Susan Diane Wojcicki

Susan Diane Wojcicki is a technology executive, presently working as the CEO of the video-sharing website YouTube.

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. Wojcicki studied history and literature at Harvard University and graduated with honors in 1990. In September 1998, the same month that Google was incorporated, its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up an office in Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park. She became Google's first marketing manager in 1999, where she worked on the initial viral marketing programs, helped create the company's longtime logo with designer Ruth Kedar, and spearheaded the first Google Doodles. She also co–developed and launched Google Image Search with engineer Huican Zhu.

Susan Wojcicki stares inspirationally at the camera with valor and composure only matched by the rival titans of Silicon Valley. — Susan Wojcicki in a 2019 Interview. *Source: Getty Images*

In 2003, Wojcicki helped lead the development of one of Google's pivotal advertising products: AdSense. She served as its first product manager, and for her efforts, was awarded the Google Founders' Award. 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. While these were certainly groundbreaking developments, she was quoted at the time as saying the “book isn't finished”. While controversial, she was responsible for shaping the world of online advertising into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. 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. 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. She became the CEO of Youtube in 2014.

Susan Wojcicki smiles during an interview — Susan Wojcicki speaks at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco
on Oct. 9, 2014. *Source: Kimberly White / Getty Images*

In the time that Wojcicki has been CEO of YouTube, the company announced that it had reached 2 billion logged–in users a month and that users were watching one billion hours a day. In January 2021, she announced that over the previous three years, YouTube had paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies. 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.

Fun Facts

Susan was vital to marketing Google's search engine. She incorporated Google search bars in university websites so that students could familizarize themselves with the search engine at an early age.
She has been instrumental in Youtube's push toward VR and 3D content, paving the way for many new technological innovations based on the largest video-sharing platform in the world.
Wojcicki is an optimist and has proven that being a CEO while being a parent is possible. She has been able to balance and maintain a good life in both worlds, dedicating two hours every night for family dinner. This time isn't negotiable and nothing can ever be scheduled during this time.