Photo by Stella Kalinina

Photo by Stella Kalinina

“Invigorating” is the word Marne Levine (MBA 2005) uses to describe her work at Facebook. As vice president of global partnerships and business development, a role she took on in February, Levine oversees a broad swath of the company’s original content programming, including its relationships with celebrities, developers, and news publishers. She also leads mergers and acquisitions. “Facebook’s mission is about giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together,” she says. “In the short time I’ve been in the job I’ve seen some awesome things that we can do when we team up with partners.” That could mean well-established figures like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, in addition to influencers and creators like Huda Kattan, whose show, Huda Boss, streams on Facebook Watch; Kattan can then sell her products directly to consumers through Instagram. It also touches on KLM airline’s use of the Facebook Messenger platform for customer care, says Levine, and Walmart’s employee training program, which features Oculus Go’s virtual reality headsets.

No stranger to the Facebook family, Levine came to the company in 2010 as its first vice president of global public policy, having served as chief of staff of the National Economic Council and special assistant to President Obama for economic policy; four years later she moved over to Instagram (which Facebook acquired in 2012) to become the company’s first COO. During her tenure, Instagram grew from just over 100 employees to more than 1,000, while its community of users expanded from 300 million to more than a billion.

Despite the big-picture scope and pace of her latest role, Levine still finds time to enjoy the small, user-generated moments that pop up in social media—and the communities that form because of them. Tied in with that is the fun factor, of course. “Boomerang is my favorite Instagram tool,” she says. “It never gets old watching grown adults in tears, laughing at these goofy, looping, three-second video clips.”

Work zone: “Early morning at the kitchen counter—with coffee, which is my favorite food. I like dark roast, black, in my Yeti mug, which keeps it extra hot.”

First job: Working in the Cuyahoga County [Ohio] Commissioner’s office. “It started with my senior project in high school and continued through college. I did everything from helping constituents get access to social services to working on a reduce, reuse, and recycle campaign. The job really showed me how government could be a force for good.”

Network effects: 2.1 billion people use Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram every day.

Podcast picks: Masters of Scale, with Reid Hoffman; Recode Decode, with Kara Swisher; Pod Save America. “I worked in the White House with those guys. They’re really good.”

Best business advice: “It’s summed up in a great quote often attributed to Einstein. ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem, and five minutes solving it.’ Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom pushed that approach. I tend to run toward solutions too quickly. Many people do.”

Tech time travel: “I fantasize about a Jetsons-style flying saucer that will teleport me above the San Francisco traffic, but I’m also pretty excited about self-driving cars.”

Family time: “Running a household with two busy kids activates the chief of staff in me. I know it sounds funny, but I find time every week for a one-on-one with each of my sons to work through a list of questions to help me map out the week ahead. That feeds into a super-detailed, color-coded schedule that I think teaches my boys to function independently and be responsible for themselves.”

Room for boards: “I’m involved in a number of organizations, including LeanIn.org, the Urban Institute, Women for Women International, and the Defense Innovation Board. The issues I feel strongly about include alleviating poverty, economic empowerment through education, and women’s rights.”  

Hail to the chief: “I want to visit every presidential library with my family before our kids go off to college. The good news is that they got excited about the idea. We’ve been to five so far and have nine more to go; in September we’re going to Texas for Johnson, Bush, and Bush.”

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