For the woman who has built the task force and established teams of two billion-dollar companies, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), being chosen as the 22nd Most Powerful Woman by Forbes, should certainly not have been a surprise. Sheryl Sandberg all of 52 today, knows just how much effort it takes to be an inspiring visionary.
While Facebook is an engineering focused company too, the core mission of Facebook is to connect people and allow them to share their lives while giving full control over what each of the users of the network share. Facebook currently has 2.9 billion monthly active users and 1.91 billion daily active users and that is surely the testimonial of what Sheryl Sandberg – overseeing sales, marketing, business development, human resources and communications – and Facebook, valued over $1 trillion – had achieved together.
Name: Sheryl Kara Sandberg
Date of Birth: August 28, 1969
Net Worth: $1.9 billion (As of August 2021)
Of the really rewarding and extraordinary achievements of Sheryl Sandberg, some interestingly less known facts about Sheryl are worth noticing. Here they are:
1. Interestingly, Sheryl always topped her class and apart from being a good student, she taught aerobics in the 1980s while she was in high school.
2. Being the oldest sibling, Sheryl was taking the responsibilities and organizing play sessions for her young and was greatly appreciated by her parents for her Leadership qualities.
3. When Sheryl was down with fever in her school days, though she got the medication and care, her father sent her to school quoting that Fever was never a reason to miss school.
4. She was awarded John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in economics in 1991 at Harvard College.
5. Having worked with professor Larry Summers, her mentor and thesis adviser in school, she was pulled in to help him in the World Bank Project, where she got to work for about one year on health projects in India dealing with AIDS, leprosy and blindness.
6. Larry Summers, who was also then United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, appointed Sheryl Sandberg as Chief of Staff, after she earned her Harvard Business School M.B.A., with the highest distinction.
7. Before joining Facebook, Sheryl spent 6 years as a vice president of global online sales and operations at Google. She was involved in launching Google’s philanthropic website Google.org. Eric Schmidt was her mentor who she praises even today for his valuable career advice.
8. When being interviewed by Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook, she quoted to him that as she was being hired for her negotiation skills, she was going to use that skill in the interview to negotiating her pay. That we say is a very smart move.
9. In 2008, Sheryl joined Facebook for the role of COO (Chief Operating Officer). Later in 2012, she became the eighth member of Facebook’s board of directors, which also made her the first female member.
10. She was named to the board of the Walt Disney Company in 2009 and joined the Board of Directors of Starbucks with a $280,000 annual salary.
11. In 2016, she is in the 7th place on Forbes’s list of ‘World’s Most Powerful Women‘. Currently, she is the world’s 22nd most powerful woman.
12. On the 50 “Women to Watch” in 2007 by The Wall Street Journal, Sheryl ranked no.19.
13. Sheryl made the 15th place on the list of ‘America’s Richest Self Made Women‘, released by Forbes in 2021.
14. 2012 saw Sheryl among the Time Magazine’s Time 100 annual list of most influential people in the world. She has also been ranked among the 50 “Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune Magazine. She has been on one list or the other consistently from 2007.
15. In 2020, Sheryl was ranked 8th on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business.
16. In October 2012, Sheryl had nearly US$790,000,000 in about 34 million Facebook stocks, of which, in August 2013, sold 2.4m shares in the company worth US$91 million. By the end of it she was left with 5% of her total stake in the company. She sold more of her shares again in April 2014 until she was left with just about 0.5% stake in the company.
17. Sandberg’s advice to young men and women is to never decide a job based purely on its designation as that does not mean anything when it comes to work. She asks people instead to focus on their skills and cultivate gender equality when with peers.
18. In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg published a bestselling book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead“, about how stereotyping has affected women internally to lean back and not take as many initiatives, causing barriers preventing women from taking leadership roles in the workplace, be it raising their hands, bringing up genuine issues or even negotiating their appraisals. She does see breaking that social stigma and bringing equality both at the workplace and at home, a key aspect of future growth.
19. In April 2017, Sandberg released her second book “Option B”. The book digs deeper into the lives of a diverse group of people who have overcome obstacles, identifies the best ways to communicate with and assist others in crisis, and provides practical advice for building resilient families, communities, and workplaces.
20. The learning from her book ‘Lean In’ has been extended at LeanIn.org, her initiative to empower women, in the form of ‘Lean In Circles‘ and the one she is most proud about is the group of Dads who have formed a Circle to enable their daughters to follow those lines and make use of opportunities around them.
With such a wonderful career and thought of an equitable society, we strongly feel Sheryl and her ‘Lean In’ movement would make a considerable impact in reforming the rules of the corporate game and societal mindset, to allow more women to share stage with men, get appreciated and be heard in board rooms and bring about a positive change.
Sheryl Sandberg, we wish you this, and many more amazing birthdays to come, showering you with great health and happiness, to achieve a lot more visionary objectives and empower a lot more leaders like you.
Happy Birthday, Sheryl Sandberg !
The post is a part of a B’day Series where we celebrate the birthday of renowned personalities from Tech Industry, very frequently. The series includes Entrepreneurs, C-level Executives, innovators or a renewed leaders who moved the industry with his exponential skill set and vision. The intent is to highlight the person’s achievements and touch base the little known, but interesting, part of his life. You can see the list of all earlier celebrated tech personalities, including Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayor, Sean Parker, Andy Rubin, Julian Assange, Sir Richard Branson, Sergey Brin by following this link or subscribe to your daily newsletter.
To make it more exciting, we suggest you to make use of the comment section if you are among the ones celebrating their birthday with today’s featured personality.
