Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is an American businesswoman and a sales and marketing professional. Sandberg held the position of COO at the company Meta, formerly known as Facebook Inc., from 2008 to 2022.

Sandberg was born on August 28, 1969 in Washington, D.C. to parents Adele and Joel Sandberg, the first of three children. Her family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida when Sandberg was two years old. Sandberg attended Highland Oaks Middle School, then North Miami Beach High School; there, she was elected class president her sophomore year and was a member of both the National Honor Society and her senior class executive board. She graduated in 1987 and was ranked #9 in her class with a 4.646 GPA.

Sandberg attended Harvard College from 1987 to 1991, when she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in economics. She was also a member of the honors society Phi Beta Kappa. Upon graduating, Sandberg was awarded the John H. Williams Prize, which is awarded annually to Harvard College's graduating honors senior with the best overall record. She attended graduate school at Harvard Business School from 1993 to 1995 and received an MBA.

While attending Harvard College, Sandberg formed a relationship with American economist Lawrence Summers; he became her mentor and thesis advisor, and later her colleague. Sandberg first worked with Summers at the World Bank as his assistant; they spent one year in India attempting to curb the spread of diseases such as leprosy.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, Sandberg worked at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant until 1996. Following that, she assisted Summers again as the chief of staff for the United States Department of the Treasury, of which Summers was the secretary. From 2001 to 2008, Sandberg served as the vice president of global online sales and operations at Google.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Sandberg first met Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the social media platform Facebook, at a Christmas party among other business professionals in 2007. The pair immediately hit it off and began developing a business relationship, spending many hours each week for three months getting to know each other and discussing a business plan for Facebook. Sandberg became Facebook's COO in 2008. She has been instrumental to Facebook's revenue growth: Facebook generated just $150 million in revenue in 2007, and by 2011 Sandberg had helped Facebook's revenue soar to $3.7 billion. In 2021, Facebook's revenue was $117 billion. Sandberg joined Facebook's board of directors in 2012; she was the first woman to serve on the board.

On June 2, 2022, Sandberg announced her departure as COO, but said she would remain on the board of directors for the time being to ease the transition. She was replaced by Javier Olivan. Sandberg said that she loved the job, but that it took up too much of her time. She plans to pursue more work in philanthropy instead of another corporate position.

Sandberg was implicated in the 2018 Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal that collected data from millions of unconsenting Facebook users for the purpose of political ads. She was also criticized for Facebook's handling of Russian propaganda about the 2016 United States presidential election. In September 2018, Sandberg testified in Facebook's court hearing about the company's role in spreading the propaganda.

Sheryl Sandberg's opening statement to the United States Congress. September 5, 2018.

After a November 2018 report by The New York Times revealed Facebook was leading an investigation on investor George Soros, Sandberg was accused of playing a part in Facebook's hiring of the now closed right-wing research firm Definers Public Affairs. The investigation into Soros began after he criticized Facebook in a public speech, among other large tech companies. It focused on looking for financial ties between Soros and anti-Facebook groups. After the story broke in November, Sandberg denied hiring the firm. Three people who spoke to The New York Times said Sandberg emailed Facebook employees shortly after Soros's speech, asking if he could make any financial gains from his critical speech. Facebook terminated its contract with Definers Public Affairs on November 15, only hours after the report was released.

Sandberg's first marriage was to businessman Brian Kraff in 1993, which ended in divorce in 1994. Kraff is the founder of eStudentLoan and Market Hardware, although the companies were founded several years after their divorce. In 2004, she married Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey. They had two children together. Goldberg died in 2015 during a holiday with Sandberg in Mexico after he suffered a heart attack while on a treadmill. News sources originally misreported his cause of death as a head injury resulting from his fall off the treadmill, which was actually a subsequent result of the heart attack. An autopsy revealed Goldberg had coronary artery disease. Sandberg began dating Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, in 2016. The couple split in 2019. Soon after, she began dating Tom Bernthal, founder and CEO of Kelton Global. They were engaged in February 2020.

Sandberg is a billionaire. As of April 2021, her net worth is $1.7 billion. Sandberg was ranked #36 on Forbes’s World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 2021 list, #15 on Forbes's America’s Richest Self-Made Women 2021 list, and #1833 on Forbes's World's Billionaires 2021 list.

During their marriage, Sandberg and Goldberg founded the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation in 2013, a nonprofit that "works to build a more equal and resilient world." The foundation is now based off of two of Sandberg's initiative websites, named after her books, LeanIn.org and OptionB.org. LeanIn.org offers support and personal connection opportunities for women in the workplace, and OptionB.org provides grief support in the hopes of building resilience.

Sandberg has made many public appearances and speeches in the span of her career, including commencements and keynote speeches. She often speaks on the topics of female leadership and women in the workplace. She has given two TED Talks on these topics, one in December 2010 and the other in December 2013. She was a keynote speaker during Colgate University's second annual Entrepreneur Weekend in April 2013. In February 2014, she gave a speech at Arizona State University's Take The Lead Challenge event.

Sandberg has given commencement addresses at the graduation ceremonies of Barnard College in 2011, Harvard University in 2014, University of California, Berkeley in 2016, Virginia Tech in 2017, and MIT in 2018. She was a keynote speaker at Harvard Business School's Class Day in 2012, an event traditionally held the day before the commencement ceremony.

Sandberg is the author of three books:

• Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
• Lean In for Graduates (2014)
• Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (2017)

Her first book, Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead generated controversy for not addressing the different challenges that working class and Women of Color face in their careers. The critical response to Lean In inspired several direct and indirect rebuttal books, including Lean Out (2016) by Dawn Foster; Lean Out: The Truth About Women, Power, and the Workplace (2019) by Marissa Orr; and Lean While Black: Guide to Black Entrepreneurship (2021) by Jade Kearney.