Susan Wojcicki, the architect behind YouTube's spectacular rise and one of Silicon Valley's most influential figures, has passed away at the age of 56 after a two-year battle with cancer.
Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO and longtime Google executive, dies at 56
The news was announced Saturday by her husband of 26 years and fellow Googler, Dennis Troper. He called her impact on their family and the world "immeasurable."
The California native and dual citizen of Poland was working for Intel as a marketing manager when she made the famously pivotal decision to rent out her garage to two startup founders named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The duo tried to turn their senior project into the behemoth that would become Google — along with her washer and dryer.
After many late nights sharing pizzas and M&Ms with Brin and Page, the Harvard, University of California, Santa Cruz and UCLA graduate became Google's sixteenth employee and first chief marketing officer. That bold move, taken back in 1999, locked the trajectory of her career in a story so quintessentially Silicon Valley.
