Fidji Simo explains why she opened up about her health issues

How the head of Facebook’s app led her team while on bed rest

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The head of Facebook’s app led her team while on bed rest


How the head of Facebook’s app led her team while on bed rest


C. J. I also want to talk about another another big aspect of your personal experience, as well as your professional experiences that you've been responding to all of these big business challenges, while also being somewhat public about some extraordinary health problems, although health problems that are actually not that extraordinary for so many women. Um and that are not often discussed in the professional sphere. You've at facebook, you've spoken about working despite a miscarriage, dealing with endometriosis, um high risk pregnancy that made you do your job while you were on bed rest for several months. And recently you've been vocal about another somewhat under recognized disorder that affects women that you're suffering from called pots. Um So, first of all, just can you tell us a little bit about how you're doing these days? Well, thanks for asking when when you do put that least together, it does sound very daunting. Uh thank God not all of these things happen all at once. Um But you know, I'm doing well, I think the thing that is really interesting is that health is really taboo in the workplace, and I think it's even more taboo for women because we have all, we already have to do so much to prove that we deserve to be in his positions of power. And so anything that creates any doubt around audiology to perform is a risk for women. And I realized, you know, that that um while that was a risk, I admit a position where I also have the responsibility to talk about this because I have a lot of women in my organization that works suffering from chronic conditions, and we never really pictured themselves as becoming a top senior leader because they didn't have role models that had made it uh to to these levels. And, and so when I started opening up sometimes, you know, I'll be honest, sometimes I was forced to open up because I was on bed rest for five months and I had to need, you know, the full launch of facebook live from my bed five years ago at a time where, you know, dialing in from your bed wasn't cool. Uh, so I realized that when I did open up, it actually encouraged a lot of my key members to be more vulnerable to open up and for me to help them and help their career in a much better way. Uh, so that felt like a big responsibility for me to to speak up. And then that became honestly a little bit of a personal cause and and passion for me because I look at the trends of autoimmune diseases and it's 50 million people into us, 75% of the patients are women. It's on the rise massively. And I do believe that uh you know, if we don't address this, it's going to uh end up impacting women in their career and that's um, let alone their life. Uh and so that's something that I really take to heart. And I found out with some wonderful clinicians and researchers, and at the end of the year, we're going to open up the first research institutes around Euro indian condition that particularly affects women, because I do think that we need to tackle that head on.