Susan Wojcicki, an innovative and influential tech industry pioneer who shared inspiring remarks with the Johns Hopkins University Class of 2014 on its Commencement Day a decade ago, died on Aug. 9 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. She was 56.
Wojcicki served as CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023, overseeing its growth into one of the world's most influential media companies. She had previously worked at Google as senior vice president of advertising and commerce, where she was instrumental in the company's $1.6 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006. In 1998, the Silicon Valley visionary famously rented her garage to two Stanford grad students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who would soon create Google in the humble Menlo Park, California, space. Wojcicki was Google employee No. 16.
Johns Hopkins conferred an honorary doctorate upon Wojcicki in 2014 for her "visionary role in revolutionizing the way we search for and share information, for contributing not just to the businesses [she worked] for but to the way we understand business today, and for inspiring the next generation of leaders." During her Commencement remarks at Homewood Field, she drew on her early years working for Google, then an unknown company, to encourage graduates to take risks.
Video credit: Johns Hopkins University
"Life doesn't always present you with the perfect opportunity at the perfect time," Wojcicki said. "Opportunities come when you least expect them, or when you're not ready for them. Rarely are opportunities presented to you in the perfect way, in a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. … Opportunities, the good ones, they're messy and confusing and hard to recognize. They're risky. They challenge you."
Wojcicki's address was selected as one of the year's most "inspiring and unforgettable" commencement addresses by a professional association of commencement and convocation officers from universities across the country.
Wojcicki graduated from Harvard University with honors in 1990. She received a master's in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA from UCLA.
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