Susan Wojcicki

Susan Diane Wojcicki (/wʊˈtʃɪtski/ wuu-CHITS-kee;[1] born July 5, 1968)[2] is the CEO of YouTube.[3] She has been in the tech industry for over 20 years.[4][5]

Susan Wojcicki
Born
Susan Diane Wojcicki

(1968-07-05) July 5, 1968
Santa Clara County, California, U.S.
EducationHarvard University (BA)
University of California, Santa Cruz (MS)
University of California, Los Angeles (MBA)
Known forCEO of YouTube, an American online video-sharing platform
Spouse(s)
Dennis Troper
​
(m. 1998)​
Children5
Parent(s)Stanley Wojcicki
Esther Wojcicki
RelativesJanina Wójcicka Hoskins (grandmother)
Anne Wojcicki (sister)

Wojcicki was involved in the founding of Google, and became Google's first marketing manager in 1999. She later led the company's online advertising business and was put in charge of Google's original video service. After observing the success of YouTube, Wojcicki proposed the acquisition of YouTube by Google in 2006, and has served as CEO of YouTube since 2014.[6]

Wojcicki has an estimated net worth of $580 million.[7]

Early life and education

Susan Diane Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968 to Esther Wojcicki, an educator of Jewish descent,[8] and Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish American physics professor at Stanford University.[9] She has two sisters: Janet Wojcicki, (PhD, anthropologist and epidemiologist)[10] and Anne Wojcicki, founder of 23andMe.[11][12] She grew up on the Stanford campus with George Dantzig as a neighbor.[13] She attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, and wrote for the school newspaper.[14]

Wojcicki's first business was selling "spice ropes" door-to-door at age 11. A humanities major in college, she took her first computer science class as a senior.[15]

Wojcicki studied history and literature at Harvard University and graduated with honors in 1990. She originally planned on getting a PhD in economics and pursuing a career in academia but changed her plans when she discovered an interest in technology.[13]

She also received her Master's of Science in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993 and a Master of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1998.[16]

Career

In September 1998, the same month that Google was incorporated, its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up office in Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park.[17] Before becoming Google's first marketing manager in 1999, Wojcicki worked in marketing at Intel Corporation in Santa Clara, California,[13] and was a management consultant at Bain & Company and R.B. Webber & Company.[18] At Google, she worked on the initial viral marketing programs, as well as the first Google Doodles.[19][20] Wojcicki also took part in the development of successful contributions to Google such as Google Images and Google Books.[21]

In 2003, Wojcicki helped lead the development of one of Google's seminal advertising products—AdSense.[22] She served as its first product manager, and for her efforts, was awarded the Google Founders' Award.[23] She rose to become Google's senior vice president of Advertising & Commerce, and oversaw the company's advertising and analytic products, including AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, and Google Analytics.[16]

YouTube, then a small start-up, was successfully competing with Google's Google Video service, overseen by Wojcicki. Her response was to propose the purchase of YouTube.[16]

She handled two of Google's largest acquisitions — the $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006 and the $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2007.[24]

CEO of YouTube

In February 2014, Wojcicki became the CEO of YouTube.[25] She was called "the most important person in advertising,"[26] as well as named one of Time's 100 most influential people in 2015[27] and described in a later issue of Time as “the most powerful woman on the Internet.”[28]

In the time that Wojcicki has been CEO of YouTube, the company announced that it had reached 2 billion logged-in users a month[29] and that users were watching one billion hours a day.[30][31] There are localized versions of YouTube in 100 countries around the world across 80 languages. Since taking on the role of CEO, YouTube's percentage of female employees has risen from 24 to nearly 30 percent.[32]

Wojcicki next to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, Poland, 11 November 2018

Wojcicki also oversaw the development and release of new YouTube applications and experiences designed to cater to users interested in family[33] gaming,[34] and music[35] content. Under her leadership, the company developed additional forms of monetization for YouTube creators, including channel memberships, merchandise, and Super Chat.[36] She also oversaw the launch of YouTube's advertisement-free subscription service, YouTube Premium (formerly known as YouTube Red),[37] and its over-the-top (OTT) internet television service YouTube TV.[38]

During her tenure, YouTube has tightened its policy on videos it regards as potentially violating its policies on hate speech and violent extremism.[39] The more stringent policies came after The Times showed that "ads sponsored by the British government and several private sector companies had appeared ahead of YouTube videos supporting terrorist groups" and several large advertisers withdrew their ads from YouTube in response.[40] The enforcement policies have been criticized as censorship.[41] Some YouTubers argue that the demonetization system is way too strict, causing any remotely "edgy" content getting demonetized and in some cases even resulting in the creators channel being removed.[42] During the controversy surrounding Logan Paul's YouTube video about a person that committed suicide, Wojcicki said that Paul did not violate YouTube's three strike policy and did not meet the criteria for being banned from the platform.[43]

