Susan Wojcicki

Susan Wojcicki (1968–2024) was an American technology executive who served as chief executive officer of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. She joined Google as its sixteenth employee in 1999, shortly after renting her garage in Menlo Park, California, to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for use as an early office space. As a senior vice president at Google, Wojcicki oversaw key product areas including advertising revenue products and advocated for the company's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006, which expanded its user base to over 2.5 billion monthly active users during her tenure.

Susan Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968, in Santa Clara, California. Her father, Stanley Wojcicki, was a Polish-born physicist who fled communist Poland at age 12 in 1949 and later became a professor and chair of the physics department at Stanford University. Her mother, Esther Wojcicki (née Hochman), was an American-born educator and journalist of Russian-Jewish descent whose parents had immigrated from Russia in the 1920s. The family resided in the Stanford area, where the parents emphasized self-reliance, creativity, and high achievement, fostering an environment that encouraged intellectual curiosity and independence among the children.

Susan Wojcicki and her husband, Dennis Troper, established Troper Wojcicki Philanthropies (TWP) in 2006, committing over $100 million to initiatives supporting researchers, academics, and entrepreneurs focused on positive societal change, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. The associated Troper Wojcicki Foundation, with reported assets exceeding $289 million, directed grants toward education, health, religion, and Jewish causes across multiple U.S. locations. In June 2023, Wojcicki joined the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of her estimated $780 million fortune during her lifetime or in her will, aligning with a pattern of targeted philanthropy common among Silicon Valley executives rather than broad, unrestricted aid.