Sheryl Sandberg is without doubt one of the most seen figures in Silicon Valley. Javier “Javi” Olivan, who’s succeeding Sandberg as working chief at Fb proprietor Meta, is a digital unknown off campus.

Sandberg, the creator of the best-selling 2013 e book “Lean In: Girls, Work, and the Will to Lead,” has over 900,000 Instagram followers. Olivan’s Instagram, with 17 followers, is non-public. Till Wednesday, Olivan hadn’t printed a public publish to his Fb profile since 2018.

“I wish to thank Sheryl for every part she’s finished for Meta and for the billions of individuals world wide who use our merchandise,” Olivan wrote on Fb after the announcement, coinciding with posts from Sandberg and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

On Wednesday, Sandberg stated she’s ending her 14-year-run on the firm so she will be able to give attention to philanthropy. Zuckerberg stated that whereas Olivan will assume the COO title, he will not substitute Sandberg within the organizational construction “since she’s a celebrity who outlined the COO function in her personal distinctive method.”

Olivan’s quiet public persona would not replicate his affect on the firm. He is amongst a handful of executives reporting to Zuckerberg, climbing close to the highest of the latter in his virtually 15-year stint on the social-media firm. He joined the C-suite 5 months in the past, assuming the title of chief development officer, and can be vp of cross-Meta merchandise and infrastructure.

If Sandberg led the cost in constructing Fb’s promoting enterprise, which nonetheless represents 97% of Meta’s whole income, Olivan deserves credit score for its world growth. His first job on the firm, from 2007 to 2011, was head of worldwide development.

Over 91% of month-to-month customers now come from exterior the U.S. and Canada, based on Meta’s first quarter results.

Born within the small Spanish municipality of Sabiñánigo in 1977, Olivan labored in Europe and Asia earlier than making his technique to Silicon Valley. After receiving a grasp’s diploma in electrical and industrial engineering from Spain’s College of Navarra, he labored as a analysis and improvement engineer at Siemens in Munich after which at NTT Information in Tokyo. In 2007, he graduated from Stanford College’s enterprise faculty and joined Fb.

When he arrived at Fb in 2007, fewer than 50 million individuals had been utilizing the app, with “a really small portion coming from customers exterior the U.S.” That is based on the prospectus for Vy World Progress, a black-check firm that counts Olivan as a board member.

Along with Vy World, Olivan spent six years on the board of Latin American e-commerce firm MercadoLibre, and he invested in geospatial imaging firm Satellogic forward of the SPAC deal it accomplished in January.

However his profession has been centered at Fb. In 2008, Olivan accompanied Zuckerberg for an look on the College of Navarra. He later labored on Web.org, an effort Fb and different corporations launched in 2013 to attach individuals to web companies in much less developed international locations.

By 2015, the Web.org effort had introduced free web companies to over 500 million individuals and linked 7 million who weren’t beforehand on-line. In an e-mail interview with Americas Quarterly, Olivan, then vp of development at Fb, stated that whereas the corporate had already turn out to be a fixture throughout Latin America, it nonetheless had ample room to develop within the area.

“Extroverted and social by nature, Latin People have embraced our website to the purpose that in lots of locations, Fb is synonymous with the web,” Olivan wrote.

Spanish was Fb’s first non-English language, and it was the primary mission Olivan labored on, he stated in an interview earlier this yr.

Olivan has continued serving the corporate abroad. As lately as March, he represented Meta on a state go to with Pedro Sánchez, the prime minster of Spain.

Olivan additionally pushed for Fb to purchase cellular messaging app WhatsApp. Earlier than the $19 billion acquisition in 2014, Olivan instructed Fb administration that WhatsApp was extra actively used than Fb, noting that “actually everybody” in Spain used it, based on a 2020 report from Democratic staffers on a U.S. Home subcommittee on antitrust. Zuckerberg stated that he agreed with Olivan’s evaluation that WhatsApp might expose new customers to Fb.

Even with the promotion, Olivan might stay comparatively beneath the radar. Sandberg, in her function as No. 2, routinely up to date buyers on quarterly earnings calls. A Meta spokesperson declined to touch upon whether or not Olivan would comply with swimsuit.

Zuckerberg wrote in his Fb publish that Olivan is taking over built-in advertisements and enterprise merchandise whereas persevering with to run infrastructure, integrity, analytics, advertising and marketing, company improvement and development.

“With some exceptions, I do not anticipate my function can have the identical public-facing side, provided that we’ve got different leaders at Meta who’re already answerable for that work,” Olivan wrote in his Fb publish.

WATCH: Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg leaving company in the fall