Sheryl Sandberg Quitting As CEO Of Meta, Facebook's Parent Company

On Wednesday (Thursday, June 2, 2022, in Manila), Sheryl Sandberg said she was leaving Meta — which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — this fall.

Photo Insert: Sandberg during a talk in Davos

The Meta CEO said she had expected to be at the company only for roughly five years rather than the 14 she has served, Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and Cecilia Kang reported for New York Times.

She added that she planned to focus on her personal philanthropy and her foundation, Lean In, and that this summer she would marry Tom Bernthal, a television producer. “I believe in this company,” said Sandberg, who will remain on Meta’s board.

“Have we gotten everything right? Absolutely not. Have we learned and listened and grown and invested where we need to? This team has and will.” Sandberg’s decision to leave Meta was her own, and she informed Mr. Zuckerberg in a phone call over the weekend, two of her employees said.

Sandberg wanted Meta’s big boss Mark Zuckerberg, who was in Hawaii, to be the first to know, one of the people said.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Zuckerberg praised Sandberg, saying it was “unusual for a business partnership like ours to last so long.” He named Javier Olivan, a longtime product executive who has overseen much of Facebook’s growth over the past decade, as Meta’s next CEO.

Sandberg is ending her tenure at Meta far from the reputational pinnacle she reached last decade.

A Harvard graduate who served as the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers during the Clinton administration, she made her name in Silicon Valley by helping to build Google’s nascent targeted ads business into a multibillion-dollar juggernaut.

After joining Facebook, she developed its advertising business and was regarded as the adult in the room. Sandberg helped create some of Facebook’s advertising formats for desktop computers, before successfully building its mobile advertising strategy.

By 2016, Facebook’s revenue was $27.6 billion, compared with the $153 million it generated in 2007 before Sandberg joined. The ads business remains Meta’s main financial engine.

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