Postcards

How the power players do it - by Fortune senior editor at large Patricia Sellers

Facebook's Sandberg, on the move again

December 23, 2009: 6:32 PM ET

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is going on the Disney (DIS) board. Smart move for her. And smart move for Disney CEO Bob Iger and his fellow directors. 

Sandberg, 40, is super-smart and supremely connected, having worked her way from Harvard to the World Bank to the U.S. Treasury--where she worked for then-Secretary Larry Summers--to Google (GOOG), where she was the top-ranked woman exec. She moved to Facebook early last year. And given Facebook's phenomenal rise, Sandberg has been rocketing up the Fortune Most Powerful Women list ever since. In this year's ranking, she's No. 22.

The key to her success? She goes for it. In "Don't Leave Before You Leave"--a terrific Guest Post by Sandberg--she explains that she joined Facebook as its COO when she had just returned to work from having her second child. The risk was high. The timing wasn't right. But opportunity is fleeting. Jump on it, Sandberg advises. Since moving to Facebook, she has joined the Starbucks (SBUX) board--and soon, Disney, where she'll be on the board with someone else who knows how to build great companies: Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs.

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About This Author
Pattie Sellers
Patricia Sellers
Senior Editor at Large, Fortune
Executive Director of MPW/Live Content, Time Inc.

Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.

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