Facebook
"Without her," says Zuckerberg, "we would just be incomplete." (Brad, 2011)
In 2007 when Sheryl Sandberg was considering becoming a Senior Executive for the Washington Post Company, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, met Sheryl at a Christmas party. Zuckerberg and Sandberg began e-mailing and having secret dinner meetings. Sandberg also started to discuss doing something more at Google with the CEO Eric Schmidt who offered her the job of Chief Financial Officer. Sandberg rejected the position because she wanted to do more management instead of having financial responsibility (Fenderson, 2012). In March 2008, after weeks of meetings with Mark Zuckerberg and even though Google tried to convince Sandberg to stay, she accepted the position of Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. Zuckerberg himself was ecstatic that she accepted and stated “Sheryl has a lot of experience, probably the best and most relevant experience of anyone we could find, to help us scale our business and her values aligned very well with my own” (Fenderson, 2012). When Sheryl started at Facebook she was very much focused on getting to know the entire staff by walking up to them and introducing herself. Facebook at the time didn’t make any money yet but Sandberg remained confident that she could turn things around quickly. As a matter of fact, she once stated “This feels like Google when I started out” (Hempel, 2008). She quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook a successful and profitable business.
By 2010, Facebook had become profitable, thanks to Sandberg. Within three years Facebook grew from a 130 employees to 2500 and from 70 million worldwide users to nearly 700 million. Her salary in 2011 was $300,000 base salary plus $30,491,613 in Facebook shares. Additionally, she has $38,122,000 restricted stock units that will be completely vested by October 2020. (Fenderson, 2012). Regarding her work with Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said, “She could go be the CEO of any company but she wants to get her hands dirty and work, and doesn’t need to be the front person all the time” (Fenderson, 2012). Even though Sandberg already accomplished so much, she still has several plans for the future of Facebook. She wants Facebook to become public for one thing and also break into other forms of media. There is talk that Facebook might become more involved with television for example. There are people that think Sandberg may become CEO of Facebook in the future but others think she has a potential career in politics because of her background with Larry Summers.
Personal life
Only a few people know that Sheryl Sandberg is already in her second marriage. She was briefly married to Washington businessman Brian Kraff after her MBA but they divorced very soon. Sheryl married her longtime best friend David Goldberg on April 17, 2004 when she was 34 years old in Carefree, Arizona. David who is also a Harvard Grad and internet executive like Sheryl, is the CEO of SurveyMonkey. Sandberg once stated, “The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.” (Zap, 2012) The couple welcomed their first child in 2005 and today they have a 7 year old son and a 4 year old daughter. After the birth of her children she began to struggle with balancing work and domestic life. She also became aware that too many women were leaving the workforce after becoming mothers. Sandberg has hired a nanny to help take care of her children but admits that she feels pangs of guilt as she admitted in the New Yorker profile: “I feel guilty working because of my kids” (Zap, 2012).
Rankings, Awards and other Accomplishments
Besides working for Facebook, being a wife and raising two young children, Sandberg joined the board of the Walt Disney Company in 2009 and the Board of Directors of Starbucks. Additionally, she serves on the boards of V-Day, Women for Women International, the Brookings Institution, and the Ad Council. When her mentor Larry Summers was criticized in 2008 for several comments he made about women she wrote an article on his behalf for the Huffington Post to support him.
Sandberg was repeatedly ranked one of the fifty “Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune Magazine since 2007. In 2007 she also ranked #19 in the Wall Street Journal’s list of “Fifty Women to Watch” list. Forbes ranked her #5 of the World’s Most Powerful Women and Business Week named Sandberg as one of the “Twenty-Five Most Influential People on the Web”. (AmazingWomenRock, 2012)
Sheryl’s empowerment as a Businesswomen
Sandberg is very well known as the women that made it very far in a business that mostly employs men. There are not a lot of online companies that have women on their boards. Sandberg is the only one on Facebooks small Board that only consists of 5 members. Twitter and Paypal for example have no female Board members at all. Apple has 1 out of 7 members; Amazon 1 out of 8 and Google has 2 out of 9. Sandberg is often criticized for not making sure Facebook has more female Board members. One reason why there are only a few female executive in Silicon Valley is that only a few women become engineers because less than 20% of engineering and computer-science majors are actually women (Fenderson, 2012). As one of the only women serving as an operating officer for a major Internet Company, Sandberg is helping to revolutionize stereotypes about such professions. She also helped co-found the Women in Economics and Business group while at Harvard.
