Cheryl Sandberg is stepping down as chief operating officer of the parent company of Facebook 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, remaining on Meta’s board, she said.
In a post on his Facebook page on Wednesday, Sandberg did not outline the reasons for leaving the company, which he helped grow from a start-up company with no revenue in digital advertising. She said she was “not entirely sure what the future will bring”, but wanted to focus more on her philanthropic endeavors.
Javier Olivan, another longtime employee who is currently the company’s chief growth officer, will take over as chief operating officer.
Zuckerberg called the move “the end of an era”, adding in his own long Facebook post that the 52-year-old “architected our advertising business, hired great people, built our management culture and taught me how to run a company”. .
Shares of the company fell nearly 3 percent after the news.
A Harvard graduate, Sandberg joined Facebook in 2008. She worked for then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers under President Bill Clinton, and later grew Google’s advertising business as its vice president of global online sales and operations.
Broadcast as the “adult in the room” when he joined Zuckerberg’s team of twenty-something at the time, Sandberg is credited with stimulating the monetization of the business, which went public in 2012 and generated $ 117 billion in revenue in 2021. d.
During her tenure, she positioned herself as an advocate for women in the workplace, writing the modern feminist call Lean In. She also introduced herself as a small business champion using Facebook for growth.
But as a public figure who once met regularly with lawmakers and regulators, she has also been caught up in numerous privacy and moderation scandals, among others that have rocked the company in recent years.
Zuckerberg said Olivan would take on a “more traditional role as chief operating officer”, focusing internally and operationally, building on his strong experience in making our implementation more efficient and rigorous.
The CEO also announced several other promotions as part of a wider reshuffle after leaving Sandberg. “I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, instead of all business and operational functions being organized separately from our products,” Zuckerberg said.
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