What ever happened to Sheryl Sandberg?
When Adam Grant asks his students at Wharton to name a leader they admire, Sheryl Sandberg’s name always comes up. “There’s usually not even another woman mentioned,” says Grant, a professor and organizational psychologist who co-authored the book Option B with Sandberg in 2017.
That’s a testament to the alarming dearth of women running big companies these days—but also to Sandberg’s unique position in the public consciousness as the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the 2013 corporate-feminist manifesto Lean In.
For more than a decade, Sandberg has been the most powerful woman in Silicon Valley, and perhaps in all of business. Lean In sold more than 4 million copies, launched a nonprofit of the same name, and inspired more than 50,000 women to join Lean In circles of their own to discuss the issues they face at work. At various points, her name has been tossed around as a possible US Treasury secretary pick, or even a potential US presidential candidate.
But for the past few years, as Facebook has been rocked by a string of scandals and crises, Sandberg’s reputation has taken a hit, and she’s been less frequently in the spotlight. It’s a noticeable shift from the early to mid-2010s, during which she was seemingly ubiquitous, cast in the media as a tough but sympathetic leader challenging Silicon Valley’s ingrained sexism and seeming lack of humanity.
