![]() Mendelsohn wanted to be an actress, but observing the Sabbath made Friday night theater shows a nonstarter. Her mom ran a catering business and her grandmother was a haberdasher-two early role models for working women. Mendelsohn grew up as the eldest child and only daughter of observant Jewish parents. She gave one newly promoted advertising exec a bracelet featuring an evil eye, meant to keep watch on her behalf. They appreciated her enthusiasm, her interest in their perspectives and concerns, and her personal flourishes, like her thoughtful gifts. When advertisers have soured on Facebook-like during their 2020 boycott over hate speech and misinformation-they still seemed to like Mendelsohn. “Personalized advertising means I get to see things I’m interested in,” she says.Īs the face of Meta to major global advertisers, Mendelsohn’s charisma has served her well. Now the ads she and her daughter see are for wedding paraphernalia. She shares that her 25-year-old daughter is engaged. “I had to watch a lot of ads that had nothing to do with me,” she recalls. She uses an anecdote about growing up in England with one television set to deflect a question about the privacy concerns around targeted advertising. When asked about metrics for Facebook’s relatively new Instagram Reels, the short video posts that offer fewer opportunities for ads than Instagram Stories and Facebook’s feed, she says messaging is the future and launches into a story about shopping for shoes in Brazil via Meta’s WhatsApp service. She arrives with her usual bubbly greeting-a hug-and her signature feminine style, her nails painted a chrome purple. The relatively new New York City resident is sitting in the Instagram section of Meta’s hip Astor Place offices. Except when Mendelsohn does it, the effect can be genuinely charming. Like many Meta executives, Mendelsohn can talk a lot without saying much. “People want Nicola to win,” says Michael Kassan, the well-connected CEO of MediaLink, a strategic advisory firm. Her theater-kid energy had endeared her to colleagues and London’s creative community. She loved her life her ad savvy aligned with Facebook’s purported mission to connect the world-a cause she deeply believes in. Mendelsohn also had that moment of clarity, except her diagnosis reinforced that she wanted to keep things as they were. ![]() Now, at age 51, she has no evidence of disease, and advocates for patients with the under-researched and underfunded illness.Ī cancer diagnosis can be a clarifying experience that prompts patients to reorder their lives. Her doctor first monitored her cancer’s progression, then she began treatment that continued until the pandemic, when Mendelsohn isolated at home because of her weakened immune system. After that horrible weekend, Mendelsohn vowed never to feel that hopeless again. ![]() She had follicular lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer that 25,000 Americans are diagnosed with each year. The results were as bad as she feared: The small lump was one of several tumors all over her body. “I felt a physical feeling that this is really bad-like you’ve been hit in the solar plexus,” she remembers. She spiraled, imagining the very worst, thinking about what she would tell her four kids. That Friday, she put her phone down and came back to see missed call after missed call from her doctor. She didn’t think anything of it, but a doctor suggested she get a scan. Mendelsohn had discovered an unusual lump near her groin. More from Fortune: 5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year-all while working from home Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now Buying a house? Here's how much to save This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home Her American colleagues’ political problems were very far from her mind. Around the same time, Nicola Mendelsohn, then Facebook’s vice president of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), was sitting at home in London with her husband, living through the worst weekend of her life. In November 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg were heads down in a war room navigating the fallout of social media’s role as an amplifier of far-right misinformation that helped elect U.S.
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