Javier Olivan is a Spanish engineer who became the chief operating officer (COO) of Meta (formerly Facebook) in August 2022.
Wiki/Biography
Javier was born in 1977 (45 years old; as of 2022) and comes from Sabinanigo, in the province of Huesca, near the Pyrenees, a mountain range that straddles the border between France and Spain. He grew up paragliding in the Pyrenees. Olivan studied computer engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain. He studied for a Master’s degree in Automation Engineering and Industrial Electronics at the University of Navarra, Spain (1995-2000), where he received the Premios Nacionales de Fin de Carrera de Educación Universitaria (National End of Career Award for University Education). In 2001, he was selected by the EU-Japan Industrial Cooperation Center to participate in the Japanese Vulcanus project. He received the Rafael del Pino Excellence Scholarship to pursue an MBA at Stanford University (2005-2007). As a Henry Crown Fellow, he participated in a two-year program at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., from 2014 to 2016. As of 2020, he lives in Palo Alto, California with his family.
family
Parents and siblings
Javier Oliván’s father’s name is Florian. His mother, María Pilar, is a retired teacher at IES Biello Aragón, a public college in Sabinanigo. He has a sister.
Javier Oliván with his parents and sister in Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park
wife and children
He is married and has two children.
Profession
Javier Olivan started his career at Siemens AG in the Munich area of Germany in December 2000 as a R&D Engineer. From September 2001 to August 2002, he worked in research and development at NTT Data, an IT service provider. In Tokyo, his work at NTT Data focused on developing software to support high-quality mobile video transmission. In March 2003, he rejoined Siemens as Senior Procurement Engineer. In April 2004, he was promoted to Siemens Mobility Product Manager, leading a cross-functional team responsible for the development and market launch of mobile phone devices. From May 2006 to July 2006, he served as a business development consultant at Fon Wireless. For the next 3 months, he served as a summer assistant to Scale VP. On October 17, 2007, he joined Meta (then known as Facebook, Inc) as head of international development. In November 2011, he became Meta’s Vice President of Growth. After serving as vice president of central products from May 2018 to January 2022, he became chief growth officer and vice president of cross-meta products and infrastructure. At Meta, he oversees user adoption, product analytics, internationalization efforts, data science, user experience research and content strategy for the company’s core products such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp. He worked on translating Facebook services into more than 100 languages, pioneered the growth team’s ideas, built “lite” versions of Facebook and Messenger for low-bandwidth environments, and launched Internet.org to spread Internet connectivity around the world. From December 2012 to August 2019, he served on the board of directors of e-commerce technology company Mercado Libre. In June 2022, it was announced that Javier Olivan would succeed Sheryl Sandberg as Meta’s chief operating officer (COO).
Facts/Trivia
- He serves on the board of directors of Endeavor, a non-profit organization that supports the global entrepreneurial ecosystem.
- He speaks Spanish, English, German, French and Japanese.
- Ollivan played a crucial role when Facebook promoted internet.org, a free service the organization promoted with a number of partners to give those who couldn’t afford the Internet a taste of the Internet. However, the service has been criticized for making Facebook an internet gatekeeper for registered users.
- In 2007, Olivan was studying for a master’s degree at Stanford University and determined to build a Spanish version of Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg approached him about the opportunity to join Facebook and lead the company’s international growth arm.
- An avid angel investor, Olivan has invested in a range of services including brand amplifier startup Yaba, payments API startup Reloadly and coaching tool GoPeer.
- His nickname is “Harvey”.
- He occasionally drinks alcoholic beverages.
Javier Olivier and Mark Zuckerberg drink champagne
- He loves water surfing.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education