Wojcicki has emphasized educational content as a priority for the company, and on July 20, 2018, announced the initiative YouTube Learning, which invests in grants and promotion to support education-focused creator content.[44]

On October 22, 2018, Wojcicki criticized Article 13 of the European Union Copyright Directive that would give YouTube the sole responsibility for removing copyrighted content, saying it would pose a threat to content creators' ability to share their work.[45]

Boards

In 2014, Wojcicki joined the board of Salesforce.[46] She also serves on the board of Room to Read,[47] an organization that focuses on literacy and gender equality in education, and is a board member of UCLA Anderson School of Management.[48]

Personal life

Wojcicki married Dennis Troper on August 23, 1998, in Belmont, California.[49] They have five children. On December 16, 2014, ahead of taking her fifth maternity leave, Wojcicki wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about the importance of paid maternity leave. She is often quoted talking about the importance of finding balance between family and career.

In addition to her U.S. citizenship,[50] she is a Polish citizen.[51][52][53] Her grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a People's Party and Polish People's Party politician who had been elected MP during the 1947 Polish legislative election.[54] Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress, responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.[55]

Advocacy

Wojcicki has been an advocate for several causes, including the expansion of paid family leave,[56] the plight of Syrian refugees,[57] countering gender discrimination at technology companies,[32][58] and getting girls interested in computer science and prioritizing coding in schools.[59]

Wojcicki endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.[60]

Awards

Wojcicki was named #1 on Vanity Fair's New Establishment list in 2019.[61]

  • In 2013, she was named #1 on the Adweek Top 50 Execs list, which recognizes the top media executives within an organization.[62]
  • In 2017, she ranked #6 on Forbes list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.[15]
  • In 2018, she ranked #10 on Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women.[63]
  • Wojcicki is currently ranked #41 on Forbes list of America's Self-Made Women.[15]

