With a 2018 net worth of $71 billion , the young CEO is credited with creating a social network that has more monthly active users than any single country in the world has people, and his majority voting rights give him complete control of the company which also means he's often the focal point of any backlash or scandal.
And for the last two years, Facebook has faced scandal after scandal. It's been called out on multiple occasions for the way it handles user data, to the point where it's led many to debate the pros and cons of free networks like Facebook that rely on advertisers for revenue. In 2018, Zuckerberg was summoned to give 10 hours of testimony to Congress as lawmakers sought answers about Facebook's role in various events like the 2016 election and the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal.
In the midst of the scandals, Zuckerberg has defended Facebook and reiterated the company's stated mission to connect the world with projects like bringing internet access to areas without less connectivity; through his charity work, he's poured millions into education efforts and billions into initiatives for curing the world's diseases.
But the recent revelations have put a spotlight on Zuckerberg and his company like never before. Here's a look at the timeline of Zuckerberg's career, from his humble beginnings in a New York suburb to his role as one of the wealthiest CEOs in the world:
While hes now a titan of Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg was raised in the quaint town of Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was born to Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, a dentist and psychiatrist, respectively. He has three siblings: Randi, Donna, and Arielle.
A precocious child, Mark at age 12 created a messaging program called "Zucknet" using Atari BASIC. He also coded computer games for his friends at a young age.
While attending high school at the renowned Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he built an early music streaming platform, which both AOL and Microsoft showed interest in. Still a teen, he rejected offers for an acquisition or a job.
He wasnt just a computer nerd, though. Zuck loved the classics "The Odyssey" and the like and he became captain of his high school fencing team.
Soon after Zuckerberg started at Harvard University in 2002, he earned a reputation as a skilled developer. His first hit was "Face mash," a hot-or-not-style app that used the pictures of his classmates that he hacked from the school administrations dormitory ID files. It got 22,000 page views from 450 people in the first four hours it was up. Harvard quickly ordered it to be taken down, citing copyright and security concerns.
He started "The Facebook" with several friends out of his dorm room, and dropped out of school after his sophomore year to focus on the social network full-time.
Before dropping out, Zuckerberg met his now-wife, Priscilla Chan. Chan told Savannah Guthrie on "Today" that they met at a frat party thrown by Zuckerbergs fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. "On our first date, he told me that hed rather go on a date with me than finish his take-home midterm," she said.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=483898591776&set=t.4&type=3&theater
Zuckerberg wasnt always the polished statesman he is now. In Facebooks early days, he carried business cards that read, "Im CEO, B---h."
Zuckerbergs company raised its $12.7 million Series A round of funding while he was barely of legal drinking age. The rest is history.
In 2010, Time magazine named Zuckerberg "Person of the Year."
Not many tech CEOs get to see themselves immortalized on the big screen, but the 2010 movie "The Social Network" put a dramatized version of Facebooks founding story in theaters. It earned eight Academy Award nominations, but Zuckerberg strongly maintains that many of its details are incorrect.
Sony Pictures/"The Social Network"
Today, over 2 billion people around the world use Facebook each month. The company makes billions of dollars every quarter by showing them ads.
Zuckerberg took Facebook public on May 18, 2012. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the biggest tech IPO in history at the time. Zuckerberg became the 29th richest person on earth overnight.
Chan and Zuckerberg continued to date throughout Facebooks rise to greatness, and the lovebirds finally got married the day after the company went public. The relatively low-key event was actually a surprise wedding. Guests thought they were celebrating a med school graduation party for Chan.
Zuckerberg designed Chans ruby ring himself, and Chan walked down the isle with Beast, the couples Hungarian Sheepdog, who they adopted in 2011.
The two honeymooned in Italy, flying in on a private jet and staying at a five-star hotel, Portrait Suites, where rooms start at 800 per night. But they still kept it casual at times when looking for something to eat paparazzi spotted the couple eating at McDonalds while overseas.
Wojtek Balczun via Facebook
Zuckerberg studies Chinese, and his Mandarin was so good by the fall of 2014 that he managed to hold a 30-minute Q&A in the language.
In 2015, he and Chan announced they had given birth to a happy girl named Max. "There is so much joy in our little family," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.
They also announced their plan to sell 99% of Zuckerbergs Facebook stock worth about $45 billion at the time over time to fund a new LCC called The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The initiative will funnel the money toward issues like personalized learning, curing diseases, and connecting people.
Even before announcing this massive new effort, he and Chan had committed $1.6 billion to philanthropic causes, including donations to the Center for Disease Control and the San Francisco General Hospital, which was eventually renamed after Zuckerberg.
In September 2016, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged $3 billion to curing the worlds diseases by the end of this century. "Can we help scientists to cure, prevent or manage all diseases within our childrens lifetime?" Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "Im optimistic we can."
In May 2017, Chan and Zuckerberg announced that they had another baby on the way.
In his mid-30s, Zuckerberg is one of a very small group of people who is worth more billions of dollars than years he has lived. Still, hes far from flashy about it the CEO notoriously wears only a hoodie or a gray t-shirt with jeans.
He drives a black Volkswagen GTI with a manual transmission, which costs around $30,000. Its not out of pre-success attachment either, because he bought it in 2014 when he was the third richest man in the world.
However, he did reportedly pay for an Italian Pagani Huayra supercar around the same time. The car starts at a cool $1.3 million.
Zuckerberg also likes to spend his money on privacy: In October 2014, he shelled out around $100 million for 700 acres of secluded land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. He angered locals by trying to force out people who owned small parcels of land sprinkled throughout his estate. He later dropped the lawsuits.
