Anthropic Appoints Antonia Sanda To Lead Communications Across Australia And New Zealand
Antonia Sanda will lead Anthropic's communications strategy across Australia and New Zealand, a hire that marks another step in the AI company's regional build-out.
- Role: communications lead for Australia and New Zealand, Anthropic
- Joins from: Deel, where she ran APAC communications for over four years
- Before that: Meta's head of communications for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, 2013 to 2022
- Earlier: head of communications at the Australian internet portal Ninemsn
- Context: Anthropic opened a Sydney office in April and appointed Theo Hourmouzis as general manager for Australia and New Zealand
What Antonia Sanda Handled At Meta
Nine years covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, including two of the hardest communications assignments the region has produced. She steered the company through the 2019 live streaming of the Christchurch mosque shootings, and through the 2021 news blackout that followed the News Media Bargaining Code.
Both were situations where the company's position was contested in real time by governments, press and the public simultaneously. Communications work of that kind is not about placement; it is about holding a defensible line while the facts are still moving, which is a rarer skill than the job title suggests and an unusually direct qualification for an AI company entering a market where regulation is being written as it goes.
Why The Hire Fits Where Anthropic Is
The appointment follows a run of regional investment. Anthropic opened a Sydney office in April and appointed Theo Hourmouzis as general manager for Australia and New Zealand, so the communications seat arrives alongside a commercial one rather than ahead of it.
Her four years at Deel add scale-up experience to the platform record: the workforce management company passed one billion US dollars in revenue by 2025 and invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Sanda described the transition candidly after an induction in San Francisco. "Just back from San Francisco, this week getting on the tools and finding my feet. There is so much to learn and I'm not yet across it all. What I have seen is that people are thoughtful and are asking the hard questions," she wrote. On her own profile she has summed up two decades of the work this way: "I relish in telling positive narratives and finding fixes to the issues." More appointments.
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