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"She\u2019s been described as Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s\u00A0most valuable friend, the key cog in the vast machinery of Facebook that makes everything else work. The one person without whom Facebook would have never gotten this close to an IPO, a woman who helped propel Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s social experiment into a juggernaut.\r\n\r\nForget the question of why there are\u00A0no women on Facebook\u2019s board, how could Sheryl Sandberg not be?\r\n\r\nGobsmacked as I am at her omission, and recognizing that this may have been a severe pain point (see conversation recounted in the\u00A0New Yorker\u00A0article), there is a piece of me that is grateful that this position of influence has, thus far, been denied Ms. Sandberg. Because I have to wonder if her 2010 TEDWomen talk -- a talk that has rallied this current generation of career women to step up and \u201Cown their success\u201D \u2013 would have been given if Ms. Sandberg already had a seat at the table.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSylvia Ann Hewlett\u00A0suggests that Ms. Sandberg's pedal-to-the-metal rhetoric underestimates what a slog success would be without the bevy of powerful mentors (eg, Larry Summers) and credentials (eg, Harvard) that have benefited her career. Even so, if I were in her shoes, I would question why I wasn\u2019t on the board. Did she need to be smarter, credentialed, or prettier? Or had she finally come face-to-face with bias? Either way, if Ms. Sandberg had already been admitted to the inner sanctum, could she have given a speech encouraging aspiring women everywhere to reach with all their might for the brass rings that have long been handed to male executives? Would her impassioned speech have had as much power and resonance if it didn\u2019t come from her own place of sorrow at being denied a very significant seat?\r\n\r\nFrom my experience, out of the deepest sorrow emerges our greatest strength and contribution.\r\n\r\nTake Clayton Christensen for example, the\u00A0NY Times\u00A0bestselling author of The Innovator\u2019s Dilemma: I wonder if his speech (now a book) \u201CHow Will You Measure Your Life?,\u201D would have the same poignancy or even urgency, had he not suffered the\u00A0blow of a heart attack, late-stage cancer, and a stroke?\r\n\r\nWhat of\u00A0Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics, a woman of tremendous wealth and privilege? Would she have started the Special Olympics had she not witnessed her mentally retarded sister Rosemary treated with what Shriver described as \u201Cunbearable rejection\u201D? Or if she hadn\u2019t personally \u201Cexperienced the sting of rejection as a woman who was told that the real power was not for her.\u201D Meanwhile\u00A0John Kanzius\u00A0sought to find a cure for cancer, not just because he was denied health, but because of the pain he saw in the eyes of children being denied theirs.\r\n\r\nReflecting on my own journey of writing\u00A0Dare, Dream, Do, some of the richest narrative, the most deeply felt moments are those that have come from personal sorrow and struggles, my own and others. This book was born not from prolonged days of splendor in the sunshine but rather through the struggle of a blustery, sleet-filled winter.\u00A0As we wrestle with the losses in our lives, the disappointments and moments of cosmic unfairness, we often make our greatest contribution.\r\n\r\nSome may call this matter of a board seat frivolous. I would argue empathy does not discriminate.\u00A0 Others may say that compared with the heroic feats of beating back cancer, Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s rallying cry for women is rather pedestrian. However, if we\u00A0concur with the\u00A0Dalai Lama's\u00A0view that the \u201Cworld will be saved by Western Women,\u201D then encouraging women to not only enter the room, but to \u201Coccupy a\u00A0chair\u201D and sit at the table is of paramount importance.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s time for Mark Zuckerberg to put a face, if not two or three, on the women of the world. And yes, it should be Sheryl Sandberg in the room -- at the table. But I\u2019m grateful that during the time she remains without that seat, she reminds us that, despite our efforts, obstacles remain, even as she has empowered us to enter the room, sit at the table, and chair our lives."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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