Sheryl Sandberg to step down from Meta’s board

Facebook’s founding chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg announced that she was leaving parent company Meta’s board of directors in May. “With a heart filled with gratitude and a mind filled with memories, I let the Meta board know that I will not stand for reelection this May,” Ms Sandberg wrote in a post on Instagram, sharing a picture of her with Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg. This marks an end to her over 14-year stint at Meta, where she remained on its nine-seat board after stepping down as the tech giant’s chief operating officer in 2022. “The Meta business is strong and well positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away,” Ms Sandberg wrote, adding that in the future, she would serve as an advisor to the company. “I will always be there to help the Meta teams,” she said. In a comment on Ms Sandberg’s Facebook post, Zuckerberg said she was “instrumental” in driving Meta’s success. “I am grateful for your unwavering commitment to me and Meta over the years,” the Meta chief said. Ms Sandberg, who has a net worth of over $1.9bn according to Forbes, joined Facebook as the company chief operating officer in March 2008 and was elected to its board of directors in 2012 at a time when the tech giant was being criticised for having very few women on its board.

She led the company’s advertising section and was responsible for growing it from its infancy into an over $100bn-a-year business. The 54-year-old soon became one of the leading women in the tech industry, going on to write the best-selling book “Lean In” in 2013 about her experience. In June 2022, Ms Sandberg announced she was stepping down as Facebook’s chief operating officer to focus on her philanthropic work. “Serving as Facebook’s — and then Meta’s — COO for 14 ½ years and a board member for 12 years has been the opportunity of a lifetime. I will always be grateful to Mark for believing in me and for his partnership and friendship,” she said. Prior to joining Facebook, the Harvard MBA was at Google for over six years, and an economist at the World Bank and chief of staff to then US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers before that. “I will always be grateful to my colleagues and teammates at Meta for all the years of working side by side and all they taught me,” Ms Sandberg said.

Sheryl Sandberg, an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer, served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org. In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company’s second-highest ranking official. In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook’s board of directors, becoming the first woman to serve on its board. As head of the company’s advertising business, Sandberg was credited for making the company profitable. Prior to joining Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and was involved in its philanthropic arm Google.org. Before that, Sandberg served as research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank, and subsequently as his chief of staff when he was Bill Clinton’s United States Secretary of the Treasury.

In 2012, Sandberg was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the most influential people in the world. On Forbes Magazine’s 2021 billionaires list, Sandberg is reported to have a net worth of US$1.7 billion, due to her stock holdings in Facebook and in other companies. In 2022, she announced she would be stepping down as Meta COO in the fall but that she would remain on its board. In January 2024, she announced that she would not stand for re-election on the board in May 2024.

Agencies