Mike Isaac

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Facebook Names COO Sheryl Sandberg to Board of Directors

After four years as the chief operating officer at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg on Monday was appointed to Facebook’s board of directors.

“Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement. “Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board.”

Sandberg is the first woman to be appointed to the now eight-member board, joining CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with financial backers Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Peter Thiel of Founders Fund, among others.

In addition to Facebook, Sandberg also sits on the boards of four other companies, including the Walt Disney Company and Women for Women International.

The appointment comes shortly after the end of Facebook’s eight-year trek toward becoming a public company, with much of that heavy lifting tasked to Sandberg upon her initial hiring. She was hired away from Google in 2008, where she served as the company’s vice president of global online sales and operations and is credited for building out the immensely profitable AdWords system, upon which Google’s massive digital advertising empire was built. Sandberg was charged with turning Facebook — then a fast-growing social start-up with lofty ambitions though little monetization strategy — into a viable, profitable business.

Which, arguably, Sandberg seems to have done. Of the $1.058 billion in revenues Facebook had in Q1, advertising — Sandberg’s specialty — made up $872 million of the total. So after what many would consider a successful tenure at the company thus far, it’s an arguably well justified appointment.

The question now, it seems, is an obvious one: What took so long?

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