Facebook’s chief marketing officer to depart after two years

Facebook Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio is leaving the company after just two years, citing a desire to dedicate 100% of his time to diversity and inclusion efforts in the marketing and advertising industries.

“It is a time for reckoning for the nation and my industry and it is time for me to play a more active part in accelerating change,” he wrote Friday in a Facebook post. Lucio said his last day on the job would be Sept. 18.

Lucio joined the company August 2018 after a stint as CMO of HP Inc., and before that he held the top marketing job at Visa Inc. In his short time at Facebook, Lucio oversaw one of the company’s most notable marketing efforts -- a rebranding that included adding Facebook’s name to its other globally known products, including Instagram and WhatsApp. The move supported a broader company effort to bring Facebook’s apps closer together, technically and in users’ minds.

Lucio, who reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, defended Facebook’s executive team, which has been under near-constant scrutiny for various privacy and content issues the past few years. “This is a remarkable group of leaders, sometimes misunderstood by the external world, but deeply caring and committed to ensuring these platforms have a positive impact on the world,” he wrote in his post.