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Influencer Column :Sheryl Sandberg

Since 2008, Sheryl Sandberg has served as the chief operating officer at Facebook helping to dramatically increase the social media firm's revenue. Sheryl Sandberg focus on positioning Facebook as a platform for small business advertising helped increase ad revenue by 21 percent to 84.2 billion during in 2020.

Since 2021, book by two New York Times reporters, Sandberg's storied relationship with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on the fritz. A spokesperson for Facebook disagreed with the book's characterization of Sandberg's and Zuckerberg's relationship.

Sheryl Sandberg, in full name Sheryl Kara Sandberg, she born since 1969, August 28, Washington, D.C., U.S., American technology executive who was chief operating officer (COO) of the social networking company Facebook in 2008.

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.

Since 2001, Sandberg joined the search engine company Google, Inc., as general manager of its business unit, notwithstanding that Google had no business unit at the time. She soon became vice president of global online sales and operations. She was in charge for development of AdWords, which placed text advertisements on search result pages and AdSense, which placed relevant advertisements on the Web sites of individuals and companies that contracted with Google. Both AdSense and AdWords helped Google become a profitable company and were responsible for much of Google’s earnings. Since 2004, Sheryl Sandberg was put in charge of Google’s for-profit philanthropy arm, Google.org, which focused on the problems of climate change, public health and poverty. 

Sandberg was recruited as Facebook’s first COO in 2008. Facebook had grown enormously since its founding in 2004, and founder Mark Zuckerberg felt that someone more experienced in management (like Sandberg) was needed to supervise the daily operations of the company. Just as she had at Google, Sandberg created an advertising strategy for Facebook that allowed the company to finally become profitable and her close partnership with Zuckerberg was seen as a crucial ingredient in Facebook’s success.  

Sandberg became an outspoken advocate for women to be more aggressive in seeking success in the business world. She often pointed out that, despite the gains women had achieved through feminism, business executives were still predominately male, and women needed to close “the ambition gap.

Sheryl Sandberg felt that, for women to want to return to work after having children, they should do everything they could to seize interesting and challenging opportunities early in their careers. Sandberg articulated her philosophy in Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead in 2013; the book was published in concert with the launch of Lean In, an education and community-building organization for the women in business. Though Sandberg’s advocacy was generally well received, some critics noted that her experience and position were as rarefied and unique as to be irrelevant to the typical working woman.

Honors and Awards

Since 2012, Sandberg became the first female member of Meta's board of directors. As a part of her compensation, Sheryl Sandberg received an equity stake in Meta that made her a billionaire after the company's in 2012 IPO (initial public offering). In 2021 April, her net worth was above 1.7 billion. In 2021, she ranked 36^th on the Forbes Power Women list and 15^th on the Forbes America's Self-Made Women list.