After wrangling with the federal deficit, he’s finally being put in charge of something more solvent.
Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired President Obama’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Reform and who was White House Chief of Staff under President Clinton, has joined Facebook’s board of directors, according to a press statement from the company on Wednesday.
“Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said in the release. “Along with his experience founding companies, this will be very valuable as we continue building new things to help make the world more open and connected.”
“Facebook has clearly emerged as a transformative force in the world,” Bowles said. “It’s no wonder given the talent Mark has put in place and the company’s focus and dedication to its mission. I’m really looking forward to getting to work and helping Facebook however I can.”
Although not expressly stated, Facebook is clearly angling to upgrade its political influence. After all, Google execs are noted Obama supporters and have a monster lobbying budget. The State Department and Twitter have been in contact, publicly at least, since the post Iranian election dissent and unrest in the summer of 2009
And it’s worth noting that the news comes just after it was disclosed that Facebook spent $320,000 on lobbying in the second quarter of 2011, second only to Google and almost as much as all of its lobbying budget last year.
Aside from his work on the fiscal commission, which proposed several painful routes to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, Bowles is currently also a board member of Morgan Stanley, Cousins Properties Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. and Belk Inc.
Bowles, 66, previously served as the President of the University of North Carolina from 2006 to 2010.
Before that, he was White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1998, and a member of the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.
The release also helpfully notes that the Columbia MBA grad got his start at Morgan Stanley and founded investment bank Bowles, Hollowell, Conner & Co. before moving to several venture capital and private equity firms.
He joins fellow Facebook board members Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company, Reed Hastings, chairman and CEO of Netflix, and Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital and Founders Fund.
