Who Is Meta's New COO Javier Olivan?

Mark Zuckerberg once called Javier Olivan, the incoming Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Meta, as “one of the most influential people in the platform's history.”

However, Javier has remained elusive to media and has intentionally kept a rather low-key public profile, having given only a small handful of interviews over the course of his career. His co-workers though, have describe him as a respected, low-ego, detail-orientated execution machine.

Javier joined the social media company back in 2007 and was intially tasked with the responsibility of growing Facebook’s user base outside of the United States, at a time when it only had 40 million active users. Over the past 14 years, Javier has been largely responsible for pushing Facebook's development into nations including India, Japan, Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil while also monitoring its worldwide movements. Under his ambit, Facebook has gone on to expand to more than 3.6 billion active users across platforms.

Javier was also the key architect in remaking the Facebook application to work in markets with more basic smartphones and weaker internet access. He has also worked with Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta platforms, on Internet.org -- a project aimed at connecting people with the internet in less developed countries. His successful global strategies have since been replicated by Google, Snap and other social media giants.

Over the years, his remit has expanded to include Meta’s ads products, core infrastructure, marketing, analytics, corporate development, and trust and safety efforts. According to reports, he is also the one who pushed Facebook to acquire the instant messaging app WhatsApp for a USD 19 billion acquisition deal.

Now, as he officially takes over from outgoing- COO, Sheryl Sandberg, he will also jurisdict thousands of salespeople and a covert crisis management team called Strategic Response.

"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," mentioned Mark Zuckerberg in a farewell Facebook post to "good friend and partner", Sheryl Sandberg.

Sandberg was very vocal about her role and essentially served as the public voice of Facebook for key periods of its history. “Sheryl has been a remarkable advocate for Meta and has worked with partners and helped to tell our story to external audiences for years,” Javier wrote in his Facebook post announcing his takeover as COO.

“With some exceptions, I don’t anticipate my role will have the same public-facing aspect, given that we have other leaders at Meta who are already responsible for that work,” Javier added.

Born and raised in a tiny mountainside town of Pyrenees region in Spain, Javier is a graduate from the University of Navarra with degrees in electrical and industrial engineering and a master's in business administration from Stanford University. Prior to joining Facebook in 2007, he served as a product manager at Siemens.

Oliver takes over as COO of Meta, at a rather challenging time for the business with the company’s stock price down more than 40 percent and slowing revenue growth, as reported this year.

In an internal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) post with Meta employees, which was seen by The Verge, employees have been instructed by the management on how to respond to questions about Sandberg’s departure.

According to the sighting, employees have been instructed to convey that Sandberg and Zuckerberg have “the upmost confidence in the leadership team they have built,” and that the company is “confident our apps will continue to be the best place for advertisers to reach people and get measurable outcomes long into the future.”