Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook

What She Saw at The Revolution

Nobody close to Sheryl Sandberg, now the COO of Facebook, is surprised to find her running the company that turned friend into a verb. In her case, it’s an action verb. Sheryl remembers birthdays. She texts people seconds before big presentations (“Smile. Talk into the mic. Good luck”). She has a system for answering all her E-mail. Her husband, Dave Goldberg, says so many people stay overnight at their house on such a constant basis that they practically run a small hotel. “There’s no such thing as an intimate dinner for six,” he says. “She’s like, ‘I really think our dining room table is too small.’ ” (It seats fourteen.)

With Sandberg at the table, big gatherings run smoothly—which partly explains how, back in the Clinton administration, when she was 29 and fresh from Harvard Business School and the World Bank, she landed the chief-of-staff job in the Treasury Department. An hour after work on a Thursday evening, she can, without a hitch, welcome 40 women into her home for dinner; just before the first guests arrive, she tucks her two pre-schoolers into bed, disappears for ten minutes, then emerges to answer the door in a sleeveless Calvin Klein dress and black Prada ankle boots.