Sheryl Sandberg Will Donate $100 Million to Help Women Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg will donate $100 million to charities with a focus on empowering women and helping grieving families, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook, set aside the money — in the form of 880,000 Class A Facebook shares — to her donor-advised fund, the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Fund. Sandberg and Goldberg vowed to donate the majority of their wealth to charity during their lifetime as part of the Giving Pledge, which was started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

According to the Journal, part of the money will go toward funding LeanIn.org, Sandberg’s nonprofit focused on empowering women. The nonprofit stemmed out of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, her 2013 book focused on elevating women’s power in the workplace. The book has been praised as a feminist manifesto and criticized for being tailored to white women in corporate settings.

She’ll also donate to OptionB.org, a separate initiative started by Sandberg in the wake of the death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, last year. OptionB.org will launch around the release of Sandberg’s synonymous book about coping with the death of Goldberg. And she’ll also give to an organization that helped her family deal with the grief of Goldberg’s death. Sandberg has spoken out about trying to find a purpose since her husband’s passing.

“I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe,” Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post after Goldberg’s death. “Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.”

[The Wall Street Journal]