WIRED Senior Writer Steven Levy and Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President of Advertising at Google attend the WIRED Business Conference Disruptive by Design in Partnership with MDC Partners at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on May 3, 2011 in New York City.
Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising at Google, has been called “the most important Googler you’ve never heard of,” but don’t let her low-key style fool you — Wojcicki is a dynamo.
A graduate of Harvard University, Wojcicki earned two advanced degrees, one from UCLA, the other from UC Santa Cruz. Wojcicki played a key role in Google’s creation story: In 1998, company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented space in her Palo Alto, California garage for $1700 per month. (Needless to say, as Google’s 16th employee, Wojcicki has been paid back).
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Wojcicki would later play an instrumental role in two of Google’s most important deals: the $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006, and the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. Wojcicki is currently responsible for Google’s most lucrative products, including the company’s main advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Her particular focus these days is Google’s mobile advertising efforts. Wojcicki’s sister Anne, the founder of do-it-yourself DNA testing company 23andMe, is married to Brin. In 2011, Susan Wojcicki was named number 16 on Forbes‘ list of the most powerful women in the world.