Sheryl Sandberg, Incoming COO of Facebook and a U2 Fan to Boot!

This morning one of my fav bloggers Kara Swisher shared with us more tidbits on what motivated Sheryl Sandberg to leave her position at Google for COO of Facebook. I have said on earlier posts that movie celebrities are fun to look at – but women tech entrepreneurs and executives are the new celebrity in my book. But what really intrigues me about Sheryl Sandberg is not only her amazing background, but that she RECENTLY returned from maternity leave for her second child!!

Better yet, her brother-in-law (Marc Bodnick of Elevation Partners) was the one pushing for her to try Facebook:

“Sheryl is a tremendous leader who has the chops in both online ads and monetization,” said Bodnick. “All of the problems of these social networking business models are all new, and she natively knows how to deal with them.”

Glad to see families supporting women succeeding in the workplace (and speaking out in public supporting them). I would drool for an interview with Sheryl Sandberg just to hear how she does it all – I imagine she has quite a good infrastructure at home. I heard of one successful executive that prints out recipes each night for her nanny to help get dinner going so when she comes home she can spend some quality time with her kids. I am in denial about cooking dinner until late afternoon – then I scramble to get it going…. Even if I had a nanny I would not know what to tell her to cook!

But on the cool factor, I think reading this juicy tidbit about her really hit the mark:

"According to Facebook board member and major investor Jim Breyer of Accel, for example: “I met her in 2001 at the U2 Concert in San Jose. Bono called her name out in front of the whole crowd thanking her for the work she had done with Larry Summers. We (including Bono) all went out for drinks afterwards. Little did I know that it would be a 23-year-old entrepreneur who would finally allow me to recruit her.”

I need to start going out to concerts again….