Javier Olivan

Current role at Meta

Javier Olivan is chief operating officer of Meta. His leadership page says he runs the company's business, operations and partnerships teams along with the central product and functional teams that support its apps and wearables, drives corporate growth, and oversees Meta's advertising and business products. He has spent close to two decades at the company.^[1]

Wikipedia records that he has been COO since 2022, when he replaced Sheryl Sandberg after her 14 years in the post, and that a reorganization in January 2025 gave him oversight of business operations for Reality Labs, Meta's hardware and metaverse unit.^[2]

Education and early career

Olivan was born in Sabiñánigo in Huesca, Spain. He studied electrical and industrial engineering at Tecnun, the University of Navarra's engineering school in Pamplona, and holds master's degrees in both fields from Navarra. He then worked as an R&D engineer at Siemens in Munich, at NTT Data in Tokyo on wireless video, and as a product manager at Siemens Mobile, where Meta's bio says he ran a cross-functional team that developed and launched handsets worldwide.^[1][2]

He enrolled in Stanford's MBA program in 2005 and graduated in 2007. Wikipedia says that as a student he co-built Nosuni, a Spanish-language Facebook clone that did not succeed, before Mark Zuckerberg recruited him.^[2][1]

Building the growth team

Olivan joined Facebook in October 2007 as head of international growth, reporting to Chamath Palihapitiya, as a founding member of the growth team. From 2011 to 2018 he was vice president of growth, a period in which, according to Wikipedia, he promoted Internet.org and Facebook Lite and advised on the WhatsApp and Onavo acquisitions.^[2]

Meta's bio describes his time as chief growth officer as covering international expansion, major acquisitions including WhatsApp, and growth, integrity, ads and commerce across its platforms.^[1]

Central products and trust work

In 2018 Olivan took charge of Facebook's trust and safety team with a focus on misinformation, according to Wikipedia. He then served as vice president of central products before being promoted to chief growth officer, giving him responsibility for the systems that sit under every app rather than for a single product.^[2]

Becoming COO

In 2022 Olivan succeeded Sandberg. Meta's own description of the post centers on the business, operations and partnerships teams, with a focus on running the company's commercial operations.^[1][2]

Boards and other roles

Wikipedia lists him as a board member of Endeavor Global, a former board member of Mercado Libre for six years, a former director of the SPAC Vy Global Growth, and a 2014 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Meta's bio also lists his Endeavor board seat.^[2][1]

Why he matters

Olivan is among the longest-serving senior leaders at Meta and one of the few who ran the growth function that scaled Facebook internationally. As COO he now oversees Meta's advertising and business products as well as the central teams behind its apps and wearables, a remit that now includes business operations for Reality Labs.^[1][2]

On The Executive List

Javier Olivan is ranked No. 46 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Operating Officers discipline. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.