Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group, Meta (Facebook) 
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE


MPW Next Gen 2023 - Meta’s Next Gen Ad-Ecosystem 

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Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group, Meta (Facebook) 
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Welcome back. I hope you all had a chance to reset and make some new connections. If anyone's still finishing up breakfast and your sessions and networking. Come on in. We're ready. Um Now it's back to our main stage conversations after meta's revenue declined for the first time in its 18 year history. Mark Zuckerberg dubbed 2023 the year of Efficiency for Meta in February of this year, Nicola Mendelson was promoted to become one of meta's most senior female executives. She leads its global Business Group, overseeing the company's advertising business and technology while rising the ranks at Facebook over the past decade. She's dealt with extraordinary personal challenges including a little known form of cancer. Now, as she steps into her new role amid a gloomy economic climate for advertisers, she sees opportunities ahead for Meta in A I powered advertising messaging shopping and more. Let's welcome me as head of its global business group, Nicola Mendelson. Hi, Nicola. Good morning. Hi, so happy to be. Hello, everybody. I thank you everyone for coming back in and thank you for joining us, Nicola. Yeah. So you have been at Facebook for a decade. But you spent most of that time as Vice President of Europe, Middle East and Africa. And a few months ago, you were promoted to be head of medics Global Business Group. So can you tell us and explain a little what that job means? Yeah. Very happy to. So it's been a big change because here I am, I'm 51 years old now. And last year I was like, would you like to take on this global role? And I was like, yes, would you like to move to New York? Yes. So I'm having and you probably can tell that my accent means that I come from not New York or America. I come from Britain from London. And so lots of changes. But what it means is that I head up the global business for the company. I head up all the relationships that we have with anybody where we physically see people where we see our partners and also the business engineering teams as well. So very different from running Europe, Middle East and Africa. Yeah, big change. And of course, you're stepping into this more senior role at a difficult time for the company. Meta has laid off more than 20,000 workers amid this year of efficiency. Push as many companies have and looking back over the past year had three straight quarters of declining sales. Is there low morale in the workforce? And as you step into a new role like this. How can you combat that? Ok. So you've now asked me about 300 questions in one, let me feel some of those away. So we're actually just coming off um Q one earnings which were very good earnings, very strong earnings. If you look at um you know, the the size of the community, we now have 3.8 billion people that are coming onto our platforms every single month, we have three billion daily. And so actually our platforms and you know, the people coming on, it's the highest we've ever we've ever seen. Similarly, on the revenue side, we had our highest first quarter that we've ever seen as well. Yes, we are going through some changes as a business mark has dubbed this the year of efficiency. But what is at the heart of this is kind of almost getting us back to our roots, getting us back to being much more agile, much more nimble and being able to create and innovate new products in new and faster ways than we've done before. And we're already seeing that coming to coming to fruition. Yeah. How are you seeing that? Is that agility in progress now? Yeah, very much so. So if you look at the number of products that we're bringing, we're reviewing about 12 new products a month and just last week, we announced a whole load of new products from on the advertising side of the area that obviously that I love and I'm passionate about and this is really with, with A I at the heart of it. So last about August, last August we ran, we launched something called Meta advantage, which is a whole suite of products that has A I at its heart. And it's about really helping advertisers to do more with less, to be able to give stronger, you know, return on the advertising investments to reach people in new and innovative ways to measure in different ways and also to provide new creative options as well. So that's just one of the ways that I'm seeing some of the changes that we're seeing. You know, you mentioned the most recent earnings report which did see growth after a tough year leading up to that. Is that an indication of any strategies you've put into place? So I think we've been very focused on looking at how we can help advertisers get the returns that they want to see. And so, you know, I've been really pleased with the progress that we've made, especially on advantage, you know, the whole advantage suite of products, but also on some of the other areas like reels, which is our, our short form videos. I don't know about you, but I am loving reels. Are you loving reels people in the room? We're seeing a doubling of people sharing reels in the last six months and now two billion shares a day. So it shows you that people are really active and really enjoying kind of commenting, sharing and rearing. And I think about it, even in my, in my personal life, my daughter got engaged recently gay and both of our feeds have now completely changed. It's