Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American technology executive, activist, and author. She is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org. In June 2012, she was elected to the board of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve on Facebook's board. Before she joined Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusiness Executive
Date of Birth28 April 1969
CountryUnited States of America
Facebook is great for women and men. We are enormously flexible. We care a lot about great opportunities for women, we push ourselves to make things as flexible as possible.
The social web can't exist until you are your real self online. I have to be me. You have to be you. Once we are online as ourselves, connected to each other and our other friends, then you can have the evolution of what becomes the social web.
It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy or gender. It is not illegal to talk about it.
Facebook is a really exciting place trying to do something really important that I really believe in. And it matters.
A lot of people will say, "what's Facebook's business model?" I always find that a kind of funny question. Our business model is out there, which is: we monetize largely through advertising and a little bit through the gift revenue, the virtual gifts we have on our site. I think those continue to be the most promising avenues going forward.
Let's acknowledge that men reach for opportunities more quickly and more easily than women. So often as managers, we give the job to whoever starts solving the problem, to whoever jumps in. Since we know men will jump in faster than women in so many circumstances, we have to slow down and encourage more women to sit at more tables.
We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap - this problem of not enough women in leadership - is running really deep and it's in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.
It's pretty exciting to take real people living in the real world, their opinions, and have people have to react to that. As opposed to their perceptions of what people are thinking, which are often very different.
As a man gets more successful, powerful, he is more liked, and as a woman gets more successful, she is less liked, and that's true by both women and men.
We're focused on doing one thing incredibly well. If you look at other companies, all of these companies are doing a lot of different things but we're still, as we grow, doing exactly one thing.
I've seen over and over how much self-belief drives outcomes. And that's why I force myself to sit at the table, even when I am not sure I belong there - and yes, this still happens to me. And when I'm not sure anyone wants my opinion, I take a deep breath and speak up anyway.
we compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet
The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do.
And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?