sheryl sandberg recently announced that she will step down as director of operations or Director of Operations, of Meta (formerly Facebook). Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media giant, announced that Javier Olivan will take over from Sandberg once she steps down from her.
Compared to Sandberg, Olivan has kept a relatively low profile, especially when it comes to dealing with the public and the media, and plans to continue to do so. Javier Olivan is a Meta veteran and was responsible for the global expansion of the platform. The Spanish native oversaw the growth of the social media platform in Latin America and much of Asia over a 15-year period. Sandberg, who was at Facebook for just over 14 years, had to face a lot of criticism not only from the US authorities and the public for Facebook’s conduct. on hate speech and disinformationand how they used user data to manipulate large sectors of society, but also to investors and stakeholders for the slowdown in the growth of Meta. Unfortunately for her, the last few years have turned out to be some of the most tumultuous times for Meta. Olivan will be tasked with playing a crucial role in the company’s turnaround, which comes at a time when it is struggling with slowing growth, rising costs and public mistrust. Hailing from the Pyrenees region of northern Spain, Olivan graduated from the University of Navarra with a degree in electrical and industrial engineering. He did his MBA from Stanford University. Before joining Facebook in 2007, Olivan worked for Japan’s NTT Data and Siemens. When he joined Facebook in 2007 as the platform’s Head of International Growth, the platform had just over 40 million active users. Over the next decade, he ensured the platform expanded to have more than 3.6 billion active users.
He later worked at Internet.org, a Facebook and other companies launched in 2013 to connect people to internet services in underdeveloped and developing countries. Olivan also lobbied for Facebook to buy the WhatsApp mobile messaging app. Before the $19 billion acquisition in 2014, Olivan told Facebook management that WhatsApp was used more actively than Facebook, noting that “literally everyone” in Spain used it. Aside from Facebook, the platform, Olivan also oversees products and services on WhatsApp and Instagram. as Director of Growth for Meta, a position he assumed in January of this year. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Infrastructure and Core and Cross-Meta Products and oversaw product and feature development for WhatsApp and Instagram. In the early 2010s, Olivan was instrumental in driving the development of Facebook in countries outside of Europe and North America. He proved to be vital for the platform to enter markets and countries such as India, Japan, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia. “This role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role that Javi (Javier Olan) will focus on internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous,” he said. Zuckerberg in a statement. Via: FirstPost
