Sheryl Sandberg Joins Facebook's Board
The COO becomes the first woman on the social networking giant's board of directors.
| Posted Monday, June 25, 2012, at 5:41 PM
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.
Facebook's board of directors has it's first female member.
The social networking giant, which has previously taken some heat for the lack of gender diversity on its board, announced Monday that it is adding an eighth seat to make room for chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who joined the company in 2008. Before joining Facebook, Sandberg worked at Google and as the chief of staff for Treasury Secretary Larry Summers under the Clinton administration.
The New York Times had this to say about Sandberg's profile within Facebook:
"[It] is second only to that of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive. And she has served as one of the company’s links to the corporate world, playing a large role in taking Facebook public and working with business partners. ... At Facebook, Ms. Sandberg is largely regarded as an efficient operating executive who frees Mr. Zuckerberg up to work on big-picture projects and chart the long-term direction of the company he founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004."
Sandberg currently serves on three other boards, including the Walt Disney Company.
The rest of Facebook's board consists of: Zuckerberg, Washington Post Co. CEO Donald Graham, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and Jim Breyer.
As the Wall Street Journal reminds us, corporate governance advocates unhappy with the board's original gender makeup had publicly called for the addition of Sandberg, who is considered a strong proponent of women in the workplace.
