Javier Olivan is a Spanish engineer and Chief Growth Officer at Meta (formerly known as Facebook). In June 2022, he made headlines when it was announced that he would be taking over as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta, succeeding Sheryl Sandberg.
wiki/Biography
Javier was born in 1977 (age 45; from 2022), and he is from Sabiñánigo, Huesca, Spain. He grew up paragliding in the Pyrenees, a mountain range straddling the border between France and Spain. He attended the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, where he continued his studies in Computer Engineering. From 1995 to 2000, he attended the University of Navarre, Spain, where he pursued a master’s degree in automatic engineering and industrial electronics. He was awarded the Premios Nacionales de Fin de Carrera de Educación Universitaria (national end-of-career awards for university teaching). In 2001, he was selected to participate in a one-year EU-Japan Entrepreneurial Center for Industrial Cooperation at Vulcanus in Japan. With the Rafael del Pino Excellence Scholarship, he pursued a Masters in Business Administration at Stanford University, USA from 2005 to 2007. As a recipient of the Henry Crown Scholarship from 2014 to 2016, he completed a two-year program at The Aspen Institute, Washington, District of Columbia. As of 2020, he lives with his family in Palo Alto, California.
Family
Parents and Siblings
Javier Oliván’s father’s name is Florian. His mother, María Pilar, is a retired teacher who taught at IES Biello Aragón, a public institute in Sabiñánigo. He has a younger sister.
Javier Oliván with his parents and sister in Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park
wife and children
He is married and has two children.
Career
Olivan left Spain to pursue his dream of being an engineer. In Europe, the best place to achieve his goal was Germany. He started his career in December 2000 as an R&D engineer at Siemens in the Munich area, Germany. He joined Siemens because he was fascinated by the disruption of mobile communications. Subsequently, he moved to Tokyo, where he worked in the research and development department of the computer services company NTT Data from September 2001 to August 2002. At NTT Data, he worked on the development of software enabling transmission high quality mobile video. In March 2003, he joined Siemens as an Advanced Procurement Engineer. After a year, he was promoted to Product Manager. At Siemens, he led a cross-functional team responsible for the development and market launch of handsets. In May 2006, he became a business development consultant for Fon Wireless, where he worked for three months. From July 2006 to September 2006, he worked as a Summer Associate at Scale VP. On October 17, 2007, he assumed the position of Head of International Growth at Meta (then known as Facebook, Inc). He was promoted to Vice President of Growth in November 2011 and Vice President of Core Products in May 2018. As Vice President of Growth, he was responsible for Facebook’s international efforts, setting strategy and expanding Facebook’s membership base. In January 2022, he became Chief Growth Officer and Vice President of Cross-Meta Products and Infrastructure at Meta. Subsequently, he oversaw user adoption, product analytics, internationalization efforts, UX research, data science and content strategy for the company’s core products such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. With his team, he focused on redesigning Facebook for the Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, translating the Facebook service into over 100 languages and ensuring that Facebook worked on slower, basic smartphones. and slower via “lite” versions of applications. For six years, beginning in December 2012, he was a board member of e-commerce technology company Mercado Libre. In June 2022, after Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s chief operating officer (COO) announced her resignation, it was announced that Javier Olivan would take over.
Facts/Anecdotes
- On February 14, 2020, he joined Endeavor Global’s Board of Directors. Endeavor is a nonprofit, leading the global movement to drive long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring and accelerating the world’s best high-impact entrepreneurs.
- He can speak five different languages, Spanish, English, German, French and Japanese.
- He then worked on Internet.org, an effort launched in 2013 by Facebook and other companies to connect people to Internet services in less developed countries. However, it drew criticism because Facebook was the guardian of the internet for those who signed up there.
- At Stanford, Olivan was creating a Spanish version of Facebook with his friends called Nosuni when Mark Zuckerberg approached him with a chance to join Facebook to lead international growth in 2007.
- He likes paragliding and surfing.
- His friends and family affectionately call him “Javi”.
- He is often seen consuming alcoholic beverages.
Javier Olivan and Mark Zuckerberg drinking champagne
