Former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki has died, aged 56. The influential leader had been living with non-small cell lung cancer in the final two years of her life.
Her husband, Dennis Troper, confirmed her death on Facebook, writing a moving tribute to his wife of 26 years: “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many.”
“Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time,” he wrote.
In 1998, Wojcicki rented out her garage in California to two of her friends, Larry Page and Sergey Brin — who went on to create Google. Wojcicki became the company’s sixteenth employee and was its first marketing manager.
Over the next two decades, she ascended to the company’s executive ranks, becoming the most senior female employee and helping it grow into the most popular search engine in the world. In 2006, Google acquired YouTube. Eight years later, Wojcicki became the CEO of YouTube.
Tributes have poured in for the mother of five, who was one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent female executives and once named in the Top Ten most powerful women in the world.
Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, described his former colleague as “one of the most incredible leaders at Google” —and “a dear friend.”
“Susan Wojcicki’s passing is devastating for everyone who knew and loved her, and for the thousands of Googlers who benefited from her advocacy and leadership,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Sharing the note that I sent to Googlers yesterday to honor her legacy. We’ll miss you, Susan, the world won’t be the same without you.”
On X, the Indian-born American business executive said he was “unbelievably saddened by the loss.”
“She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.”
Melinda French Gates described Wojcicki as a “visionary leader” who “broke the mold” and “ intentionally pried open doors for the many young women who have followed her footsteps.”
“She remains a role model for people of all backgrounds who dream of careers in tech as meaningful and impactful as hers,” French Gates wrote in a statement, published on LinkedIn. “I admired her, and I will miss her.”
CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger paid tribute to the former employee of his company, saying she was “a fearless leader, and inspiration to so many of us.”
“We were incredibly fortunate to have Susan at Intel early in her career, and it was inspiring to see her soar in the years that followed. I’m praying for the Wojcicki family as we mourn her passing and reflect on her remarkable legacy.”
A champion of paid parental leave
Wojcicki was 46 and pregnant with her fifth child when she became CEO of YouTube in 2014. She told Today at the time “Your kids get something from your career and your career will get something from your kids.”
“I try, because I found that if I’m home for dinner, I can get the scoop from my kids on the day,” she said. “After my kids go to bed, I check email. It’s about having that balance.”
“I want people to realise that it really is OK, that you can have a family. I don’t feel like I’m a perfect mom, and then there are times at work where I feel like maybe I wasn’t perfect here because of constraints on my time. But having the sum of both of those things going on in my life makes me a better mom at the end of the day, and I think gives me really important perspectives in the workplace as well.”
Wojcicki was a champion of generous parental leave packages, campaigning for them to become standard at Google and beyond.
At a Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco in 2015, Wojcicki declared that if the company didn’t have a good maternity leave program, she would resign.
“What we found, and I just went through this so I felt like I had the same experience, you’re more ready to come back to work when the kids are a little bit older,” she said.
“You’re sleeping better, they’re sleeping better, they’re getting closer to eating real food, instead of just you, and milk. So I thought about it on day 10, and I could barely walk, you’re barely sleeping, you’re very sore.”
“Your homes are readjusting. I thought, what would happen if I had gone back to work on day 10. I thought I’d quit, that’s what I would do, because I wouldn’t be able to do that. The really sad thing in the US is a lot of women don’t have that choice.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2014, Wojcicki explained that when Google increased paid parental leave to 18 weeks, the rate at which new mothers left fell by fifty per cent.
Soon after, Wojcicki was named one of the 10 most powerful women in the world by Forbes, alongside the likes of Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel.
In an interview with FastCompany in the same year, she said she associates each of her children with Google milestones.
“I joined Google when I was pregnant, so my oldest I’ve associated with Google,” she said. Then I worked with the team and together we created AdSense after I came back from maternity leave (with my second). My third one, I associate with YouTube. The last one is DoubleClick.”
During her time at YouTube, she established new advertising formats and subscription offerings. She also worked on content moderation.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2019, Wojcicki suggested that her legacy at YouTube would depend on whether it succeeded in regulating the control of inappropriate content, hate speech, misinformation and extremism.
“I know we can do better, but we’re going to get there,” she said. “We’ll get to a point where we have solved a lot of these issues, and I feel like we’ve already made significant progress. I own this problem, and I’m going to fix it.”
Last year, she stepped down from her role at Youtube, citing “family, health, and personal projects” reasons.
Wojcicki was the eldest of three daughters. Her mother worked as a journalist and teacher and her father was a physicist at Stanford University. As a child, she was interested in “all kinds of new things and new extracurriculars.”
She went on to study at Harvard University before receiving a master’s degree in economics from the University of California and a master’s degree in business from the Anderson School of Management. She was four months pregnant when she left her role in marketing at Intel to join Google in 1998.
Before leaving for YouTube in 2014, she was senior vice president of Google’s advertising and analytics products. Describing the transition across businesses, Wojcicki said in an interview with Glamour in 2014: “It was a bit of a leap, but sometimes you have to do the right thing for you right now.”
“Don’t forget that it gets easier! Having a child is a big life change, but the really hectic period is relatively short,” she said. “You can get through it.”
Earlier this year, Wojcicki’s son Marco died, aged 19. The freshman at Berkeley died from an accidental drug overdose, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which cited the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
In May 2023, Wojcicki’s father, Professor Stanley Wojcicki, passed away, aged 86.
Wojcicki is survived by her husband, her four children, her sisters Janet (a Professor of pediatrics at UCSF Medical School) and Anne (Founder and CEO of 23andMe) and mother Esther (author of How to Raise Successful People).
Image Credit: Dennis Troper (Facebook)