A woman who formerly worked for Meta’s ex-operations chief Sheryl Sandberg claims she was tasked with drafting “talking points” for her boss while she was in labor with her first child.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of an explosive memoir about her six-year tenure at the company that was then known as Facebook, wrote a scathing assessment of Sandberg, including a claim that her then-boss invited her to “come to bed” while clad in pajamas during a flight on a private jet.
Wynn-Williams, who was director of public policy at Facebook, recalled giving birth to her firstborn in January 2014 in her new book titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
“I get a message,” she wrote. “Sheryl’s about to unexpectedly go into a meeting with the president of Brazil at Davos and she wants talking points.”
Wynn-Williams torched Sandberg’s hard-driving work ethic in light of her bestselling 2013 book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which encourages women to be more ambitious in their career while asserting themselves in corporate boardrooms.
“I’m in the delivery room, my feet in stirrups, in labor,” Wynn-Williams wrote. “I put down my phone and reach for my laptop. I start drafting.”
Her husband, Tom, who was nearby, was incredulous, according to the book.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Just getting Sheryl some talking points,” Wynn-Williams replied to her husband, according to the memoir.
“Sarah, no,” her husband told her.
But Wynn-Williams persisted.
“I continue typing,” she wrote. That’s when her husband “appeals to my doctor, a person he knows I deeply respect…”
But Wynn-Williams insists on getting the job done despite being “between contractions,” telling her husband and the doctor: “Two more minutes.”
According to Wynn-Williams, the doctor “reaches over and gently closes my laptop.”
“She says, ‘It’s a very special thing to give birth to your first child. I don’t think you should be working through it. Sheryl will understand.’”
“She won’t,” Wynn-Williams responded. “Please let me push Send.”
That’s when the doctor responded: “You should be pushing. But not Send.”
Wynn-Williams wrote that “[d]espite the disapproval in the room,” she “quickly reopen[ed] the laptop.”
“I send the email. I know how this looks, and I can’t defend it.”
Wynn-Williams wrote that she was “ashamed” though she “can’t blame this entirely on Facebook.”
“I’ve been this kind of driven person my whole life. I don’t like to let people down. But it’s also true that at Facebook, I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” she wrote.
The Post has sought comment from Sandberg and Facebook’s parent company, Meta.
Wynn-Williams also alleged in the book that Sandberg spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and another subordinate, her personal assistant “Sadie,” and that she grew irritated when Wynn-Williams declined the former COO’s invitation to “come to bed” while on a private jet flight.
According to Wynn-Williams, Sandberg and Sadie would take turns sleeping in each other’s laps and stroking each other’s hair during road trips.
Sandberg has thus far declined to comment on the claims.
Wynn-Williams has also accused another Meta executive, Joel Kaplan, of sexually harassing her. Meta said it conducted a lengthy internal investigation into the claims.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post.
“Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment.”
“Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.”
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