Credit: maryannerussell.com
Sunday brought another glowing profile of Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook COO, who is No. 12 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list, is on a PR roll. Though being called "the Justin Bieber of tech" in the New York Times comes close, I think, to jumping the shark image-wise.
The Times article honed in on Sandberg's third "job" besides playing backup to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and wife and mother to her two young kids at home. This would be: being the most vocal champion for women who do it all. Do it all at once, that is. Sandberg's is a can-do, should-do message that's controversial. (Some weary working women bristle that of course a woman who earned $30.8 million last year can afford the support structure to keep racing ahead in her career.) Nonetheless, it's worth noting that the story that the Times mentions to illustrate Sandberg's mantra—the tale of a young Sandberg hire who courageously steps up to the job, domestic dreams be damned—was first told here by Sandberg in an essay she wrote in 2009 called "Don't Leave Before You Leave." And by the way, her message, she told us then, applies not just to striving women but to ambitious men as well:
Making decisions too early, trying to plan life too carefully, can close doors rather than keep them open. Any time you make a plan, you do it with imperfect information; the further in advance you make that plan, the less information you have. You never know how you will feel or what choices you might face. Take life one step at a time and don't make decisions before you have to.
A few months ago we were interviewing a fantastic woman to join Facebook's Business Development team. After we extended an offer, she came in to ask some follow-up questions about the role. She did not mention lifestyle or hours. But she was the typical age of the people who leave before they leave. So I shocked her by asking the question no one asks. "Priti," I said, "I'm sorry for bringing up something so personal, and feel free to tell me you don't want to discuss it. But just in case you are thinking that you might want to have a child sometime soon and need to stay where you are to have room to slow down, I'd love a chance to tell you why that makes it even more important that you change jobs now."
A few weeks later, Priti Youssef Choksi found out she was pregnant. Today, she is a mom, Facebook's director of business development, and one of the rising stars on Sandberg's watch.
As Facebook prepares for its IPO, another senior woman has joined its ranks: Rebecca Van Dyck, who was global CMO at Levi Strauss for the past year and was in marketing at Apple (AAPL) before that. While Sandberg & Co. deserve credit for bringing women up at Facebook, the company also deserves tough scrutiny for its board deficiency: How can it be that Facebook, whose biggest and best base of customers is female, does not have a single woman on its seven-member board of directors?
Sandberg isn't a Facebook director, but she's on the board of Walt Disney (DIS) and she recently stepped off the board of Starbucks (SBUX). Surely she could wield some of her clout at her own company. More work to be done.
Who is Facebook's highest-paid executive? Sheryl Sandberg.
The Facebook COO received a base salary of just $300,000 last year, but Sandberg's total comp turned out to be $30.8 million, according to Facebook's pre-IPO filings. Meanwhile, her boss, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, got $500,000 in salary and some $1.5 million in total comp. (Don't feel too sorry for Zuckerberg. The 27-year-old boss owns more than a quarter of the company he co-founded--a stake MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 2, 2012 11:53 AM ET
Clara Shih is an early achiever. At age five, she arrived in the U.S., from Hong Kong, with her parents. With no access to bilingual education, she was initially placed in special classes for kids with speech impediments and advanced so rapidly that she scored a 1420 on her SATs -- in eighth grade. She started her company, Hearsay Social, at age 27, made Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jan 11, 2012 10:22 AM ET
This past summer, when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg emailed me about Clara Shih, we at Fortune knew to keep a lookout.
"I think she is awesome," Sandberg wrote in her email.
Sure enough, Starbucks (SBUX) yesterday named 29-year-old Shih, a social-media entrepreneur, to replace Sandberg on its board of directors.
A 29-year-old on the Starbucks board?!
Starbucks is bulking up on social-media expertise at a time when boards of most Fortune 500 companies desperately MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 15, 2011 1:20 PM ET
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has become the go-to adviser for aspiring young women in business. Her view, which she expressed in an on-stage interview with me at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit: "Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal,'" she said, adding, "We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap."
Indeed, Sandberg's own career path--from the U.S. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 28, 2011 10:04 AM ET
Mark Zuckerberg has upped the ante in his dietary adventure. As we reported last May on Fortune.com, the Facebook CEO pledged that this year "the only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself." He started out by slaughtering a pig, goat and chicken. Now the Silicon Valley billionaire has expanded his menu. Zuckerberg has learned to hunt, according to people close to him. He got a hunting license MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 27, 2011 1:26 PM ET
FORTUNE-- We're extending the deadline to apply to be one of Fortune's 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. The new deadline is August 1. We're reaching out worldwide to find the most innovative, game-changing female entrepreneurs whose companies brought in $1 million to $25 million in the last fiscal year. We'll invite the 10 winners to the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, October 3-5 in Laguna Niguel, California.
We started MPW MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 20, 2011 11:40 AM ET
The current cover of Fortune shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blowing a big pink bubble--POP! The story, Don't call it the next tech bubble--yet, delves into Zuckerberg's latest purchase: a $7 million, 5,600-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Palo Alto. Home prices there have gone up 24% in the past six months.
"The $7 million price tag doesn't buy much," writes my colleague David Kaplan, in the cover story. "Zuckerberg's parcel is MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 15, 2011 9:30 AM ET
Last fall, in Oprah's Next Act, Oprah Winfrey talked about how she has learned to embrace her power.
Well, she did that today, by naming herself CEO of OWN, her new cable network that's been struggling to find its audience.
So much for the life of leisure Oprah once imagined she might have after her daytime talk show ended. ("La-di-da, I'll do a show and then I'll go have lunch with my MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 13, 2011 5:05 PM ET
Credit: maryannerussell.com
This week's New Yorker includes a profile of Sheryl Sandberg, who is many things. She is the Facebook COO who is helping Mark Zuckerberg turn his startup into a very profitable business. She is, at 41, one of the fastest-rising stars on Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women list. And as she has taken to talking publicly about her career--from the World Bank to McKinsey & Co. to the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 5, 2011 11:04 AM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
