Dropbox CEO defends the addition of Condoleezza Rice to the board

Dropbox intended to make headlines after introducing Carousel, Dropbox for Business, and the Mailbox app expansion on Wednesday. But the cloud storage company probably didn’t expect those headlines to be about another news item altogether: its newest Board member, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The appointment didn’t sit well with Reddit, Twitter, and the rest of the Webiverse. 

Earlier this week, Dropbox held a high-profile event to release a slew of new products, including Mailbox for Android and Mac as well as a new photo-backup app called Carousel — but the company also slipped another major announcement under the radar. The same day as its big product launches, Dropbox announced that Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State under the Bush administration, had joined the company’s board of directors. While Dropbox CEO Drew Houston didn’t announce this on stage, the company did acknowledge her joining the board in a blog post covering a number of leadership changes.