Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has been named one of the two new members of the board of SurveyMonkey, the online survey company ran by her late husband David Goldberg up until two months ago when he died.
SurveyMonkey announced the appointment of Sandberg in a statement, citing her "deep operational expertise" and "valuable perspective" as assets to the SurveyMonkey team.
"Ever since Dave joined SurveyMonkey six years ago, I watched him and his team execute on their mission to help people make better decisions," Sandberg said in a statement. "I'm looking forward to working with the board and this amazing team and help to realize Dave's vision of building a lasting company that will impact the way we all do business for years to come."
In May, Goldberg was exercising on a treadmill while on vacation in Punta Mita, Mexico with Sandberg when he fell and hit his head on the machine, leading to a huge loss of blood that eventually caused his death. Although Sandberg is the more famous half of the husband-and-wife duo, Goldberg was known throughout the technology industry as one of the biggest startup advocates, and his death rocked the inner circles of Silicon Valley.
In her book Lean In, Sandberg describes her partnership with Goldberg as key to her successful career in an industry largely dominated by males. Sandberg recounts how she and her husband divided the household chores, with Goldberg being willing to pick up some of his wife's slack when necessary. She advises women that the best way to succeed in their careers is to pick a partner who will be vested in her success.
Goldberg was the prime example of a partner who was 100 percent supportive of his partner's success. Even as Mr. Sandberg was pushing his wife to go after what she wanted, he was also busy running various companies ranging from his own music startup Launch, which he later sold to Yahoo, to SurveyMonkey, which he joined in 2009.
From there, Goldberg grew SurveyMonkey from a mere 14 employees to 500. The site is now the most popular online survey service on the Internet, with 473,000 surveys answered every month. SurveyMonkey now has 20 million users and is valued at $2 billion.
The firm also announced the addition of David Ebersman, CEO of Lyra Health and former chief financial officer of Facebook who led the social network into its initial public offering in 2012, to the board.
Zander Lurie, current temporary executive chairman of SurveyMonkey and executive vice president at GoPro, has been permanently named chairman of SurveyMonkey.
