Sheryl Sandberg, hadn't she already left Meta?
As an executive director. In 2022, she retired as operational director, a position in which she had been the right-hand man of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg since 2008. As a 38-year-old, she was considered 'the adult in the room', next to the then 23-year-old Zuckerberg. Together they built the startup Facebook into the billion-dollar company Meta, which also includes Instagram and WhatsApp. She didn't leave completely two years ago, she stayed on as a member of Meta's board, in a non-executive, more supervisory role. When announcing her departure earlier this week, she said that she will now remain involved as an advisor.
Wasn't she an example for many career women?
She certainly was. First of all, because Facebook's success was largely due to its success. Using the lessons she had learned at her previous employer Google, she developed the advertising model that made the company so successful.
In 2014 she published her bestseller Lean in, which became a source of inspiration for women who aspired to reach the top at the time. Her message was that women should not be put off by all the men in the boardrooms who would not want mothers there. Women should embrace their ambitions, stand up and compete. She was criticized for this because her form of feminism focused too much on the attitude of the individual woman and that it ignored structural changes that are necessary to change the culture within companies so that women would be given more space.
Two years later, it was mainly Sandberg who came to the fore when Facebook came under fire after the presidential elections in 2016. The company has since been increasingly criticized because it provides ample scope for sowing division and spreading misinformation. She also defended the company during hearings in Congress, when it became clear in 2018 that a privacy breach had allowed the data company Cambridge Analytics to influence voters using illegally obtained data.
What will Sandberg do now?
Sandberg has focused on philanthropy since 2022. She previously set up her own foundation that works to improve the position of women in the workplace. According to business magazine Forbes she has a fortune of almost $2 billion.
In her statement about her departure on Facebook, she wrote on Wednesday that she will continue to focus on her children and her wedding this summer. Her first husband died in 2015, after which she Option B wrote, about grief and dealing with loss.
There are rumors that she would like to start a political career. That's not that crazy. She feels connected to the Democrats. In her twenties, she already worked for Bill Clinton's administration, as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. In 2016 she would according to The New York Times told colleagues that she would have switched to a Hillary Clinton administration if he had won. In recent years, she has spoken out strongly against abortion bans in several American states. She also supported the civil rights movement American Civil Liberties Union with $3 million.
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