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Sheryl Sandberg said on Wednesday that she would not stand for re-election to Meta’s board of directors in May, ending her 14½-year run in a formal role at the social networking company.
Ms. Sandberg had remained on the nine-seat board after stepping down as Meta’s chief operating officer in 2022. In a post to her personal Facebook page on Wednesday, she said she would still be an adviser to the company and would “always be there to help the Meta teams.”
“The Meta business is strong and well positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away,” she wrote.
In a comment on her Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive and founder, said Ms. Sandberg had been “instrumental” in driving his company’s success. She was elected to Facebook’s board of directors in 2012, when the company was under fire for having too few women on its board.
Mr. Zuckerberg hired Ms. Sandberg in 2008 — when the company was still known as Facebook — to become its first chief operating officer. She oversaw Facebook’s initial move into digital advertising, courting big brands and small businesses to expand it into a multibillion-dollar endeavor.
Ms. Sandberg became one of the highest-profile female executives in the business world, eventually writing a best-selling book, “Lean In,” about her experience.
But she also faced criticism during one of Facebook’s most tumultuous periods. Russians manipulated the company’s platforms to spread misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and its privacy and data-collection practices drew regulatory scrutiny.