all about weddings, it's all about bridesmaids and our own individual feeds in our Instagram dms is like literally what flowers, what I've got some people nodding, who've also got daughters getting married or something. You know, it's all completely changed and a lot of that is being surfaced by A I because about 20% of the recommendations that people see is due to A I. Yeah, thank you, Nicola. I'll come to everyone for your questions in a moment. If you have anything, start thinking, I can talk about weddings but a new topic. Yeah, we can save that for after the networking chat. Um You know, you were promoted into this role after the exit of Martin Levine and of course her departure from Meta came following the departure throughout Silicon Valley of kind of a group of senior women, including Sheryl Sandberg. Looking back at Meta, you know, obviously there are a lot of other talented senior women at Meta. You have CFO, Susan Lee and other leaders as well. But does that worry you are there enough women rising in the ranks to take the baton from those who have recently left? So it doesn't worry me. I mean, Cheryl Mary or dear friends and, you know, one of the wonderful things of working at the company as long as I had is, you know, the close friendships that have been formed. But I think the testament to any great leader is the people that they leave behind and giving the runway for growth for those people as well. And so you mentioned Susan, but also Jen who heads up our legal, you know, chief legal officer, if I think about who is our head of product, I think of Maxine. You know, there's so many senior women, Angie who took over my role from me, Mia, so so many of us and so I met her has always been a fantastic place for diversity in all its guises. So I feel very proud of the work that the company does here and the amazing women we have. Yeah, thank you. Do we have any questions for Nicola? It's OK, we can come back. Thank you. Well, yes. Um Well, so some people here may not be familiar with your personal story. In 2016, you were diagnosed with a form of cancer called follicular lymphoma. It's a relatively little known form of blood cancer and it's currently considered to be incurable. You know, since then, you've been an advocate for families affected by this illness. And since then, you've also continued to rise the ranks at Facebook and now meta you know, what has motivated you to press on in your career and your life through such a challenging, personal period. Yeah. So cancer touches us all in different ways. But getting a diagnosis of an incurable cancer, which I did in 2016 is really challenging. And I know you're probably looking at me now thinking, well, she looks all right, what's going on? It's an unusual one in which, whilst I have no evidence of disease and I have had chemotherapy and I've had immunotherapy and I'm grateful to be. Well, it sort of exists on a molecular level, which we can't measure yet because we don't have the equipment to do so. And the typical person with follicular lymphoma will have between six and eight relapses in their lifetime. What motivated me is when you get a moment like that, I think you look at your life and kind of it gives you a moment to evaluate. But actually I think it was a practice that I had always done anyway in my life. And so I've got a great husband, I've got a great family community and I'm blessed and I love the job that I do. So when I actually looked around and gone, what should I, I love what I do. So I want to continue to do the things that I, that I do. And equally because I knew how fortunate I was. I also know how unfortunate many others are, especially many that are going through a diagnosis of follicular lymphoma. And so that's what led me to setting up a foundation in 2019. And our whole sole vision of mission is to, is to find a cure. So I'm determined to do that. Definitely. You know, what would you say? Oh, please, you know, you also founded, co founded a pledge called Working with cancer to help people experiencing health challenges and cancer in the workplace. What would you say to other women who face health challenges but feel they have to hide them at work. Yeah, definitely don't hide it because the pressure and stress of getting a health condition diagnosis is very, very stressful. If you add the stress on to that of not telling anybody in your workplace as well. Well, that's worse, right? Because you've got double stress and you definitely don't want that. So the reason we did the cancer, you know, working with cancer plus with Art Sadoon from publicist who also had had a cancer was a couple of reasons. One, we both realized when we went public with our diagnosis that very few senior leaders talked very openly about it. And so if you have people at the top that are not speaking openly, you create a whole kind of layers that go down where nobody feels comfortable talking about it. So getting it out, they're getting it open. And what we also found was that many companies actually do have good cancer care and treatment for employees. But people because they were nervous about talking about it didn't even go and ask about it. So our pledge is to try and sign up as many companies as possible and especially the large global companies to be able to say no, we want to make our workplaces a place where people can come with their illnesses and that we can provide the support. And I'm really proud of the fact that over 350 of the world's largest companies to date have signed to this pledge, which means millions and millions of people can feel more assured if they get such a diagnosis. So more work to do on this, but we're