Sheryl Sandberg

Chief operating officer of Facebook

• Born: August 28, 1969
• Place of Birth: Washington, DC

Primary Company/Organization: Facebook

Introduction

Sheryl Sandberg is credited with helping to build Google into the powerhouse it became before moving to Facebook, where she became a major force in expanding both the fortune and the user base of the social networking site. She has risen to the height of her career while raising a family, maintaining a strong base of friendships, and promoting women's issues. When she left Google in 2008, her loss was considered a major setback for Google but a major victory for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. In 2007, Sandberg was the youngest woman to be included among Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women. That year, she was ranked fifth on Forbes's list of 100 Most Powerful Women. She has also been named to the Wall Street Journal's list of 50 Women to Watch and to Businessweek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web. In 2012, Time magazine named Sandberg to its list of 100 Most Influential People. She has served on the boards of companies and institutions that include Starbucks, the Brookings Institution, Women for Women International, V-Day, and the Ad Council.

Early Life

Sheryl Kara Sandberg was born August 28, 1969, in Washington, DC, while her father, Joel, an ophthalmologist, was working for the National Institutes of Health. Her mother, Adele, taught English as a second language. Sandberg has two younger siblings, David, a pediatric neurologist, and Michelle, a pediatrician. When she was two years old, the family moved to North Miami Beach.

Sandberg entered Harvard University in 1987 as an economics major. Harvard helped to hone her activist inclinations, and she was particularly concerned with women's issues. One of her pet causes was encouraging other women to major in economics and government. She wrote her undergraduate honors thesis on the correlation between domestic violence and socioeconomic status.

She graduated summa cum laude in 1991 with a bachelor of arts degree and was awarded the John H. Williams Prize for top economic student in her class. Her mentor, Lawrence Summers, became extremely important in her career, and she spent two years working with him as a research assistant while he served as a chief economist and vice president for developing economies at the World Bank. Her job responsibilities focused on issues such as leprosy, HIV/AIDS, and blindness in India. In 1993, Sandberg began graduate work at Harvard, receiving a master's degree in business administration with highest distinction in 1995. She then went to work as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company, a blue-chip consulting firm.

Life's Work

Sandberg moved to Washington, DC, in 1999 to serve as chief of staff for her former mentor, Summers, when he was appointed secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton. She remained in that position until January 2001, when Clinton left office. At the Treasury, her focus was on debt forgiveness during the economic crisis in Asia. As chief of staff, she made a particular point of visiting each undersecretary to discover what she could do to facilitate the goals of their jobs and make their professional lives easier.

In 2001, Sandberg moved to California to begin working for Google, concentrating on the advertising side of the business. At the time, Google, which had been founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, was still a relatively small company, with only three hundred employees. As the vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations, Sandberg was a major player in Google's rise to the top. She was responsible for advertising, publishing, and consumer sales and for sales related to Google Books Search. She was also closely involved in establishing Google's philanthropic arm, which was created by earmarking 1 percent of equity and 1 percent of profits for Google.org, which focused on issues such as climate change, poverty, pandemic disease, and drought. In 2005, Sandberg helped to set up a system for awarding grants to individuals and groups working on these issues. By the time she left the company, she was a millionaire.

By 2007, Sandberg was looking for a job change, either within Google or with another company. She met Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at a Christmas party given by Silicon Valley executive Dan Rosensweig. At the time, Zuckerberg was only twenty-four years old, and he recognized the need to bring in someone with more experience than he had. However, he was being careful about the kind of person he brought in. Zuckerberg had pledged to keep Facebook free for users, and the company was spending more money than it was bringing in. He wanted someone who shared his goals for the company but who could also make the company profitable. Zuckerberg and Sandberg began a series of lengthy meetings in restaurants and in her home. When she announced that she had decided to leave Google for Facebook, which had only 130 employees at the time, there was widespread surprise.

Sandberg came to Facebook as the chief operating officer (COO), outranked only by Zuckerberg as cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO). With the goal of raising Facebook profits, Sandberg was put in charge of advertising and sales. Under her leadership, advertising became Facebook's chief source of revenue. Her responsibilities also included business development, human resources, communication, and public policy. Facebook began placing ads that run alongside user pages, encouraging users to click on particular products. Whenever a user “likes” a company or a product, that action is posted on the user's newsfeed, serving as an advertisement to friends and family or to anyone who has access to the user's profile page. The site also began selling virtual birthday cards.

As Facebook advertising skyrocketed, companies flocked to the site, with the number of advertisers tripling between 2008 and 2009. A study conducted by National Advertisers revealed that 66 percent of advertisers were marketing their products on social media sites, with the majority of them choosing to do so on Facebook. In 2009, Sandberg led Facebook into selling Facebook credits that could be used to purchase virtual items in games such as Zynga's ever-popular FarmVille.

Once Sandberg was on board, Zuckerberg left for a monthlong vacation, allowing her free rein. She won over most employees by demonstrating that her advertising model worked. As a boss, she was generous with praise, and she saved criticisms for one-on-one meetings with employees. By 2010, with one-third of all internet display advertising appearing on Facebook, sales had climbed to $2 billion and were expected to double in 2011.

Sandberg and Zuckerberg have continued to work well together. While he allowed her a great deal of autonomy, he did not intend to lose control of his company. Sandberg was much more conscious than Zuckerberg of the right of Facebook users to control access to their own information. When Facebook went public in 2012, she became a billionaire.

