---
title: " Careless People:  Sarah Wynn-Williams' Memoir revelling how the elite shaped world events"
description: Sarah Wynn-Williams invented her own job at Facebook, then spent seven years watching it from the inside. Her memoir reads like literature and lands like tes...
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-06-15T10:00:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-29T08:44:00.475Z
canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/careless-people-sarah-wynn-williams-memoir-revelling-how-the-elite-shaped-world-events
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/camilo-jimenez-qZenO_gQ7QA-unsplash.jpg
categories: Memoir & Biography
content_type: Book Review
region: United States
publication: Rich Books
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

"I saved myself." is the story of her life. It is the opening of her memoir and it is the key to everything that follows. A girl who nearly died grew into a woman who would spend seven years inside the most powerful communications company on earth, watching the same pattern play out on a planetary scale. Wynn-Williams did not apply to Facebook. There was nothing to apply for. She studied law in New Zealand, worked at one of Australia's largest firms, then moved to the United Nations in New York and on to the New Zealand embassy in Washington.

When a major earthquake struck Christchurch and ordinary lines of communication failed, the platform kept her in contact with her sister back home. She came to believe a company that size could be a force for good in the world, a tool for diplomacy and connection at a scale no embassy could match. So she pitched Facebook a role that nobody there had thought to create: a global public policy function, run by someone who understood how governments actually worked.

The first pitch went nowhere. Her ideas were dismissed and she heard nothing back. Then the Arab Spring arrived, and Facebook found itself at the centre of revolutions it had not planned for and did not understand. Someone in Washington remembered the New Zealander who had talked about exactly this during her interview. They called her back. She had been right, and now they needed her.

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