REUTERS/Rick Wilking and Trulia
In Palo Alto, Zuckerberg reportedly bought his 5,617-square-foot home for $7 million in 2011, and then spent an additional $45 million on the four houses and land around it for the sake of privacy.
He also bought a $10 million mansion in San Francisco, and then proceeded to spend more than $1 million on remodeling and additions (like a $60,000 greenhouse) that took a year to build and reportedly disturbed neighbors.
During the renovation, he allegedly hired people to sit in cars parked near the house at night to save parking spaces for the construction workers.
Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian
Zuckerberg hasnt been afraid to spend Facebooks money either: The company has some major acquisitions under its belt, including $1 billion for Instagram, $19 billion for WhatsApp, and $2 billion for Oculus.
But even Zuckerberg cant always get what he wants: He tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but CEO Evan Spiegel turned him down.
Zuckerberg emcees Facebooks annual developer conference every year, where he gives updates on the companys roadmap. Before the conference started to attract thousands of attendees, Zuck would present in flip flops.
In May 2017, Zuckerberg returned to his alma mater, Harvard, as its youngest commencement speaker ever. During his speech, he touched on a range of politically-charged topics, including climate change, universal basic income, criminal justice reform, and "modernizing democracy" by allowing people to vote online. He received an honorary doctorate as well.
Besides other tech celebrities, Zuck frequently meets with other important people, like Brazils president, Dilma Rousseff, Snoop Dogg, and former President Barack Obama. This picture is from a visit back in February 2011.
Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Zuckerbergs troubles began. People unhappy with the election results blamed Facebook for spreading fake news that led to Donald Trumps win. The CEO brushed off the claims: "Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook ... influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said.
About a year later, the first official evidence emerged. Facebooks chief security officer announced approximately $100,000 in ad spending for roughly 3,000 ads operated out of Russia, and Zuckerberg admitted that "calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it." Just before Facebook executives were supposed to testify in front of Congress, Facebook found that 126 million Americans probably saw Russia-funded posts intended to sway them.
Zuckerberg has always been passionate about political issues, but he kicked up his rhetoric significantly around the time that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. He was one of the first tech CEOs to denounce Trumps initial executive order on barring people from predominately Muslim countries from entering the US.
In 2017, Zuckerberg announced that his personal challenge for the year an annual tradition since 2009 was to visit every US state. The stops he made sparked speculation that he had plans to run for president one day, but he denied it.
In 2018, Zuckerberg said his personal goal for the year was to focus on fixing important issues that Facebook had a hand in and that affected the world: "We wont prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If were successful this year then well end 2018 on a much better trajectory."
In March 2018, #DeleteFacebook started trending after the founder of data analytics company Cambridge Analytica came forward to say that the social network had harvested data from over 50 million users profiles later increased by Facebook to 87 million and used it to target voters during the 2016 election after being hired by the Trump campaign. Zuckerberg wasnt heard from for days, which wasnt lost on users, employees, or the media.
This time, Zuckerberg himself was called on to testify in front of lawmakers: once in a joint hearing, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and once in front of The House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Each testimony lasted five hours, and Zuckerberg left with a laundry list of requests for answers and action items .
Zuckerberg reportedly trained with a team of experts hired by Facebook to coach him on how to answer questions and how to be charming ahead of the testimonies. The consultants were led by a special adviser to President George W. Bush, Reginald J. Brown.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Facebooks stock tumbled in the months following the congressional hearings, as well as scandal. At its lowest, it was down 18% from what it had been before the story broke. But Zuckerbergs testimony seemed to give hope to investors. As a Silicon Valley CEO put it, "Mark Zuckerberg presented himself well, or at least as well as possible given the situation. He seemed reasonably well informed, prepared, and authentic."
Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
During its contentious 2018, Facebook faced accusations that its moderation efforts werent adequate in stopping the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on its network. Facebook and Facebook-owned apps (like Instagram and WhatsApp) were cited as contributing to political violence and deliberate misinformation in Myanmar, India, Germany, the Philippines, Brazil, and more.
Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In September 2018, Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced they were leaving Facebook. It was later reported they had left amid "growing tensions" with Zuckerberg, and that the pair was fighting with Facebook leadership over Instagrams "autonomy."
The departure of Instagrams cofounders was quickly followed with scathing remarks from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who detailed disagreements with Facebook executives over user privacy. Acton said: "I sold my users privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day. Actons comments echoed those made by the other WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum, when he left the company in April. Outlets reported Koum and leadership fought over plans for Facebook to weaken WhatsApps encryption and access user data.
To add to an already scandal-riddled September, Facebook announced it had been hacked, and around 30 million users had their personal information compromised. Its the worst hack in Facebooks 15-year history.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A bombshell New York Times report reveals how Facebook executives specifically Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg fought back against criticism it had received in 2018. Soon after, internal Facebook documents made public by British Parliament showed how Zuckerberg restricted certain "strategic competitors" from accessing user data in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.
Time will tell what direction the CEO takes with his company, or how regulations will influence his companys business model. Despite his billions and the ups and downs of his career, Zuckerberg consistently appears to be dedicated to the companys mission and office culture. His office is enclosed by glass walls, and he holds regular "Townhall" style Q&A sessions with Facebooks thousands of employees.
(Jillian D'Onfro, Rebecca Borison, and Alex Heath contributed to earlier versions of this story.)
SEE ALSO: 33 photos of Facebook's rise from a Harvard dorm room to world domination
