The life of Meta’s new COO: Javier Olivan

Meta’s next chief operating officer (COO) will be Javier Olivan (formerly Facebook). 

The news came after Sheryl Sandberg announced her resignation as COO after 14 years in the position. 

“I want to thank Sheryl for everything she’s done for Meta and the billions of people across the world who use our products,” Olivan said on Facebook following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement post.

Olivan’s early life and career at Meta 

After Zuckerberg, Sandberg was the second-in-command. She was in charge of pushing improvements in Facebook and its products, including Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

She plans to leave the company in the fall of this year to focus on her foundation and philanthropic work.

She will, however, remain a member of Meta’s board of directors. We take a look back at Olivan’s early life and career at Meta as he takes on new responsibilities as COO.

The start of the journey

Olivan studied electrical and industrial engineering at the University of Navarra, and is originally from the Pyrenees highlands in Spain. He relocated to the United States to obtain an MBA at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

He talks about his childhood adventure activities in the Pyrenees mountains in an interview with the Alumni Society. Surprisingly, he still keeps a surfboard sitting against the wall in his office, according to sources.

He worked for a number of organizations before joining Facebook, including Siemens, NTT Data, and others. 

He was an early user of Facebook when he arrived at Stanford in 2005, back when the site needed a college email address to open an account. 

Olivan had planned to establish a Spanish version of Facebook at the time, but when Zuckerberg learned about it, he quickly called out and invited him to lead international expansion in 2007.

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Life at Facebook

He joined Facebook in 2007 before Sheryl Sandberg became the official COO. It’s worth noting that at the time, the corporation only had 40 million users, most of them from the United States. Olivan was eager to expand Facebook’s user base.

According to The Verge, the business’s growth team rapidly became a dominant operation, allowing Olivan to gain control within the corporation. 

In 2013, Olivan worked on Internet.org, a project created by Facebook and other organizations to link people in developing nations to internet services.

By 2015, Internet.org has connected 7 million individuals and provided free internet to over 500 million people.

Olivan’s previous title was chief growth officer, which he held before being promoted to COO. More authority entails more responsibility. It will be interesting to observe how Meta develops under his guidance.

Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.

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