Kunst meets Marie-Eve Schröder
“For us, it’s still a bit like a start-up“
After a career of more than 20 years in the beauty industry, Marie-Eve Schröder moved to Facebook, now Meta, in 2019. As Group Director DACH Region, she is part of the global company’s top management. Born in France, she has lived in Düsseldorf for 14 years and has found her home here. During a walk in Benrath’s Schlosspark with VIVID publisher Rainer Kunst, she spoke about plans and visions of Meta and the Metaverse, about data protection and fake news on the internet, the role of sustainability in a tech company – and about her love for the state capital.
What was it like for you when you switched to the tech company Meta after a career of more than 20 years in the beauty sector?
After a great time in companies in the really exciting beauty industry, which I wouldn’t want to miss, a completely different world awaited me at Meta. What intrigued me straight away was their corporate culture: things like respectful cooperation and genuine collaboration are not just mentioned in the corporate guidelines, but are actually put into practice. This fascination continues to this day, I have to say. The people working at Meta are extremely open, since they adhere to the principle of “sharing is caring”. Knowledge is shared, people support each other wherever possible. As a result, you are constantly learning. Although we have around 68,000 employees worldwide, the company still has a certain start-up character – I think that’s great!
A few months ago, Facebook became Meta. What does that mean for its users?
I think that the new look helps us a lot in communication. People understand even better what we do exactly, which individual product solutions we offer and how they go together and can be linked in a complementary way. Other platforms also do this very well with complementary offers. Our advantage over them, however, is our enormous size: we already have around 200 million companies on our platform and reach 2.7 billion users every day. With this reach, you can do a lot of good.
“we already have around 200 million companies on our platform and reach 2.7 billion users every day. With this reach, you can do a lot of good.”
You recently announced the Metaverse, a kind of parallel universe on the internet. Second Life started with this idea almost 20 years ago. How do Metaverse and Second Life compare?
The analogy lies primarily in your avatar. That is, in the Metaverse you can project yourself into a virtual world and have an active role in this parallel world. You can define your environment there, design it, personalise things and so on. It’s similar to Second Life. The big difference is that Second Life was a game and Metaverse is not only meant to be a game. You can also use it to organise virtual business meetings, for example, in which the participants get a feeling of three-dimensionality through the stimuli via the VR glasses, it is very close to reality. For the near future, I could also imagine a use in education, for example, where children who cannot go to school learn via the metaverse and experience other places from a distance. Meta will invest 150 million US dollars in the next few years to build an ecosystem dedicated to learning in the Metaverse in order to further develop the metaverse together with many cooperation partners.
One issue that is always associated with social media is data protection. In Europe, it is treated differently than in the USA, for example. How do you work together across the group?
We have a global approach to data protection. The advantage in Europe is that the issue is clearly regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation. In the USA, they are catching up more and more in terms of data protection. Across the Group, privacy is a top priority for us: there is no other division that has as many staff. Ultimately, every user at every level can set exactly what he or she wants to disclose. I see it as one of our biggest tasks to make our users even more aware of the possibilities that already exist.
How does your internal communication actually work with around 68,000 employees worldwide? Do you also talk to Mark Zuckerberg regularly?
For us, it’s still a bit like a start-up: as an employee, you are also in direct contact with the management level. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has an active Q and A with all employees every week and talks about his strategy and his visions. There are also very controversial discussions – regardless of the hierarchy of those involved – because there is a great deal of openness in the company.
Social media can also be very polarising. For example, how does Meta deal with the current issue of Covid and the vaccination debate?
From the start, we have taken a very clear position on the issue of Covid and vaccination and cooperated with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to ensure that all the scientific information we provide is up to date.We still do this today, and we are highly regarded for it. We remove misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm with the help of AI and our security team, which we tripled to 40,000 staff since 2016. We are also reducing the reach of posts that have been deemed false by our fact-checking partners. We will never be able to achieve zero percent misinformation, but we are very close to that.
Sustainability plays an important role for you personally and you are also a strong advocate for it at Meta. How can a tech company be (more) sustainable?
Studies show that many consumers expect big tech companies like us to have answers for a more sustainable life. And we and our competitors take this expectation very seriously and offer solutions. As a tech company, we don’t produce anything like in manufacturing industries, so we don’t have production and logistics, for example. That’s why Meta’s approach to sustainability is a little different. We reduce our carbon footprint in several ways. Supplying our data centres with 100 per cent renewable energy and saving energy and water through efficient concepts are the foundations of our strategy for operating sustainable data centres. What we cannot reduce further on our own, we compensate for through our involvement in global projects and initiatives.
What does your cooperation with start-ups look like?
If you look at the diverse development history of Meta and Facebook, start-ups have always played a major role. We are huge today, but we still have that start-up mentality. Our cooperation with other start-ups will be even stronger in the future, especially because of Metaverse and topics like virtual reality or augmented reality. Behind these new solutions are mostly very innovative start-ups that are still very small. We want to support and promote the people there, both financially and with education and training. That is one of the biggest and most important components of our business model.
What is your personal connection to Düsseldorf?
I have been living in Düsseldorf for 14 years and I love this city. This is my home, I am happy here. My children also grew up here. I think this city has the perfect size. You have culture, sports, shopping, interesting and nice people. Thanks to the airport, you also have very good international connections; for example, I can quickly reach France, Belgium or the Netherlands. For me, Düsseldorf is a central place in the middle of Europe. •
About Marie-Eve Schröder
since 07/2019
Group Director and EMEA GMS Sustainability Leader at Meta / Facebook10/2007 - 06/2019
CMO-CDO / Senior Vice-President – Henkel Beauty Care06/1997 - 09/2007
Sales / Marketing Global roles at Procter & Gamble / WellaBorn in 1970 in Mâcon (France), living in Düsseldorf since 2007 with her husband, 3 children and Snoopy (pictured)
Member of the Board of Directors and Advisory Board at Accenture, Kühne and Plastic Bank
Mentor and faculty member at Leadership Next Academy (female empowerment)
Words Tom Corrinth
Pictures Frank Beer