to leaders and countries all over the world,” while Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman noted that “wherever Dina goes, she is enormously successful.”

Earlier this year, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, “I’ve known Dina for about 20 years and run into her all over the world. She’s an exceptional banker with superb relationships. Clients have deep respect for her given her knowledge, experience (international, on boards, in government), ability to execute and deliver, and the fact she works so hard.

“She is a better banker and has more or better relationships than many big finance CEOs. She’s the full package — doing it all at the most senior levels. To sum up, she’s a first-class banker, who combines amazing relationships, execution, smarts, character and hard work.”