YouTube shares a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki on fighting lung cancer
Photo: Dennis Troper (Facebook)
YouTube has shared a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki, the company’s former CEO and one of Google’s earliest employees, detailing her unexpected diagnosis and two-year battle with lung cancer. Wojcicki wrote the message in the last weeks of her life and had planned to publish it this fall, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Wojcicki died unexpectedly in August.
In the blog post, Wojcicki discusses life with the disease, along with her efforts to support cancer research, both before and after her diagnosis. Wojcicki writes that women die from lung cancer more than any other cancer and says that two-thirds of non-smokers diagnosed with the disease are women.
Her message begins:
At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I had almost no symptoms and was running a few miles a day at the time. I had never smoked so I was totally shocked with this diagnosis.
My life changed dramatically after that day. I decided to resign from my role as CEO of YouTube, to focus on my health and my family. I was able to live an almost normal life, thanks to modern medicine. I continued to serve on boards: Salesforce, Planet Labs and Waymo, as well as on nonprofit boards like Room to Read and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). But most of my time shifted to focus on cancer research.
Before my diagnosis, my husband and I had already been actively supporting cancer research and new technologies like genetic sequencing and data science, with the hope of shedding light on new cures. After my diagnosis, we stepped up our efforts as we quickly learned lung cancer was under researched and misunderstood. We have since given millions of dollars to support early detection research, new immunotherapy options that could cure cancer, building a community of genotyped patients to better understand the disease, and fundamental research to better understand the mechanisms and science behind the cancers.
Wojcicki was a critical part of YouTube and Google, having joined the latter as its 16th employee in 1998. Under her leadership as CEO from 2014 to 2023, YouTube fostered and grew the online creator celebrity phenomenon we know today.
You can read the full message at YouTube’s blog.
Photo: Dennis Troper (Facebook)
YouTube has shared a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki, the company’s former CEO and one of Google’s earliest employees, detailing her unexpected diagnosis and two-year battle with lung cancer. Wojcicki wrote the message in the last weeks of her life and had planned to publish it this fall, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Wojcicki died unexpectedly in August.
In the blog post, Wojcicki discusses life with the disease, along with her efforts to support cancer research, both before and after her diagnosis. Wojcicki writes that women die from lung cancer more than any other cancer and says that two-thirds of non-smokers diagnosed with the disease are women.
Her message begins:
At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I had almost no symptoms and was running a few miles a day at the time. I had never smoked so I was totally shocked with this diagnosis.
My life changed dramatically after that day. I decided to resign from my role as CEO of YouTube, to focus on my health and my family. I was able to live an almost normal life, thanks to modern medicine. I continued to serve on boards: Salesforce, Planet Labs and Waymo, as well as on nonprofit boards like Room to Read and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). But most of my time shifted to focus on cancer research.
Before my diagnosis, my husband and I had already been actively supporting cancer research and new technologies like genetic sequencing and data science, with the hope of shedding light on new cures. After my diagnosis, we stepped up our efforts as we quickly learned lung cancer was under researched and misunderstood. We have since given millions of dollars to support early detection research, new immunotherapy options that could cure cancer, building a community of genotyped patients to better understand the disease, and fundamental research to better understand the mechanisms and science behind the cancers.
Wojcicki was a critical part of YouTube and Google, having joined the latter as its 16th employee in 1998. Under her leadership as CEO from 2014 to 2023, YouTube fostered and grew the online creator celebrity phenomenon we know today.
You can read the full message at YouTube’s blog.