Joanna Shields | MediaGuardian 100 2012
Job: vice-president and managing director of Facebook (Europe, Middle East & Africa)
Age: 50
Industry: digital media
New entry
Facebook will count 2012 as a year to forget after a botched flotation saw the social network's market value plummet. But away from Wall Street, Joanna Shields has led Facebook on its way to becoming a key marketing platform for Europe's top businesses.
Shields makes her return to the MediaGuardian 100 two years after joining Facebook as its vice-president and managing director in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Previously a senior executive at Google, Bebo and AOL, Shields is seen as a safe pair of hands for Facebook in its biggest and fastest-growing market outside the US.
She was recruited by Facebook chief operating officer (and former Google colleague) Sheryl Sandberg in 2010 and quickly reorganised its European base to focus on long-term partnerships with several high-profile businesses and startups.
Facebook has since launched products with music services including Spotify and Deezer, and news outlets such as the Guardian and BBC, as it aims to turn the social network into a primary entertainment destination on the web. Deals with Burberry, Unilever and Nestlé are part of the site's money-spinning efforts.
Shields also oversaw Facebook's Explore London 2012 page on the Olympics, where users could interact daily with their favourite athletes and teams.
Colleagues of Shields describe her as a "fast-moving deal machine" who has forged a reputation as a tough negotiator. But she is an unlikely leader in the global media scene, hailing from a small blue-collar town in the US where she worked as a child in her father's metal factory.
At Facebook, she has seen the number of daily active users in Europe and Asia rise to 283m in June, up from 130m in June 2010. The money made from each active user has also risen, from $0.90 per European user in June 2010 to $1.43 in June 2012. Facebook's revenue for Europe and Asia hit $409m this year, 41% of its total of $992m and up from $159m in June 2010.
Now Shields has her sights set on the Middle East and Africa, where half of the continent's 1 billion people have a mobile phone, according to recent estimates. The region is likely to be central to Facebook's plans to make more money from mobile access to its website beyond 2012.