References
  1. "#DearMe: Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube" on YouTube
  2. "California Births, 1905 - 1995". Familytreelegends.com. Retrieved March 15, 2014.
  3. Gustin, Sam (3 May 2011). "Google Ad Chief Susan Wojcicki: 'The Book Isn't Finished'". Wired.com. Retrieved 10 September 2011.
  4. "YouTube's Susan Wojcicki: 'Where's the line of free speech – are you removing voices that should be heard?'". the Guardian. 2019-08-10. Retrieved 2021-01-16.
  5. Connley, Courtney (2019-08-20). "YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki: Here's what to say when men are talking over you at a meeting". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-01-16.
  6. Orescovic, Alexi (February 5, 2014). "Google taps longtime executive Wojcicki to head YouTube". Reuters.
  7. "#38 Susan Wojcicki". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-10-27.
  8. Tramiel, Preeva. "Esther Wojcicki: A Jewish mother of the tech revolution". Retrieved 1 August 2017.
  9. Clifford, Catherine (2018-06-18). "How Anne and Susan Wojcicki's parents raised the founder of 23andMe and the CEO of YouTube". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-05-14.
  10. Sellers, Patricia. "Before Google, the Wojcicki girls learned from Mom". Fortune.com. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  11. I raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor—here’s one of the biggest mistakes I see parents making, Esther Wojcicki, Published Wed, May 8, 2019, cnbc.com.
  12. Clifford, Catherine (2018-06-18). "How Anne and Susan Wojcicki's parents raised the founder of 23andMe and the CEO of YouTube". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  13. Laporte, Nicole (August 6, 2014). "The Woman Behind the Superlatives: Three Things You Need to Know About Susan Wojcicki". The Fast Company. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  14. Sellers, Patricia (February 1, 2012). "Before Google, the Wojcicki girls learned from Mom". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  15. "Susan Wojcicki". Forbes. Retrieved 2017-11-15.
  16. Swift, Mike (February 7, 2011). "Susan Wojcicki: The most important Googler you've never heard of". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  17. "Our history in depth – Company – Google". 2012-04-02. Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2018-11-07.
  18. "Susan Wojcicki". Time. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  19. "Susan Wojcicki - "Inspirational 100" Alumna". UCLA Anderson School of Management. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  20. Think Quarterly: Innovation (US).
  21. "Susan Wojcicki - CEO @ YouTube". CrunchBase. TechCrunch.
  22. "Profile Of Susan Wojcicki: Mother Of AdSense". Search Engine Land. 2007-07-05. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  23. "The house that helped build Google - USATODAY.com". usatoday30.usatoday.com. Retrieved 2019-11-23.
  24. Stangel, Luke (August 10, 2017). "Wojcicki: Memo could deter women from tech careers". BizJournals.
  25. "Google Ads SVP Susan Wojcicki Takes Over At YouTube". Retrieved June 12, 2014.
  26. "Is This the Most Important Person in Advertising?". Retrieved 2021-01-08.
  27. Grazer, Brian (April 16, 2015). "The 100 Most Influential People". TIME. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  28. Luscombe, Belinda (August 27, 2015). "Meet YouTube's Viewmaster". TIME. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  29. "YouTube Hits 2 Billion Monthly Users, As Number Of Channels With 1 Million Subscribers Doubled Last Year". Tubefilter. 2019-02-05. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  30. Hamedy, Saba. "YouTube just hit a huge milestone". Mashable. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  31. "YouTube Claims 1.5 Billion Monthly Users in Latest Ad Sales Pitch". Fortune. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  32. Wojcicki, Susan. "Exclusive: How to Break Up the Silicon Valley Boys' Club". The Hive. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  33. Perez, Sarah. "Hands On With "YouTube Kids," Google's Newly Launched, Child-Friendly YouTube App". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  34. Dredge, Stuart (2015-08-26). "Google launches YouTube Gaming to challenge Amazon-owned Twitch". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  35. "YouTube Music is here, and it's a game changer". The Verge. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  36. "VidCon 2018: Helping creators earn more money and build stronger communities". YouTube Blog. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  37. "Google wants you to pay $9.99 per month for ad-free YouTube | VentureBeat". venturebeat.com. 2015-10-22. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  38. Lee, Dave (2017-03-01). "YouTube takes on cable with new service". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  39. "An update on our commitment to fight violent extremist content online". YouTube Blog. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  40. Alba, Davey (25 March 2017). "YouTube's Ad Problems Finally Blow Up in Google's Face". WIRED.
  41. Hern, Alex (21 March 2017). "To censor or not to censor? YouTube's double bind". theguardian.
  42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkDWHiphPz4. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  43. Newton, Casey (12 February 2018). "YouTube's CEO says Logan Paul doesn't deserve to be kicked off the platform". The Verge. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  44. YouTube Blog https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/mid-year-update-on-our-five-creator/. Retrieved 2020-05-31. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  45. Alexander, Julia (2018-10-22). "YouTube CEO says EU regulation will be bad for creators". The Verge. Retrieved 2018-10-27.
  46. "Susan Wojcicki". Salesforce.com. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  47. "Board of Directors". www.roomtoread.org. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  48. "Susan Wojcicki ('89) - "The most important Googler you've never heard of"". UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  49. "Weddings". Palo Alto Weekly. November 11, 1998. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  50. ["Forbes Profile Susan Wojcicki". Retrieved 1 August 2017.
  51. Kafka, Peter (August 12, 2014). "New YouTube Boss Susan Wojcicki Talks Talent, Music and M&A (Q&A)". Re/code. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  52. Paid Maternity Leave Is Good for Business, The Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2014
  53. Prezes YouTube wlasnie przyjechala do Polski a to dopiero poczatek, Gazeta.pl, 28 March 2017
  54. "Franciszek Wójcicki", Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia (in Polish), 2018-02-28, retrieved 2020-01-07
  55. Zalewski, Wojciech (2011-10-01). "Janina Wójcicka Hoskins (1912–1996): Portrait of an Esteemed Librarian". Slavic & East European Information Resources. 12 (4): 224–236. doi:10.1080/15228886.2011.623117. ISSN 1522-8886. S2CID 144135260.
  56. Wojcicki, Susan (2014-12-16). "Paid Maternity Leave Is Good for Business". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  57. "Susan Wojcicki: Refugees Are Trying to Escape Terror—Not Create It". Time. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  58. Isidore, Chris. "YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on gender discrimination: It still hurts". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  59. Wojcicki, Susan (2016-01-27). "Closing the Tech Industry Gender Gap". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  60. Mandelbaum, R., More Business Leaders Sign On With Clinton, Forbes, September 23, 2016.
  61. "Vanity Fair New Establishment List 2019".
  62. "The Top 50 Execs Who Make the Wheels Turn". Adweek. October 28, 2013. Retrieved March 15, 2014.
  63. Bellstrom, Kristen (24 September 2018). "Patti Davis, Rihanna, Fortune Most Powerful Women 2018: Broadsheet September 24". Fortune. Retrieved 18 October 2018.

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