Who is Javier Olivan? This is the Spaniard who will direct the operations of Meta

When Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday, June 1, that Sheryl Sandberg would leave her duties as COO (Chief Operating Officer, or director of operations) of Meta, he also moved - figuratively, of course - the heart of the company from Menlo Park, California, to

, in Huesca.

This municipality of just under 10,000 inhabitants is also making a figurative air bridge with Silicon Valley with the appointment of Sandberg's successor, the 44-year-old Spaniard

.

Javi, as he is known in the company, has had a discreet profile outside of it, but also in his accounts on the different Meta social networks.

On Instagram he has a closed profile, while on Facebook, where he began working in 2007, he commented on the change of position after almost four years of silence: he had not made open publications since November 2018. In all that year he made three, which, For comparison, they are the same ones that Mark Zuckerberg did on May 19.

Oliván's first job at Meta - then still called Facebook - was to promote the international growth of the social network, a job he carried out between 2007 and 2011 (he previously worked at NTT and Siemens).

He was responsible, for example, for translating the platform's application into Spanish, the first language in which it was available after English.

Afterward, he continued with what he admits was mostly " behind the

" work leading the infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development and growth teams.

The idea is that this does not change.

"I want to thank Sheryl for everything she has done for Meta and for the billions of people around the world who use our products," the manager began a long message after announcing the change.

"You can't really replace someone like Sheryl," he acknowledged, "so even though we have the same title, it

."

Sandberg, for his part, congratulated his friend "Javi" on his promotion and conveyed his "deep confidence" in his leadership.

"I know you will do great things for Meta and for all the teams that are lucky enough to work with you."

In March, the manager from Huesca met with President Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa after the company announced the construction of the first Meta Lab in the world and a data center in Castilla-La Mancha.

Spain, he anticipated, "is going to be a strategic point."

As COO, Oliván will be in charge of directing the operations of Meta, but it seems that he will choose to do it, in a way,

.

Thus, with "some exceptions," he does not expect his work to be as public-facing as his predecessor's.

Public relations, he explains, is left to "other Meta leaders who are already responsible for that job."

For Mark Zuckerberg, the change represents the "end of an era", although Sandberg will continue on the Board of Directors.

Oliván, he noted, should be a "more traditional" COO and will focus on making the company work "more efficiently and rigorously."

As a curiosity, it is rumored that it was Oliván who introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Serrano ham.

As the founder himself told an event during the Mobile World Congress in 2015, this relationship -that of Zuckeberg and this meal, not that of the manager and the new COO- had a notorious incident when a friend sent him an acorn-fed ham for his birthday and the security team

.

In that same talk, Zuckerberg, who has just replaced his right hand with his, until now, one of his left hands, explained that one of the keys to Facebook's growth was "keeping a team as small as possible." possible".

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