Who Is Javier Olivan? [Meta’s New COO]
Javier Olivan is a 15-year company veteran who is now the new COO of Meta platforms. Throughout the years, Olivan has played a crucial role in the company’s explosive growth for 15 years. Olivan is the Chief Growth Officer (CGO) of Meta and VP of Cross-Meta Products and Infrastructure.
Before his current position, he has held many roles in Meta throughout his career. Olivan is set to replace Sheryl Sandberg, who is stepping down to focus on philanthropy. Sheryl has been one of the most influential women in tech for several years.
‘You can’t really replace someone like Sheryl; so while I’ll have the same title, this will be a different role.’
Javier Olivan said in a Facebook post.
The change comes as Meta struggles due to rising costs and slow growth.
Javier Olivan
Olivan was born in the small Spanish municipality of Sabiñánigo in 1977 and grew up in the Pyrenees region of northern Spain. He earned his electrical and industrial engineering degrees from the Spain’s University of Navarra. He also completed his master’s in business administration (MBA) from Stanford University.
Before joining Facebook, Olivan worked at Japan’s NTT, Siemens, and various other companies. He joined Facebook in 2007 as the head of international growth. The social media platform had only about 40 million users back then and now has nearly 3.6 billion users across all meta platforms.
Javier Olivan was responsible for overseeing Facebook’s international expansion into countries such as India, Japan, Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil. As CGO, Javier Olivan managed Meta’s apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
He also worked across data science, UX research, internationalization, and content strategy teams. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as the company’s new COO, Olivan will also handle advertising and business products.
However, Olivan is likely to stay out of the limelight. This is quite different from Sheryl, who often represents Facebook to outside audiences.
“This role will be different from what Sheryl has done. It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous.”
Mark Zuckerberg
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