Female leaders in this world are few and still emerging One of the well-known powerful female leaders is Sheryl Sandberg. She is best known for her leadership style in leading giant companies. She has led businesses of tech-giants like Google, Facebook, and is successful in what she does.
Sheryl Sandberg is the COO(Chief Operating Officer) of the Facebook company. She is also popular as the author of books ‘Lean In Women, Works, and The Will to Lead”. Sheryl is the first female member of the board of directors of Facebook. Not just Facebook but she has also worked in Google as a sales operator. Sheryl was a keynote speaker in TED talk and delivered a speech on “Why we have too few women leaders”.
She also serves U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers as chief of staff. Because of her leading powers, she ranked fourth in the “Forbes” list of most powerful women and was enlisted in the “Time’s Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.”
How Sheryl Sandberg grew up to be a leader
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Sheryl Sandberg’s full name is Sheryl Kara Sandberg. She was born on August 28, 1969, in Washington D.C.She is the eldest daughter of parents Joel Sandberg and Adele Sandberg. Her father was an ophthalmologist and her mother was a French language teacher and was doing a Ph.D. Her mother had to leave her job and studies to look after the children. Sheryl has two younger siblings David and Michelle. When Sheryl was just two years old, the family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida where all her siblings were raised.
An excellent student
Sheryl attended Highland Oaks Middle school and then moved to North Miami Beach High School. She graduated in 1987 scoring top among her fellow students. She was not just a bright student but also an active one. Her leadership trait reflected ever since she was a child. She used to be on the executive board in not just one group but many school groups.
After school, she joined Harvard college taking economics as a major. In 1991, she graduated summa cum laude in economics as one of the top students. Considering her work and efforts, she was awarded the John H. Williams Prize. After college, she became a research assistant for Larry Summers, her former teacher at the World Bank. During this time she worked on projects related to Leprosy, AIDs, and blindness in India.
In 1993, she enrolled in Harvard Business for masters. And voila in 1995, she graduated with the highest distinction score and earned a master’s degree in MBA.
Starting off her professional life
As a starting of her career, she worked for McKinsey & Co. as a management consultant for about a year in 1995. Then Seryl crossed paths with Larry Summers again. Mr. Larry became a deputy Treasury secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration. Then Larry reached out to Sheryl to become his chief of staff to which Sheryl gladly accepted. Sheryl worked there for 5 years assisting her mentor Larry until 2001. Sheryl left the job after George W. Bush moved into the White House.
Sheryl Sandberg in Google VP
Sheryl moved to Silicon Valley leaving the government job behind her and joined Google Inc. At that time Google was just a 3-year-old new company. She served as a Vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She worked and led the sales department by supervising sales, advertising, and working on Google Book Search, publishing products, and customer products.
Sheryl worked for Google from 2001 to 2008. Google’s market was up and running after her entry in the firm.
Sheryl Sandberg as Facebook COO
In 2007 December, during a Christmas party, Sheryl met Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook for the first time. They introduced themselves and had an hour-long discussion the same day.
After the first meet, the two had private meetings along the next months. After explaining facebook’s plans and stories, Mark Zuckerberg finally offered her a responsibility to become the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook company.
At this point, Sheryl was failing to become the COO at Google as the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin were doing both CEO and COO work. Wanting to try something new, Sheryl finally accepted Mark Zuckerberg’s offer. In February 2008, despite Google wanting her to stay, Sheryl left Google and joined the Facebook company as a COO.
After joining Facebook, Sheryl first built a personal relationship with all hundreds of employees working there. As Sheryl was in marketing, she brought the idea of “Ads discreetly presented” on Facebook. With her spectacular idea, within just two years she was able to make Facebook a profitable company.
In 2012, Sheryl became the first female in Facebook’s board of directors members. Specifically, Sheryl oversees business operations, expand global footprints, sales management, human resource department, business development, marketing, policy, privacy, and communications. Sheryl Sandberg leadership style in any field is to be praised as her performance has brought a lot of profits in the company and to herself. As a COO, she climbed her way up to the billionaire’s list in 2014.
Sheryl Sandberg books: ‘Lean In’ and ‘Option B’
Sheryl Sandberg is also an author, she has written two popular books ‘Lean In Women, Work, and the Will To Lead’. This book became one of the best-seller books in 2013. Sheryl focuses on leadership and women. She has motivated thousands of women around the world to reach their ambitions.
Following the book name, Sheryl founded a community LeanIn.org to support women striving to become a leader and help them reach their goals. In 2017, Sheryl published another successful book, ‘Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy’.
Sheryl Sandberg husband, boyfriend, and kids
In 1993, Sheryl Sandberg married a businessman Brian Kraff. The couple didn’t stick together for long and divorced a year later. Eventually, Sheryl married Dave Goldberg CEO of SurveyMonkey and a former Yahoo executive in 2004. The pair were happily in love with each other and had two wonderful children.
The couple supported each other. Unfortunately in 2015, Sheryl’s husband suddenly died of head trauma. It happened during their vacation in Mexico as her husband slipped on a treadmill and hit his head. Sheryl was very sad about this and often posted on Facebook about her late husband.
She was struggling with the Trauma because of her husband. Love once again knocked at her doorstep. She fell in love with Tom Bernthal, founder of a Los Angeles based agency. They have even announced their engagement in February 2020.
What is Sheryl Sandberg known for?
Sheryl Sandberg is best known for making Facebook a profitable company. Before she entered Facebook as a COO, the company barely had any revenue and people used the site just for fun. She introduced the ‘ads discreetly presented’ feature on Facebook. She was able to convert Facebook into a business platform by adding the business options of advertising on Facebook.
She is also known for launching Google.org, a well known philanthropic site by Google. It was launched to help non-profit and social enterprises. Sheryl has also served U.S Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers as chief of staff.
Sheryl Sandberg’s Achievements and Accomplishments
According to Forbes, Sheryl Sandberg is placed fourth in the list of most powerful women. She also made a name for herself in magazines like ‘Time’ Magazine’, ‘Business Week’, ‘The Jerusalem Post’,‘Fortune’ Magazine, ‘The Wall Street Journal’, and many more.
Sheryl became the first woman on Facebook’s board of directors in 2012. In 2013, her book “Lean In” was listed in ‘Financial Times’ and ‘Business Book of the Year Award’.
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