Oliván was born in 1977 in
Sabiñánigo,
Huesca, Spain.[2][4] His father Florián is a retired businessman who ran a hardware store and an arcade, while his mother María Pilar is a retired professor from the Biello Aragón Institute.[5][6]
Education and early career
Between 1995 and 2002, Oliván studied electrical and industrial engineering at
Tecnun, the School of Engineering of the
University of Navarra in
Gipuzkoa.[5][7] He then joined
Siemens as a research and development engineer in
Munich, Germany, where he patented an algorithmic system for
digital image processing, before moving to
Tokyo, Japan, to work for
NTT Data on wireless video technologies.[2][4][1] He later worked as product manager at
Siemens Mobile where he led a team responsible for mobile device development.[8][9]
In 2005, he enrolled in the
MBA program at
Stanford University,[10] where he took a course that analyzed case studies of startups, including
Facebook.[11] As a student, along with several friends, he worked on creating a Spanish-language version of Facebook, called Nosuni.[4] Though the project was a failure,[12]Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, reached out and asked Oliván to work for him. He accepted the offer after graduating in 2007.[10][13]
Meta Platforms
Oliván joined Facebook (now
Meta Platforms) in October 2007 as head of international growth under
Chamath Palihapitiya.[14][11] As a founding member of the growth team,[15] he oversaw the company's international expansion—into new markets and languages.[16][4] Between 2011 and 2018, he served as vice president of the growth team.[14] He advocated the
Internet.org and Facebook Lite initiatives during this period. He advised multiple acquisitions including that of
WhatsApp and
Onavo.[16][9] In 2018, he took charge of the trust and safety team to tackle
misinformation on its platforms.[9] He was the vice president of Central Products between 2018 and 2022, after which he was promoted to chief growth officer.[14]
He was recognized as a Henry Crown Fellow by the
Aspen Institute in 2014.[18] He serves on the board of the non-profit,
Endeavor Global.[8] Previously, he was a board member of the e-commerce company
Mercado Libre for six years.[2] He was also on the board of Vy Global Growth, a
special-purpose acquisition company that invested in geospatial imaging firm
Satellogic before the SPAC deal completed in 2022.[2]