How Sheryl Sandberg rose to become Meta's second-in-command

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, claimed in 2008 that he hired Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive, because “she has just about the most relevant industry experience for Facebook, especially since we need to scale our operations and scale them globally.”

Zuckerberg was 23, and Sandberg was 38.

Facebook has since become a behemoth, and Zuckerberg is the same age as Sandberg was when he hired her. Over the past year, he has renamed his company Meta and begun to steer the social network in a new direction, dubbed the 'metaverse'. And, as Zuckerberg has accepted more of her responsibilities and rebuilt the corporation for its next phase, Sandberg, 52, has grown less prominent.


She announced on Thursday that she will be departing Meta in the fall.

Here’s a look at her journey from a Harvard graduate to a powerful tech executive:

1995: Completed her MBA from Harvard.

1999: Became Larry Summer's chief of staff when he was named Treasury secretary in Bill Clinton's administration.

2001: Joined Google as business-unit general manager and took over the company's ad programme. She soon became vice president of global online sales and operations.

2004: Was put in charge of Google’s for-profit philanthropy arm, Google.org

2008: Was recruited as Facebook’s first COO

2013: Wrote the best-selling book 'Lean In', which describes some of her own professional experiences.

2015: Her husband, Dave Goldberg, died unexpectedly.

2016: Sandberg was reportedly on Hillary Clinton's shortlist for one of two cabinet positions.

2017: Wrote about Goldberg's death in her book Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.

2018: Details of the Cambridge Analytica scandal surfaced. Sandberg admitted that Facebook knew about the improper data use back in 2015, but didn't make it public.

2018: She was summoned to Washington in September to testify about Facebook's role in Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

2018: Was the subject of a New York Times investigation that highlighted Facebook's handling of election meddling and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

2022: Sandberg announced that she would step down as COO later this year.