Sheryl Sandberg to resign from Meta board

Former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg will not remain on the company’s board of directors after her term ends in May, as per reports.

“With a heart filled with gratitude and a mind filled with memories, I let the Meta board know that I will not stand for reelection this May,” said Sandberg.

Sandberg said in her post that she would be leaving the Facebook parent company’s board to focus more on philanthropic work but added that she would continue to serve as an advisor to Meta.

She added that Meta’s current leadership team under CEO Mark Zuckerberg “have proven beyond a doubt that the Meta business is strong and well-positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away.”

“Thank you Sheryl for the extraordinary contributions you have made to our company and community over the years,” Zuckerberg said in a comment on her post. “Your dedication and guidance have been instrumental in driving our success and I am grateful for your unwavering commitment to me and Meta over the years.”

Sandberg who gained popularity for being one of the most influential women in tech helped grow Facebook’s revenue from roughly $150 million in 2007 to more than $3.7 billion in 2011, the year before it went public.

“Sheryl architected our ads business, hired great people, forged our management culture, and taught me how to run a company,” Zuckerberg said in a June 2022 Facebook post when Sandberg announced she would leave the COO role. She also helped oversee a massive rebranding in 2021 from Facebook to Meta that reflected the company’s ambitions to reorient itself around building an immersive digital world called the “metaverse.” Meta’s ambitious spending on that project sparked concerns from shareholders and was followed by major cuts at the company last year.