Author Bio
• Birth—August 28, 1969
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Raised—North Miami Beach, Florida
• Education—B.A., M.B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Northern California
Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American businesswoman and author, who has served as the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008. In June 2012, she was also elected to the board of directors by the existing board members becoming the first woman to serve on its board.
She has written one book and co-authored a second: on her own, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013) and, with Adam Grant, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (2017). The latter was written after the death of her husband, David Goldberg. Both books became bestsellers.
Before Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She also was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for the United States Department of the Treasury. In 2012, she was named in "Time 100," an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by Time.
Background
Sandberg is the daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg and the oldest of three siblings. Her father, Joel, is an optometrist, and her mother, Adele, has a Ph. D. and worked as a French teacher before concentrating on raising her children. Her family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida when she was two years old. She attended public school and taught aerobics in the 1980s while still in high school.
In 1987, Sandberg enrolled at Harvard College and graduated in 1991 summa cum laude with an A.B. in economics and was awarded the John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in economics. While at Harvard, Sandberg met then-professor Larry Summers, who became her mentor and thesis adviser. Summers recruited her to be his research assistant at the World Bank, where she worked on health projects in India dealing with leprosy, AIDS, and blindness.
In 1993, she enrolled at Harvard Business School and in 1995 she earned her M.B.A. with highest distinction. After business school, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. From 1996 to 2001, Sandberg served as Chief of Staff to then United States Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers under President Bill Clinton where she helped lead the Treasury’s work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial crisis.
She joined Google Inc. in 2001 and served as its Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations, from November 2001 to March 2008. She was responsible for online sales of Google's advertising & publishing products and also for sales operations of Google's consumer products & Google Book Search.
Facebook
Facebook
In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party; at the time, she was considering becoming a senior executive for The Washington Post Company. Zuckerberg had no formal search for a COO but thought of Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role. They spent more time together in January 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in March 2008 Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google.
After joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was "primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow." By late spring, Facebook's leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, "with the ads discreetly presented"; by 2010, Facebook became profitable. According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications.
Her executive compensation for FY 2011 was $300,000 base salary plus $30,491,613 in FB shares. According to her Form 3, she also owns 38,122,000 stock options and restricted stock units (worth approx. $1.45 billion as of mid-May 2012) that will be completely vested by May 2022, subject to her continued employment through the vesting date.
In 2012 she became the eighth member (and the first female member) of Facebook's board of directors.
Personal
In 2004, Sandberg married David Goldberg. The couple lived in Northern California with their two children. Tragically, David died from a head injury after falling from a treadmill while the couple was on vacaction in Mexico.
Sandberg's grief inspired her to pair with psychologist Adam Grant in order to write Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. The book, published in 2017, became a New York Times bestseller. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved, 2013; updated, 2017.)
Adam Grant is a psychologist and the New York Times best-selling author of Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World (2016) and Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (2013). His also co-authored, with Sheryl Sandberg, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (2017).
As Wharton’s top-rated professor for five straight years, Adam is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives. He has been recognized as one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers and received distinguished scholarly achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation.
Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University with Phi Beta Kappa honors and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He serves as a contributing op-ed writer for The New York Times on work and psychology.
His keynote speaking and consulting clients include Facebook and Google, the NBA, Teach For America, and the U.S. Army and Navy. Adam is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, their two daughters, and their son. (From the publisher.)