It’s been over 12 years since the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s infamous feminist game-changer “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead”. Framed as a corporate how-to-guide for the ambitious career woman, it spawned a global movement of aspirational female professionals prioritising their work goals.
Since then, the organisation has undergone several transformations and navigated multiple controversies, including claims that it champions only a certain kind of privileged, elitist white feminism.
In the past few months, the organisation has been back in the headlines for some brow-raising twists and turns. Here’s a closer look at what the former COO of Facebook has been working on and where Lean In is at in 2026.
Downsizing and shifting focus
Over the past 12 months, the non-profit has undergone a significant restructuring, with staff reductions and strategic shifts resulting in a workforce reduction of approximately 25 per cent. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported over a dozen employees had left the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation, the parent arm of the LeanIn.Org initiative. The article revealed that the organisation was shifting its focus toward countering the rise of “manosphere” and “tradwife” content, with Sandberg herself pushing for a sharper, more activist strategy.
New focus on AI
Throughout the advocacy group’s history, priorities have ranged from fixing the gender pay gap, calling out sexist workplace discrimination, solving the lack of childcare and policy support, and identifying systemic constraints facing women in the workplace. Now, the new focus has turned towards highlighting the use of AI and technology, particularly to help women advance their careers.
A recent survey released by the organisation revealed a gender gap in the use of AI in the workplace, with almost 80 per cent of men in the US saying they had used AI for work, compared with 73 per cent of women. Among those using AI, 27 per cent of men said they’ve been commended for doing so, compared with 18 per cent of women.
Meanwhile, more men than women claimed to have been encouraged to use AI by their manager, a finding that Sandberg believes could exacerbate existing gender pay and promotion inequalities.
“These small gaps will become really big over time if we don’t call attention to them right now,” Sandberg told Axios last week. She referenced similar research from 2025 which revealed female software engineers using AI are viewed as less competent than their male counterparts. She added that this bias towards praising men for actions women are criticised for exists in the use of AI too.
Speaking with FastCompany, Sandberg noted, “the biases exist, and then they will get internalised. I bet a lot of the people doing this—and it’s got to be both male and female managers—don’t even know they’re doing it, which is why we think research like this is so critically important.”
“These differences—which are not that small, but are smallish now—will compound over time, which is why we think it’s so important for people to understand them and acknowledge them.
According to Lean In’s findings, women are likelier to be cautious about the ethical implications of using AI at work compared to men. They’re also more likely to worry that they would be perceived as “cheating” by using AI, a tendency consistent with the findings derived from the Women’s Agenda roundtable with Salesforce last year.
Lean In’s new CEO said recently, “Don’t get us wrong. It is great that women have ethical concerns and care about cheating, but we really worry that’s going to inadvertently cause women to use AI less.”
“We also found that women feel differently about AI because they are treated differently in regards to AI, and [are] spoken to differently.”
Bridget Griswold was appointed as the new CEO on March 24, with Sandberg describing the 25-year-old former Meta product manager as a “AI native” who would spearhead the organisation’s new focus to close the AI gender gap.
Griswold told FastCompany she aimed to use AI to “help women harness the power of their careers.”
And Sandberg sounds positive about their prospects: “I think we’re in a place where we’ve got new technology [and] old patterns, and they are old patterns that we at Lean In are committed to overcoming,” she said.
“We are worried—and we should be worried—that in a world of the revolution of AI, women shouldn’t get left behind.”
But the former CEO is copping some backlash over the new hire. Griswold has limited experience in nonprofit leadership and was reportedly elevated to the top role just months after joining as the company’s Director of AI and Product.
Some critics warned that her background as a former product manager might indicate a move away from traditional feminist advocacy toward a tech‑centric agenda. In her LinkedIn post announcing Griswold’s appointment, Sandberg praised the Brown University alumni as “the right leader with the right set of skills” who can “step up and lead the AI revolution.”
“[She] impressed us and our board with her commitment to our mission, her deep understanding of how technology can be used to support the global Lean In community, and her passion for making sure that women harness the power of AI to further their careers,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the group has vowed to continue the annual Women in the Workplace study and the Lean In Circles, the civically organised peer-support groups to help women share experiences, build confidence, and develop leadership skills.
New fight against Tradwives
Sandberg is clearly hoping to relaunch the organisation to a fresh generation of professionals by hiring Griswold to lead the organisation into new territory: fighting tradwife culture.
Last month, Sandberg said in an interview with People magazine, that tradwife content is “sexist” and “very detrimental to women.”
“The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time,” she said. “And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make. If you look at the percentages of women who need to work outside of the home to support their families, it’s the great majority of women. And so these messages that ‘this is how you have a successful marriage, that this is how you have six children,’ I think, are very detrimental to women.”
She warned against the use of “new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are.”
“You are not harming your marriage and you are not harming your children by working and by being ambitious,” she challenged.
All eyes are now on Griswold as she embarks on this new mission.