Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg steps down after 14 years

“It’s the end of an era. After 14 years, my good friend and partner Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down as COO of Meta,” announced Mark Zuckerberg.

Sheryl, however, will continue to serve on Meta’s board of directors.

Zuckerberg reminisced that one of Sheryl’s greatest legacies is the incredible team she has built. Some of these leaders have already stepped up into larger roles reporting to Zuckerberg, like Nick Clegg as President, Global Affairs and Jennifer Newstead as Chief Legal Officer.
“When Sheryl joined me in 2008, I was only 23 years old and I barely knew anything about running a company. We’d built a great product — the Facebook website — but we didn’t yet have a profitable business and we were struggling to transition from a small startup to a real organization. Sheryl architected our ads business, hired great people, forged our management culture, and taught me how to run a company. She created opportunities for millions of people around the world, and she deserves the credit for so much of what Meta is today,” he said.

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It’s unusual for a business partnership like ours to last so long, he said: “I think ours did because Sheryl is such an amazing person, leader, partner, and friend. She cares deeply about the people in her life and she is generous about nurturing relationships and helping you grow as a person. She has taught me so much and she has been there for many of the important moments in my life, both personally and professionally. Whether going through the different transitions we’ve made as a company over the years, or when she supported me and Priscilla as we navigated challenges having children, our partnership has always been deeper than just business.”

There won’t be any replacement for Sheryl’s role in Meta’s existing structure. “I’m not sure that would be possible since she’s a superstar who defined the COO role in her own unique way. But even if it were possible, I think Meta has reached the point where it makes sense for our product and business groups to be more closely integrated, rather than having all the business and operations functions organized separately from our products,” he added.

Marne Levine, Chief Business Officer and the top business person who handles Meta partnerships, will report to Javier Olivan so that its Ads and Business Platform product group will be closer to the Meta Business Group.

Javi will become the next Chief Operating Officer since he will now lead its integrated ads and business products in addition to continuing to lead the infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development and growth teams.

“But this role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous. As part of this, Molly Cutler, our VP Strategic Response, will join Javi’s team and report to Naomi Gleit,” said Mark.

Justin Osofsky will report to Chris Cox. In addition to his role overseeing Global Operations and Instagram’s business organisation, Justin will now take on an additional responsibility building a content team that works across business and product that will train Meta’s AI recommendation systems to help you discover the most interesting, relevant, and personalized content across Facebook and Instagram.
Lori Goler, Head of People, will now report directly to Mark Zuckerberg.