Anne Wojcicki, the previous CEO of 23andMe, is making headlines this week with a daring $305 million bid to reclaim management of the DNA-testing firm she co-founded. In Silicon Valley, Anne is thought not solely as an achieved entrepreneur, but in addition the youngest of the legendary three Wojcicki sisters.
Anne, 51, and her elder sisters, Janet and Susan, are all celebrated excessive achievers. Janet is a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology on the College of California, San Francisco. Susan was the CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. (She handed away on Aug 9, 2024 at age 56 following a two-year battle with non–small-cell lung most cancers.)
The Wojcicki sisters had been raised in a quiet Silicon Valley suburb by their mom, Esther Wojcicki, a famend educator and parenting knowledgeable, and their father, Stanley Wojcicki, a revered physics professor at Stanford. In 2023, Mattel honored them with a line of Barbie dolls designed to encourage younger women to pursue careers in STEM fields.
Right here’s a take a look at the lives of the three sisters.
Anne Wojcicki
Anne Wojcicki earned a B.S. in biology from Yale College in 1996 and co-founded 23andMe a decade later with fellow biologist, Linda Avey. By 2008, the corporate’s retail saliva-based genetic take a look at was named TIME journal’s Invention of the Yr. That very same interval marked main modifications in her private life as properly: she married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007, and the couple had two kids earlier than divorcing in 2015, following reviews of Brin’s affair with a Google worker.
23andMe grew to become the primary firm to obtain FDA approval to ship genetic variant info on to shoppers. At its peak, it reached a market capitalization of $6 billion.
However following its buzzy Nasdaq debut, the corporate struggled. Rising rates of interest weighed on shopper demand, whereas rising privateness issues about its genetic database drew scrutiny. A significant blow got here in 2023, when hackers breached the system and uncovered the non-public knowledge of thousands and thousands of consumers over a five-month span. By fall 2024, 23andMe had misplaced 98 p.c of its worth, its unbiased board members had all stepped down. In March 2025, the corporate filed for chapter. Shares plunged 50 p.c to $0.88, and Anne resigned as CEO.
Now, simply months later, she’s returned in a daring effort to win again management of the corporate she constructed.
Janet Wojcicki
Janet Wojcicki is an anthropologist and epidemiologist who serves as a professor on the College of San Francisco. She earned her Ph.D. from the College of California, Los Angeles. Her analysis facilities on youth danger elements for weight problems, significantly inside high-risk populations.
Past her tutorial work, Janet has developed longitudinal beginning cohorts of pregnant girls to check how vitamin influences neonatal outcomes. She additionally serves on the board of administrators for the San Francisco Common Hospital Basis.
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki, the eldest of the three sisters, was the sixteenth worker at Google. She studied historical past and literature at Harvard, later incomes levels in economics from the College of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA from UCLA. In 1998, after returning to her hometown of Menlo Park, she rented out the storage of her residence to Google Inc., which used it as its first headquarters. A 12 months later, she formally joined the corporate.
Over her 20-year profession at Google, Susan helped launch a number of key merchandise, together with Google Photos, Google Books and AdSense. She additionally performed a central function in Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube and later served as YouTube’s CEO for 9 years. In 2023, she stepped right down to give attention to “household, well being and private initiatives.” She handed away the next 12 months from lung most cancers.
Susan married Dennis Troper, a Google govt, in 1998, and the couple had 5 kids. Their son, Marco, tragically died at age 19 from an unintentional overdose throughout his freshman 12 months at UC Berkeley.
