Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Honey Pot gets acquired for $380 million, Japan Airlines announced Mitsuko Tottori as the airline’s first female president, and Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from Meta’s board. Have a thoughtful Thursday.
– An empty seat. In the year-and-a-half since Sheryl Sandberg announced her departure as COO of tech giant Meta, she has spent more time on her work with LeanIn.org, become a co-owner of a new Bay Area women’s soccer team, and started advocating for Israeli victims of sexual violence in the Hamas attack. All the while, she has remained a member of Meta’s board of directors.
Yesterday, Sandberg announced that she will step down from Meta’s board this year. “With a heart filled with gratitude and a mind filled with memories, I let the Meta board know that I will not stand for reelection this May,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
She says she stayed on as a board member after her Aug. 1, 2022 exit as COO and Sept. 30, 2022 departure as a Meta employee “to help ensure a successful transition.” Now, she says, executives and their teams “have proven beyond a doubt that the Meta business is strong and well-positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away.” She name-checked her COO successor Javi Olivan, as well as Meta ads business leaders Justin Osofsky and Nicola Mendelsohn, for their work steering the business. On Meta’s board, she leaves behind women directors including former PayPal exec Peggy Alford, Estée Lauder CFO Tracey Travis, and former McKinsey senior partner and U.S. Treasury CFO and COO Nancy Killefer. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Sandberg for the “extraordinary contributions [she has] made to our company and community over the years.”
While Sandberg said she will continue to serve Meta as an adviser, her exit from the company’s board brings to an end her last significant professional role at the company she joined in 2008, building a business model that led to its $114 billion in revenue today. She spent 14 and a half years as the company’s COO and has sat on the board for 12, she noted in her announcement.
While Sandberg has long advocated for women’s equality in the workplace, in recent months she stepped up her public-facing advocacy work. Her stand this fall against sexual violence in Hamas’s attack on Israel was a particularly bold—and more political than usual—stance for the former business executive. At an event hosted by Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in early December, I asked Sandberg if she would have been able to take up such a cause if she were still an executive at Meta. She declined to comment at the time.
With her actions no longer tied to Meta, it will be intriguing to see what she does next.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- A share of the honey. Compass Diversified Holdings will acquire the Honey Pot, the feminine care brand started by CEO Beatrice Dixon, for $380 million. The Honey Pot’s plant-based products brought in over $100 million in sales last year, and Dixon said she looks forward to further growth. Wall Street Journal
- Come fly with she. Japan Airlines announced that Mitsuko Tottori will become its first female president more than 35 years after joining the airline as a flight attendant. After the announcement, Tottori told news reporters that she hopes the appointment will inspire women in Japan's heavily male-dominated business world. Reuters
- Baby bust. The number of babies born in China fell for the seventh year in a row in 2023, according to government statistics, despite the country’s persistent efforts to encourage women to have children. The ruling Communist Party rolled out tax credits, cash bonuses, and other incentives for giving birth last year, but only 9.02 million babies were born compared to 11.1 million deaths. New York Times
- An AI believer. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat told audiences at the World Economic Forum in Davos that her own experience with breast cancer has made her optimistic about AI’s potential in health care. Porat's oncologist told her AI is the only technology that will democratize health care. Bloomberg
- Crime fighters. Under CEO Adena Friedman, Nasdaq has built up a software business that identifies and prevents financial crime. In a new report, the stock exchange finds that $3 trillion in illicit funds were part of the global financial system in 2023. Yahoo Finance
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Gregg Renfrew is returning to Beautycounter, the brand she founded, as CEO a year after leaving the role following a sale to Carlyle.
ON MY RADAR
Art by women is soaring in value as buyers seek to rewrite history Semafor
How a 27-year-old codebreaker busted the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity WIRED
Male-run Blackbird-backed startup pivots to NYC ‘girl’s club’ Australian Financial Review
PARTING WORDS
"I didn’t think I was allowed to be a director. And that’s not true anymore."
— Jodie Foster on what's changed since she was a young actor
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