Sheryl Kara Sandberg, COO of Facebook
Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American business executive, billionaire, and philanthropist born on August 28, 1969. Sandberg serves as a chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she announced, on June 1, 2022, that she is stepping down in the fall of 2022.
Personal Life and Education
Sandberg was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C. to a Jewish family, the daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg, and the oldest of three children. Her father is an ophthalmologist, and her mother was a college teacher of the French language.
She is also a founder of Leanin Org. Sandberg studied economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There she did her undergraduate thesis with economist Lawrence Summers as her adviser. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1991 and was the top student in economics. When Summers became chief economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., Sandberg joined him there, and together from 1991 to 1993 they worked on projects that helped developing countries. In 1993, she enrolled at Harvard Business School and in 1995 she earned her MBA with the highest distinction. In her first year of business school, she earned a fellowship.
After graduating from business school in the spring of 1995, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company for approximately one year. From 1996 to 2001 she again worked for Lawrence Summers, who was then serving as the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton. Sandberg assisted in the Treasury’s work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial crisis. Sheryl Sandberg is a chief operating officer at Meta, overseeing the company’s business operations and serving on its board of directors. Before joining the company then called Facebook, Sheryl was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, chief of staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Clinton, a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and an economist with the World Bank. During her time at Google, she grew the ad and sales team from four people to 4,000.
Journey in Facebook
In 2012, she was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the most influential people in the world. In 2022, she announced she would be stepping down as Meta COO in the fall but that she would remain on its board. In 2012, she became the eighth member (and the first woman) of Facebook’s board of directors. Sheryl Sandberg has served as the chief operating officer of Facebook, now Meta, since 2008. Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008 and was key to turning it into a social media giant that generated almost $120 billion in revenue last year. She became an influential author publishing “Lean In” in 2013 and served as the highest-profile face of the company next to Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
Before she joined, the company was “primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow.” Facebook’s leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, “with the ads discreetly presented”, by 2010, Facebook became profitable. According to Facebook, she oversees the firm’s business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, and communications.
In April 2014, it was reported that Sandberg had sold over half of her shares in Facebook since the company went public. At the time of Facebook’s IPO, she held approximately 41 million shares in the company; after several rounds of sales she is left with around 17.2 million shares, amounting to a stake of 0.5% in the company, worth about $1 billion.
Sheryl Sandberg became one of the most recognized figures in global business after helping Facebook transform from a startup into a multibillion-dollar advertising powerhouse, and is stepping down as chief operating officer. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sandberg called her time at Meta the “honor and privilege of a lifetime,” but joked that it’s also “not the most manageable job anyone has ever had.” “It’s a decision I didn’t come to lightly, but it’s been 14 years,” she said “I want to make more room to do more philanthropically, to do more with my foundation.”
In 2015 Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died unexpectedly. She wrote about his death in Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy was co-written with Adam Grant, and offers guidance on overcoming various hardships. Sandberg articulated her philosophy in Lean In Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013), the book was published in concert with the launch of Lean In, an education and community-building organization for women in business. Though Sandberg’s advocacy was generally well-received, some critics noted that her experience and position were so rarefied and unique as to be irrelevant to the typical working woman. In 2009, Sandberg was named to the board of The Walt Disney Company. She also serves on the boards of Women for Women International, the Center for Global Development, and V-Day. She was previously a board member of Starbucks, Brookings Institution, and Ad Council.
As COO, Sandberg positioned Facebook as a platform for small business advertising, helping increase ad revenue by 37% during 2021, to nearly $115 billion. Sandberg was reportedly accused of pressuring the Daily Mail to drop a story about her then-boyfriend Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, which the company denies. Sandberg announced in a Facebook post on June 1, 2022, that she would step down later in the year, saying that she will focus on her philanthropic work.
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sandberg released her first book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, co-authored by Nell Scovell and published by Knopf on March 11, 2013. Lean In is intended for professional women to help them achieve their career goals and for men who want to contribute to a more equitable society. The book argues that barriers are still preventing women from taking leadership roles in the workplace, barriers such as discrimination, blatant and subtle sexism, and sexual harassment. Sandberg claims there are also barriers that women create for themselves through internalizing systematic discrimination and societal gender roles. Sandberg argues that in order for change to happen women need to break down these societal and personal barriers by striving for and achieving leadership roles. The ultimate goal is to encourage women to lean into positions of leadership because she believes that by having more female voices in positions of power there will be more equitable opportunities created for everyone.
In her book, she does suggest other women to lean in during challenges.
“We’re failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership. It is time to cheer on girls and women who want to sit at the table, seek challenges, and lean into their careers.”
Instead, she has been perceived as a COO who avoids engaging in this crisis. “Sandberg, the architect of the business model that is now the subject of so much scrutiny, has remained silent in public.” In her book, she recognizes those who do tackle crises “I have the deepest respect for people who provide hands-on help to those in crises. It is the most difficult work in the world.”
In March 2014, Sandberg and Lean In sponsored the Ban Bossy campaign, a television and social media campaign designed to discourage the word bossy from general use due to its perceived harmful effect on young girls. Several video spots with spokespersons including Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, and Condoleezza Rice among others were produced along with a website providing school training material, leadership tips, and an online pledge form to which visitors can promise not to use the word.
Sandberg supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. She declined to endorse Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of Facebook, multiple times throughout the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, though stated, “I imagine I will support a Democratic nominee” over incumbent Donald Trump.
The plans of Meta for the future are:
- Building the world online
- Launching Aquila
- Terragraph, and improving connectivity
- The lessons of free basics
- Artificial Intelligence, and a robot butler
- Bots of the future
- Facebook’s bet on virtual reality
- The challenges of augmented reality
The future of the company would go far beyond its current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them. Sheryl Sandberg announced that she would be leaving Meta later this year.
Did you know?
- Sheryl met Mark Zuckerberg at a Christmas party. When thinking of getting a job at Facebook, many may imagine an intense application process and cutthroat interviews. For Sheryl though, she only had to attend a holiday party.
- Besides working at Facebook and Google, Sheryl has had a handful of other interesting jobs. In the ’80s she used to be an aerobics instructor. “The silver leggings, the legwarmers, the headband…the whole thing,” said Sheryl in an interview.
