The first woman has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Facebook Inc., which operates Facebook, the world’s largest social network. The new board member is Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). As the Business Week server informed earlier, the company had already been facing criticism because of a lack of diversity in its top management. The critics did applaud the appointment of Sandberg, but pressure is still being put on the company to install more women and representatives of minorities in its top management. As one of the world’s most watched companies, it should be an example in this regard. Current statistics show that only 11% of America’s largest companies on the Fortune 500 index do not have a woman on its board.
Sheryl Sandberg is responsible for commercial operations at Facebook, including sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, public relations policy and communication. Prior to joining Facebook in 2008, she was the Vice-President of Global Online Sales at Google and the chief of staff of the American Ministry of Finance under president Bill Clinton. She began her career as en economist at the World Bank. She is a graduate of Harvard University. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company, the Women for Women International and V-Day support organizations for women, as well as of the Center for Global Development, an independent think-tank for the support of global economic development.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, appointing Sandberg to the board was natural. He considers her as a long-term partner in the management of the company and he also appreciates her experience from the boards of other companies. Besides Zuckerberg and Sandberg, Facebook’s board consists of directors that Zuckerberg picked through the years when he was seeking help with the company’s growth. The board includes the Chief Executive Officer of the Washington Post Donald Graham, the co-founder of Netscape Communications and investor Mark Andreessen, the managing partner of the investment company Accel Partners Jim Breyer, investor and founder of the Clarium Capital investment fund Peter Thiel, the Chief Executive Officer of Netflix Reed Hastings and president emeritus of the University of North Carolina Erskine Bowles.
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