going to keep agitating. No, thank you. I want to check one more time if anyone has anything for Nicola, ok, we can keep going. You know, what are the things that an employer or boss should do when an employee comes and says that they have a diagnosis like this? So I think it's about um first of all listening, um I had a recent incident where this happened. Um and I can certainly empathize and I think people come to me because they understand that I can empathize on such a thing. But, but even if you can't make the space to listen, empathize as a human, which I know everybody would and then and take the cue from the person, see if they want to talk about it, see how you can be helpful, see if you can be supportive and just kind of give them the cotton wool that they need at that time where people are feeling the most vulnerable to be able to move forwards and, and continue with where they are. And then I was taught a really good phrase which is don't just say to people, how are you ask them, how are you today? And just putting it in the actual timing makes a real difference in terms of how people answer, answer that question. And it feels like it's genuine as opposed to we all just say, how are you? Yeah, fine. That's your answer. Yeah, it's a great tip. Um You know, another way that you really have, you know, brought your whole self to work over your career is that for much of your career, you worked a four day week and chose to take a pay cut and take that time to focus on raising your four Children. You said that, you know, clearly you were able to be extraordinarily successful in your career working those four days. But how did that looking back? How did that choice impact the direction your career has taken? Yeah. Well, it did impact because I was also offered CEO jobs at that time, which I didn't take because I didn't think I could do a good job, both for my family, but also for the, for the job as CEO at that time. And so I actively stopped doing that there was a book I read at the time, which was called On Ramps and Off Ramps, which really spoke to me, which is women and blending the whole how you work and how you don't at different times, what the impacts on your careers. And it's like at some points you're really pushing hard and at other points you might just pull back a little bit. But what I've also learned as I think back on that period is that I, I have four Children. Um, every time I went away and I took maternity leave coming in the UK six months, maternity leave is pretty standard. Now, I took full six months each time I actually grew as a person through that time, it gave me a different perspective. And if you grow as a person, it means that you grow as a leader as well in terms of what you come back on. So I'm proud of the fact that I've promoted many women over the years now on maternity leave because I could see the path that they were on. And I didn't believe in the, you've got to be present for another six months after you come back. If the person is good enough, it doesn't matter if they're on maternity leave or not, then they should, they should go forward. So, yeah, it was the right decisions for me at that time. Yeah. Hi. I think we have one question up here. Please stand up. And introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jill, uh CEO and co-founder of Motherly. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm gonna go back to the health concerns. Uh So I really appreciate the concept of if you see it, you can be it. And I think that leaders high in an organization, especially when it is visible as me, it's very important to be sharing health concerns. And as such, I was diagnosed with MS three months after launching motherly and as a venture backed organization and as a CEO as an actual executive raising venture dollars, I didn't feel and talked to legal counsel that I could share that in that first year or so because these things are often misunderstood. And so my question to you is being an employee is a little different and I have since been very open about what I've done. But would your advice be to others that maybe are in CEO positions that are, you know, the buck stops with them going out to raise venture dollars or working with investors? What would your advice be to them on how to share this in a way that doesn't impact the future of their business? Yeah. So I think it's a really important question and I certainly, I mean, I had, when I went public, I had a couple of ceos that said to me, I've got the same thing as you and I'm not telling anyone and I had people that were younger in career said the same thing which is, and they were in big companies saying I can't tell people I've got this because I think it means that they'll overlook me for promotion. I think that's probably true. I think there are probably companies or investors that probably wouldn't invest. Then the question has to be, are those the sorts of people that you want as your business partners? And the answer is probably no, because actually all of us as humans get things that come in our lives that we can never envisage and can never happen. Yes, you back a founder, but you also back the team and the vision that the founder has as well. So you look for the strength and the depth also. So that's how I would think about it. Now, it's an easy thing to say when, you know, you've had 30 years in industry, a harder thing to kind of get your head around when you're in your twenties and your thirties. But I absolutely believe that those principles remain true. And I think if you believe in yourself, you'll find the right partners and the right money or the right employer.