Sheryl began to get more involved into fighting feminism after her Phi Beta Kappa induction where men and women had separate ceremonies. According to Fenderson’s biography on Sandberg, Sheryl listened to a speech at the women’s ceremony about the difficulties and challenges women face who wanted to major in business and economics and she called it the best speech she ever heard because she was facing the same issues her entire life. Years later after having a conversation with her son about women in space it dawned on her that the problems women encounter when trying to enter the business world are far more subtle than blatant sexism. Women are discouraged from being interested in business or computer science by the way stereotypes are shaped through popular culture. For example, her son though only one women could go to space because the Star Wars series only had one women in space also. In 2010, Sandberg addressed these issues when she was speaking at the TED Women conference, “For any of us in this room today, let’s start out by admitting we’re lucky. We don’t live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited…. More women than men graduate college and graduate school, and receive doctoral degrees… Yet women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen percent are women.” Furthermore, she insisted that in order to solve these problems, women need to negotiate their salaries just as men do, and make sure that they have the support of their partners regarding domestic chores. Sandberg also stressed about women reaching their career goals before having children because otherwise women often don’t come back.
Sandberg has been accused of underestimating the challenges that women face in the business world and critics often wondered why she doesn’t make sure that there are more women on the Board of Facebook. Sandberg responded, “Our board is tiny. It’s not an issue for my life” (Fenderson, 2012). However, Sandberg has been instrumental in changing the dynamics of Facebook’s employees. In March 2008, she hired Lori Goler as the head of recruiting and together they hired many more women. As of spring 2011, Facebook executives consisted of 12 females. Additionally, Sandberg presses for progressive policies, especially for women by putting together trendsetting child-care programs, maternity-leave policies and preferred parking places reserved for expectant women (Conley, 2010). Sheryl has a reputation to fight for what she believes is best for everybody in her company and she doesn’t let go until she gets what she wants. She has a good sense for talent and can be very persuasive and motivate others. In the commencement speech Sandberg held at Barnard College, she also said: “Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face – and there will be barriers – be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold. I promise that you will never know what you are capable of unless you try. You are going to walk off this stage today and you are going to start your adult life. Star out by aiming high….Go home tonight and ask yourselves, what would I do if I weren’t afraid? And then go do it!” (Fenderson, 2012)
Future plans
Sheryl Sandberg isn’t one to make future plans as she said herself, “The reason I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan, I’m limited to today’s options” (Auletta, 2011). Sandberg has a wide range of areas where she worked in past from being an aerobics teacher, to being involved with politics, working for a bank, working for an internet company and of course being a mother. For now, however, she is content being at Facebook. “I’m actually quite happy with Mark and the company. I always tell people if you try to connect the dots of your career, if you mess it up you are going to wind up on a very limited path. If I decided what I was going to do in college – when there was no internet, no Google, no Facebook…. I don’t want to make that mistake” (Auletta, 2011).
Conclusion
Sheryl Sandberg is a truly astonishing woman that earns the title role model for women around the globe. She is still so young but has already accomplished so very much. Even though it wasn’t always easy for her as a woman in a male dominated field she wasn’t afraid to fight for where she wanted to go. In her case it wasn’t luck but simply very hard work and determination. On top of all of her involvements she still manages to raise children but she has to make sacrifices while doing so. I personally look forward to following Ms. Sandberg’s career over the next few years and see where she’ll be in the next decade or so. It would not surprise me in fact if she would be one of the countries first female President in the future. It’s not going to happen tomorrow but if women continue to be strong and fight hard for what they deserve I believe it is possible. Sheryl Sandberg for sure is not afraid of a challenge. Sandberg also knows that she can’t do this alone. In her commencement address to Barnard College graduates, she once said, “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored” (Zap, 2012).
Works Cited:
Auletta, Ken. (2011). A Woman’s Place. The New Yorker. Retrieved, March 23, 2012, from
Conley, Kevin. (2008). Sheryl Sandberg: What She Saw at The Revolution. Retrieved, March 21, 2012, from
Fenderson, Adrienne. (2012). Sheryl Sandberg – The biography. Kindle Edition. Amazon Digital Services. Retrieved, March 23, 2012 from
Hempel, Jessi. (2008). Meet Facebook’s New Number Two. CNN Money. Retrieved, March 21, 2012, from
Sheryl Sandberg. (2012). Retrieved, March 23, 2012, from
Sheryl Sandberg COO of Facebook/Former Chief of Saff Department of Treasury. (2011). Retrieved, March 23, 2012, from
Stone, Brad. (2011). Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg. Business Week. Retrieved, March 23, 2012, from
Zap, Claudine. (2012). Meet Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook’s Highest-Paid Employee. Retrieved, March 23, 2012, from
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