Bits Blog: Sheryl Sandberg Sells $91 Million of Facebook Stock

DealBook: Sheryl Sandberg Takes Her Message to Wall Street

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, is heading to Wall Street with her message about women in the workplace.

Ms. Sandberg, whose book “Lean In” is scheduled to be published on Monday, is visiting three big banks and a consulting firm this week for private events with women to discuss the ideas in her book. The events in New York, which are closed to the general public, will kick off Ms. Sandberg’s book tour on the East Coast.

On Thursday, Ms. Sandberg will visit Goldman Sachs for an afternoon conference, according to three people with knowledge of the event who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. All of the women in Goldman’s offices are invited.

The same day, Ms. Sandberg also has a meeting about her book at Morgan Stanley, according to two people familiar with the matter.

On Friday morning, Ms. Sandberg is headed to JPMorgan Chase for an event with women at the bank and JPMorgan clients, according to Jennifer Zuccarelli, a JPMorgan spokeswoman. That event is hosted by Mary Callahan Erdoes, head of the asset management division; James B. Lee Jr., vice chairman of the bank; and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive.

Also on Friday, Ms. Sandberg has a meeting at Accenture, the consulting firm, according to a person familiar with the matter. (Friday happens to be International Women’s Day.)

As it happens, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were the lead banks handling Facebook’s initial public offering last May, a deal that was widely criticized as the social network’s stock fell in the following months. While investors lately have been warming up to Facebook, the stock is still trading well below its initial offering price.

The events come as Ms. Sandberg prepares to spread her message to a broader audience. The Web site for her book, leanin.org, went live on Wednesday.

Through groups known as “Lean In Circles,” Ms. Sandberg hopes to start a national discussion about gender and encourage women to try certain strategies for professional success, The New York Times’s Jodi Kantor reported.

Wall Street, of course, is notorious for being a male-dominated culture. While women have made some progress in recent decades, they still make up a small percentage of the top positions.

“By talking openly about the challenges that we all face in the workplace and at home, we can work towards solutions together,” Ms. Sandberg says in a post on the book’s Web site.

After the private meetings this week, Ms. Sandberg has some public events on her calendar.

On Tuesday, she’s visiting the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in Manhattan for an event with Chelsea Clinton. On March 14, she heads to the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington.

Ms. Sandberg is also speaking at Harvard Business School on April 5 for an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of women being admitted to the M.B.A. program. Later that day, she is expected scheduled to speak at Colgate University‘s entrepreneur weekend.

Sheryl Sandberg, ‘Lean In’ Author, Hopes to Spur Movement

Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist who helped start a revolution 50 years ago, Ms. Sandberg wanted to do far more than sell books.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, is trying to create her own version of consciousness-raising groups.

Fifty years after "The Feminine Mystique" was first published, women still face professional and lifestyle issues. What should the feminist movement focus on next and why?

Ms. Sandberg, whose ideas about working women have prompted both enthusiasm and criticism, is attempting nothing less than a Friedan-like feat: a national discussion of a gender-problem-that-has-no-name, this time in the workplace, and a movement to address it.

When her book is published on March 11, accompanied by a carefully orchestrated media campaign, she hopes to create her own version of the consciousness-raising groups of yore: “Lean In Circles,” as she calls them, in which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success. (First assignment: a video on how to command more authority at work by changing how they speak and even sit.)

“I always thought I would run a social movement,” Ms. Sandberg, 43, said in an interview for “Makers,” a new documentary on feminist history.

And yet no one knows whether women will show up for Ms. Sandberg’s revolution, a top-down affair propelled by a fortune worth hundreds of millions on paper, or whether the social media executive can form a women’s network of her own. Only a single test “Lean In Circle” exists. With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.

Even her advisers acknowledge the awkwardness of a woman with double Harvard degrees, dual stock riches (from Facebook and Google, where she also worked), a 9,000-square-foot house and a small army of household help urging less fortunate women to look inward and work harder. Will more earthbound women, struggling with cash flow and child care, embrace the advice of a Silicon Valley executive whose book acknowledgments include thanks to her wealth adviser and Oprah Winfrey?

“I don’t think anyone has ever tried to do this from anywhere even close to her perch,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College, who invited Ms. Sandberg to deliver a May 2011 commencement address about gender in the workplace that caught fire online. (Ms. Sandberg, who will grant her first book interview to the CBS program “60 Minutes,” declined to comment for this article.)

Despite decades of efforts, and some visible exceptions, the number of top women leaders in many fields remains stubbornly low: for example, 21 of the current Fortune 500 chief executives are women. In her book, to be published by Knopf, Ms. Sandberg argues that is because women face invisible, even subconscious, barriers in the workplace, and not just from bosses. In her view, women are also sabotaging themselves. “We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” she writes, and the result is that “men still run the world.”

Ms. Sandberg wants to take women through a collective self-awareness exercise. In her book, she urges them to absorb the social science showing they are judged more harshly and paid less than men; resist slowing down in mere anticipation of having children; insist that their husbands split housework equally; draft short- and long-term career plans; and join a “Lean In Circle,” which is half business school and half book club.

The project has the feel of a social experiment: what if women at major corporations could review research on how to overcome gender barriers, along with instruction on skills like negotiation and communication? Will working women, already stretched thin, attend nighttime video lectures on “Unconditional Responsibility” and “Using Stories Powerfully”? The instructions for the gatherings, provided to The New York Times by an outside adviser to the project, are precise, down to membership requirements (participants can miss no more than two monthly meetings per year) and the format (15-minute check-in, 3 minutes each for personal updates, a 90-minute presentation, then discussion).

Sheryl Crow — I Got Tee Pee for My HUGE Estate

Sheryl Crow
I Got Tee Pee
For My HUGE Estate

 
Sheryl Crow is selling her massive Hollywood Hills estate -- complete with THREE houses! Actually, FOUR ... 'cause you gotta count the sweet tee pee. Peace pipe, anyone?

Check out TMZ on TV -- click here to see your local listings!

Media Decoder Blog: Book by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg Will Be Published in March

Knopf has set a publication date of March 2013 for a new book by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, that was written “to encourage women to aspire to and pursue leadership roles,” the publisher said on Thursday. “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” reflects on Ms. Sandberg’s own personal and professional experiences and discusses the latest research on equality in the workplace. Knopf is planning to print 400,000 copies in hardcover.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Sandberg said that the book grew out of a TED talk that she gave two years ago; a video of the talk has been viewed millions of times online and has prompted a flood of letters to Ms. Sandberg on gender issues in the workplace.

“Real equality means that women can do anything,” she said on Thursday. “Real equality means that men have to be more fully engaged at home. The book isn’t just written for women, it’s written for men.” Ms. Sandberg first discussed the book in August.