Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is going on the Disney board. Smart move for her. And smart move for Disney CEO Bob Iger and his fellow directors.
Sandberg, 40, is super-smart and supremely connected, having worked her way from Harvard to the World Bank to the U.S. Treasury–where she worked for then-Secretary Larry Summers–to Google , where she was the top-ranked woman exec. She moved to Facebook early last year. And given Facebook’s phenomenal rise, Sandberg has been rocketing up the
Fortune
Most Powerful Women list ever since. In this year’s ranking, she’s No. 22.
The key to her success? She goes for it. In “Don’t Leave Before You Leave”–a terrific Guest Post by Sandberg–she explains that she joined Facebook as its COO when she had just returned to work from having her second child. The risk was high. The timing wasn’t right. But opportunity is fleeting. Jump on it, Sandberg advises. Since moving to Facebook, she has joined the Starbucks board–and soon, Disney, where she’ll be on the board with someone else who knows how to build great companies: Apple’s Steve Jobs.
