Javier Oliván (born 1977) is a

Spanish-American Spanish Americans ( es, españoles estadounidenses, ''hispanoestadounidenses'', or ''hispanonorteamericanos'') are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from Spain. They are the longest-established European American group in t ...

business executive and the

chief operating officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc., (file no. 3835815) doing business as Meta and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns Facebook, Instag ...

, succeeding

Sheryl Sandberg Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969) is an American business executive, billionaire, and philanthropist. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is als ...

Early life, education and career

Oliván was born in 1977 in

Sabiñánigo Sabiñánigo (''Samianigo'' in Aragonese) is a municipality located in the province of Huesca, Aragón, Spain, capital of the comarca of Alto Gállego. Formerly, the region was called Serrablo, hence the demonym "serrablese". Sabiñánigo is at ...

Huesca Huesca (; an, Uesca) is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and of the comarca of Hoya de Huesca. In 2009 it had a population of 52,059, al ...

, Spain.

Education and early career

He studied electrical and industrial engineering at the

University of Navarra , image = UNAV.svg , latin_name = Universitas Studiorum Navarrensis , established = 17 October 1952 , type = Private, Roman Catholic , chancellor = Fernando Ocáriz Braña , president = María Iraburu Eli ...

Pamplona Pamplona (; eu, Iruña or ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain. It is also the third-largest city in the greater Basque cultural region. Lying at near above ...

. He then joined Siemens as a research and development engineer in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

, Germany, before moving to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan, to work for

NTT Data is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational information technology (IT) service (economics), service and consulting company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a partially-owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). Ja ...

on wireless video technologies. He later worked as product manager at

Siemens Mobile Siemens Mobile was a German mobile phone manufacturer and a division of Siemens AG. Siemens sold Siemens Mobile to the Taiwan-based BenQ in 2005, subsequently becoming BenQ-Siemens and succeeded by Gigaset. The last Siemens-branded mobile phon ...

where he led a team responsible for mobile device development. In 2005, he enrolled in the

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accoun ...

program at Stanford University. As a student, along with several friends, he worked on creating a Spanish-language version of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

, called Nosuni. Though the project was a failure,

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...

, the founder of Facebook, reached out and asked Oliván to work for him. He accepted the offer after graduating in 2007.

Meta Platforms

Oliván joined Facebook (now

) in October 2007 as head of international growth. As a founding member of the growth team, he oversaw the company's international expansioninto new markets and languages. Between 2011 and 2018, he served as vice president of the growth team. He advocated the

Internet.org Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Meta Platforms and six companies (Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and Qualcomm) that plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to l ...

and Facebook Lite initiatives during this period. He advised multiple acquisitions including that of

WhatsApp WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows user ...

and

Onavo Onavo was an Israeli mobile web analytics company owned by Meta Platforms. The company primarily performed its activities via consumer mobile apps, including the virtual private network (VPN) service Onavo Protect, which analysed web traffic sen ...

. In 2018, he took charge of the trust and safety team to tackle

misinformation Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. It differs from disinformation, which is ''deliberately'' deceptive. Rumors are information not attributed to any particular source, and so are unreliable and often unverified, but can turn ou ...

on its platforms. He was the vice president of Central Products between 2018 and 2022, after which he was promoted to chief growth officer. In August 2022, Oliván replaced

after she stepped down 14years into the role. He serves on the board of the non-profit, Endeavor Global. Previously, he was a board member of the e-commerce company

Mercado Libre MercadoLibre, Inc. (literally "free market" in Spanish, and known as Mercado Livre in Portuguese) is an Argentine company headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, incorporated in the United States that operates online marketplaces dedicated to e-co ...

for six years.

Personal life

Oliván lives in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was ...

. He is married and has two children. He met his wife while he was an Erasmus student in Munich.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olivan, Javier Living people 1977 births 21st-century American businesspeople American chief operating officers Facebook employees Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni University of Navarra alumni