Facebook’s New Chief Operating Officer, Ex-Google VP, Sandberg

Facebook announced Sheryl Sandberg as the new Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. Sandberg worked at Google for six years as Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations.

Sandberg will join Facebook on March 24, 2008 and is responsible for helping the company scale its operations and expand its presence globally.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said:

Sheryl is a great manager who will help scale Facebook’s operations globally. She has relevant experience and a track record of scaling business operations and building new kinds of advertising networks. Sheryl understands Facebook’s goal of connecting everyone in the world and is passionate about building a business that will enable us to realize this mission.

In addition, Sheryl serves on the board of Google.org/the Google Foundation and directs the Google Grants program, which provides free advertising to non-profit organizations worldwide.

More details about Sandberg are still live at Google’s executives team page. Here is a quote of her bio from that page:

Sheryl Sandberg
Vice President, Global Online Sales & Operations

Sheryl Sandberg joined Google in 2001 and is currently the Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations. In this role, Sheryl is responsible for online sales of Google’s advertising and publishing products. She also runs sales operations for Google’s consumer products and Google Book Search. In addition, Sheryl serves on the board of Google.org/the Google Foundation and directs the Google Grants program, which provides free advertising to non-profit organizations worldwide.

Prior to joining Google, Sheryl was the Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department, where she helped lead its work on forgiving debt in the developing world. Before that, Sheryl was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and an economist with The World Bank, where she worked on eradicating leprosy in India. Sheryl currently serves on the boards of the ONE Campaign, The Ad Council, Leadership Public Schools, and eHealthInsurance.

Sheryl received a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics from Harvard University, and was awarded the John H. Williams Prize as the top graduating student in economics. She was a Baker and Ford Scholar at Harvard Business School, where she earned an MBA with highest distinction.

Postscript: I’ll keep updating this article as I get more news. We do have a request in with Google for more information. We just found a story from the International Herald Tribune that has a nice quote from Sheryl showing her motivations:

For me that is part of the excitement. I’ve loved being part of the process of helping to build Google. The opportunity to help another young company to grow into a global leader is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Google Veteran Leaves for Facebook from the Wall Street Journal has some excellent background. In that article we learn that Sandberg will replaced by Vice President for Online Sales and Operations David Fischer, 35, her longtime deputy.

Google’s Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Business Development, sent us a statement:

Sheryl was a valued member of the Google team and we wish her well in her new endeavors. We have a deep management bench at Google and are delighted that David Fischer, who has been such an important part of the growth of this worldwide organization, will assume responsibility for Google’s global online sales and operations.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.