In 2012, Sandberg unwittingly became the center of a debate on women executives when Eric Johnson of Forbes published the May 24, 2012, article “Sheryl Sandberg Is the Valley's It Girl—Just Like Kim Polese Once Was.” Kim Polese, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who cofounded the software company Marimba, fired back via a May 25, 2012, Forbes article by Caroline Howard, “Kim Polese: Stop Comparing Female Executives and Just Let Sheryl Sandberg Do Her Job.” Polese accused Johnson of expressing outmoded views on the roles of women. Amid protests, the article was pulled. The reason that Sandberg had been so successful at Facebook, in Polese's view, is simply that she did her job well.

In 2013, Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, in which she discusses the difficulties of balancing motherhood and career advancement as well as the pressures and challenges modern women face in the workplace. The book produced legions of fans and critics alike. Some critics made sociobiological and freedom-of-expression arguments for the gender differences seen at work and at home. Others saw her assertions as excluding women of color and lower-class women and as overly heteronormative. But the major critique of her position was that being able to parent and pursue a high-level career may not be possible for many women, not due to a desire to work but due to structural barriers in the workplace, a point made by Princeton University administrator Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter, who had also written on the topic, was often held to be Sandberg's opponent in the debate, although Slaughter herself lauded many of the points in Lean In. The book was released at the same time as the launch of an educational and community-building organization for women in business, also called Lean In. The following year, Sandberg and Lean In cosponsored the Ban Bossy campaign, a social media campaign designed to discourage the use of the word bossy to describe women and young girls. Partnering with spokespeople like Beyoncé and Jennifer Garner, the campaign also provided school training materials and leadership tips.

Sandberg released her second book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, cowritten with Adam Grant, in 2017. The memoir focuses on building resilience after the death of her husband in 2015 and gives advice on overcoming hardships. Between 2014 and 2018—excluding 2015—Sandberg ranked in the top ten on Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business list. She also ranked thirty-sixth on the Forbes' Power Women of 2021 list and fifteenth on Forbes' America's Self-Made Women of 2021 list.

Sandberg and other leaders at Facebook came under fire in 2021 when a former Facebook employee came forward with allegations that the social network misled the public regarding its actions to reduce hate speech and other content that is particularly harmful to children and adolescents. The allegations led to deeper investigations, including congressional testimony—Sandberg went before Congress in 2018 and 2021—and reportedly caused tensions between Sandberg and Zuckerberg.

In August 2022, Sandberg stepped down as COO of Meta. In January 2024, she announced she was also leaving Meta's board. She was focusing much of her attention on a foundation she had set up to address issues that affect women in the workplace.

Sandberg produced a documentary that debuted in April 2024. Screams Before Silence reveals sexual violence committed by Hamas forces against Israelis on October 7, 2023. On that morning, members of the Palestinian terrorist organization invaded communities from the Gaza Strip. They killed about 1,200 civilians in their homes and at a music festival and kidnapped about 250 others, including women, children, and elderly individuals. A number of the female victims were sexually assaulted. Sandberg interviewed survivors, freed hostages, and witnesses such as first responders and medical and forensic experts. The documentary also includes footage shot by Hamas attackers who had GoPro cameras rolling.

Personal Life

Sandberg's first marriage, to businessman Brian Kraff, ended in divorce. In 2004, Sandberg married Dave Goldberg, a former executive of Yahoo! and a cofounder of Launch Music. The wedding took place at Boulders Resort in Carefree, Arizona, with Rabbi Jay Moses officiating. Goldberg became the CEO of SurveyMonkey. The couple had two children, a son born in 2005 and a daughter born in 2007. In May 2015, Goldberg died unexpectedly in an exercise-related accident. She married Tom Bernthal, a former NBC News producer and entrepreneur, in August 2022.

Sandberg has combined her love of entertaining with her passion for women's issues. She regularly entertains the Women of Silicon Valley, a group of women that includes doctors and teachers as well as technology whizzes. Actor Geena Davis, tennis legend Billie Jean King, media mogul Rupert Murdock, business executive Meg Whitman, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, former secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, and Cambodian activist Somaly Mam have all been guest speakers. A benefit that Sandberg sponsored for Mam's work raised more than $1 million.

Bibliography

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Ghert-Zand, Renee. "Sheryl Sandberg's New Film Testifies to Hamas's Brutal Sexual Violence on October 7." The Times of Israel, 26 Apr. 2024, www.timesofisrael.com/sheryl-sandbergs-new-film-testifies-to-hamass-brutal-sexual-violence-on-october-7/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.

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Lagorio-Chafkin. "Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg Breaks Silence About Business Practices, Outage." Inc., 19 Oct. 2021, www.inc.com/christine-lagorio-chafkin/facebook-sheryl-sandberg-mark-zuckerberg-outage-small-business.html. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.

Neate, Rupert. "$2bn Woman: How Sheryl Sandberg Became One of Tech's Most Successful Bosses." The Guardian, 18 Jan. 2024, www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/18/how-sheryl-sandberg-became-one-of-tech-most-successful-bosses-facebook-meta. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.

Rushe, Dominic. “Sheryl Sandberg: The First Lady of Facebook Takes the World Stage.” Guardian 24 Jan. 2012: 1. Print.

Slaughter, Anne-Marie. "Yes, You Can." Rev. of Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg. International New York Times. New York Times, 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.

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