Annie Tritt for The New York Times  Randi Zuckerberg, back to camera, sings at a party in Palo Alto, Calif., in September.  “WHO wants a tequila shot?” Randi Zuckerberg shouted over the thump of “Baby One More Time,” Britney Spears’s breakup anthem.  It was nearly midnight on a rainy Wednesday in September, and more than a dozen friends gathered by Ms. Zuckerberg, the older sister of Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, were crowding a private room at the Midtown karaoke club Japas 38.  “Yay!” cheered the crowd as their host hoisted a carafe of tequila in the air and circled the tables, pouring shots. The air smelled of stale beer and soy sauce. After salt was licked, plastic cups drained and limes squeezed, she grabbed a microphone and belted out a rousing version of “I Will Survive.”  In August, Ms. Zuckerberg, 29, quit her job at Facebook, where she had been among the first two dozen people hired. Most recently, she was the director of marketing. In its early days, Ms. Zuckerberg was a buoyant presence, representing her reticent brother to an eager press. Later, she earned attention (not always favorable) singing at company functions with a band composed of colleagues. And she came up with the idea for Facebook Live, the social network’s video channel, which has featured interviews conducted by Facebook executives with Oprah Winfrey and President Obama.  Now Ms. Zuckerberg has started her own business, R to Z Media, to help companies take advantage of social media.  “This is the launch party of Randi Zuckerberg!” she said at the club, beaming.  Ms. Zuckerberg, who lives in a rented house in Palo Alto, Calif., has ambitions beyond the Internet. “I want a talk show,” she said two days earlier over drinks at the Mercer Hotel. She also wants to sing on Broadway. And she is interested in philanthropy: while in New York, she conducted live online interviews with participants of the Clinton Global Initiative and worked the red carpet at a United Nations gala.  Older women who are mentors, Ms. Zuckerberg said, have warned her that she must tone down her flamboyant persona, but she refuses to take heed. “This is a new world we live in, and it should be possible for a woman to be taken seriously and still do what she loves,” she said.  Three weeks after the karaoke night, she spoke at a conference sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange. She then traveled to Warsaw to talk to 2,000 telecom and media executives about social media. And the estate of Michael Jackson hired her to be the host of an online show on the pop star’s Facebook page.  “Every article written about me now refers to me as Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s sister,” she said. “Maybe one day that won’t be what people say about me.”  MS. ZUCKERBERG was born in 1982 and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., a Hudson Valley town about 40 minutes from Manhattan. She is older than Mark by two years and has two younger sisters. Early on, her parents signed her up for piano lessons, but she longed to sing. She enrolled at Harvard in 1999 and studied psychology after being turned down by the music department, she said, because her piano skills were lacking. She continued to sing, using the stage name Randi Jayne.  In 2002 her brother joined her at college. “I don’t know if Mark and I ever talked about our feelings, but we overlapped at Harvard and hung out a lot,” she said, adding that they were “as close as a brother and sister could be.” Ms. Zuckerberg graduated in 2003. (Her brother dropped out.) She moved to New York to work at the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather before being hired in 2004 as a production assistant on the television show “Forbes on Fox,” making $32,000 a year.  In 2005, Mark, who by then had moved to Palo Alto and had received $12.7 million in financing for Facebook, recruited her. “He actually called up my mom and said, ‘I’m concerned Randi is in a dead-end career,’ ” Ms. Zuckerberg said. “He finally said: ‘Randi, come out to the office. I think you’ll like it.’ ” She said Mr. Zuckerberg bought her a plane ticket; while visiting the company, she was asked to weigh in on the design of Facebook’s logo.  “I had never had anyone hand me that decision-making power,” Ms. Zuckerberg said, adding, “I fell for it hook, line and sinker.”
Mark Zuckerbergâs older sister has left Facebook, the company he co-founded, to follow an agenda of her own.