Javier Olivan, who replaced Cheryl Sandberg at Meta, has built his career on international expansion

Cheryl Sandberg is one of Silicon Valley's most prominent personalities. Javier Xavi Olivan, who replaced Sandberg as a chief operating officer of Facebook's owner Meta, is an off-campus foreigner.

Sandberg, author of the 2013 best-selling book, Lean: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, has more than 900,000 followers on Instagram. Olivan's 17 Instagram followers are private. As of Wednesday, Olivan hasn't made a public post on his Facebook account since 2018.

"I want to thank Cheryl for everything she has done for Meta and the billions of people worldwide who use our products," Olivan wrote on Facebook after the post coincided with Sandberg and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

On Wednesday, Sandberg said he would end his 14-year tenure with the company to focus on philanthropy. While Olivan will inherit the title of chief operating officer, Zuckerberg said that he will not replace Sandberg in the organizational structure "because he is a superstar who has defined the role of a chief operating officer in his unique way."

Olivan's quiet character does not reflect his influence on the company. He joined C-Suite five months ago as CEO of Growth and vice president of Cross-Meta Products and Infrastructure.

is first position in the company, from 2007 to 2011, was Head of International Growth. According to Meta's first-quarter results, more than 91% of its monthly users are now from outside the United States and Canada.

Born in 1977 in the small Spanish community of Sabinyanigo, Olivan worked throughout Europe and Asia before moving to Silicon Valley. After graduating with a master's degree in electrical engineering and industrial engineering from the Spanish University of Navarra, he worked as a research also development engineer at Siemens in Munich also then at NTT Data in Tokyo. In 2007, he graduated from Stanford University Business School and joined Facebook.

In 2007, fewer than 50 million people used the app when it appeared on Facebook, with "very few from outside the United States." According to the prospectus of Vy Global Growth, a black-check firm that considers Olivan, a board member.