Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American technology executive, activist, and author. She is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org. In June 2012, she was elected to the board of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve on Facebook's board. Before she joined Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusiness Executive
Date of Birth28 April 1969
CountryUnited States of America
I have a five year-old son and a three year-old daughter. I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home. And I want my daughter to have the choice to not just succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.
Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.
Nobody can succeed on their own.
There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is work, there is life, and there is no balance.
Every woman I know, particularly the senior ones, has been called too aggressive at work. We know in gender blind studies that men are more aggressive in their offices than women. We know that. Yet we're busy telling all the women that they're too aggressive. That's the issue.
Bring your whole self to work. I don't believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional and it is all personal.
Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.
We have to ask ourselves if we have become so focused on supporting personal choices that we're failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership,
I'm not pretending I can give advice to every single person or every single couple for every situation; I'm making the point that we are not going to get to equality in the workforce before we get to equality in the home. Not going to happen.
And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?
Coming from Google, you don't exactly spend a lot of time at Microsoft.
I don't pretend there aren't biological differences, but I don't believe the desire for leadership is hardwired biology, not the desire to win or excel. I believe that it's socialization, that we're socializing our daughters to nurture and our boys to lead.
Framing the issue of work-life balance - as if the two were dramatically opposed - practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?
Don't be afraid to ask the 'dumb' question, everyone else will be relieved you had the guts to ask!