Sheryl Sandberg will step down as chief operating officer of Facebook’s parent company Meta after 14 years, a major change in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg will lose one of his closest lieutenants.
Sandberg, one of the company’s top executives, will leave the business “in the fall” after a transition period, while remaining on Meta’s board, he said.
In a post on his Facebook page on Wednesday, Sandberg did not explain his reasons for leaving the company, which helped him grow from a low-income start-up to a digital advertising giant. . He said he was “not entirely sure what the future holds,” but that he wanted to focus more on his philanthropic efforts.
Javier Olivan, another long-time employee who is currently the company’s growth director, will hold the position of chief operating officer.
Zuckerberg called the move the “end of an era,” adding to his long Facebook post that the 52-year-old had “architectured our ad business, hired great people, forged our management culture and had taught me how to run a business. ”
Shares of the company fell nearly 3 percent on the news.
A graduate of Harvard, Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008. She worked for then-Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers under President Bill Clinton, and later grew Google’s advertising business as vice president of global online sales and operations.
Chosen as the “adult in the room” when she joined Zuckerberg’s twenty-one-year-old team at the time, Sandberg is credited with boosting the business’s monetization, which went public in 2012. and generated $ 117 billion in revenue in 2021.
During her tenure, she positioned herself as an advocate for women in the workplace, writing the modern call to arms feminist Lean In. She also introduced herself as an advocate for small businesses that use Facebook to grow.
But as a public figure who once met regularly with lawmakers and regulators, she has also been caught up in the numerous scandals over privacy and content moderation, among others, that have shaken the company in recent years.
Zuckerberg said Olivan will take on a “more traditional role as chief operating officer,” where he will “focus internally and operationally, building on his solid track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous.”
The CEO also announced several other promotions as part of a larger remodel following Sandberg’s departure. “I think Meta has gotten to the point where it makes sense for our products and business groups to be more integrated, rather than having all the business and operational functions organized separately from our products,” Zuckerberg said.