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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Menlo Park–based Facebook, described how the Jewish youth movement BBYO helped to shape her.

Sandberg, author of the bestseller “Lean In” on empowering women in the workplace, spoke in a video message to the annual BBYO conference in Dallas last weekend.

She said her experience in the organization helped her “stay close to the Jewish identity as a Jewish woman that has really mattered to me.”

Also delivering video messages to the conference, which drew 2,000 teen leaders from across the United States and other countries, were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency.

Sharansky spoke of the vital role Jewish youth movements played in sustaining his hopes when he was a prisoner of the Soviet gulag. — jta