Anne Wojcicki

Anne E. Wojcicki (/wuːˈtʃɪtski/ woo-CHITS-kee;[1] born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe.

Anne Wojcicki
Born	(1973-07-28) July 28, 1973 Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Education	Yale University (BS)
Known for	Co-founder and CEO of 23andMe
Net worth	$690 million (June 2019)
Spouse(s)	Sergey Brin ​ ( m. 2007; div. 2015)
Children	2
Parent(s)	Stanley Wojcicki Esther Wojcicki
Relatives	Susan Wojcicki (sister)

Early life

Wojcicki, the youngest of three daughters, was born in Palo Alto, California.[2] Her parents are Esther Wojcicki (née Hochman), an educator of Russian-Jewish descent, and Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish-born physics professor emeritus at Stanford University. Her two sisters are Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube and a former executive at Google,[3] and Janet Wojcicki, anthropologist at the University of California, San Francisco.[4][5]

Wojcicki grew up on the Stanford campus. When she was two, she learned how to figure skate, and later started playing ice hockey.[6] She attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, and was an editor for The Oracle, the school newspaper, and won a scholarship for her sports stories.[4][7]

Education

Wojcicki attended Yale University, where she was a competitive ice skater and played on the varsity women's ice hockey team.[8][9] She graduated with a B.S. in biology in 1996.[10] She did molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, San Diego.[7]

Career

After graduating, Wojcicki worked as a health care consultant at Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based investment fund[7] and at Investor AB.[6] She was a health care investment analyst[8] for 4 years, overseeing health care investments, focusing on biotechnology companies. Disillusioned by the culture of Wall Street and its attitude towards health care,[11] she quit in 2000, intending to take the MCAT and enroll in medical school. Instead, she decided to focus on research.[6]

In 2006, she co-founded 23andMe with Linda Avey.[12] 23andMe is a privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company, based in Sunnyvale, California, that provides genetic testing.[13] The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The company's personal genome test kit was named "Invention of the Year" by Time magazine in 2008.[14] From 2015, the FDA started to give approval to 23andMe's health-related tests, including risk from cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, certain cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and coeliac disease.[15][16] In 2018, 23andMe entered into a four-year collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to develop new medicines.[17][18]

Wojcicki is also a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company, Xconomy.[19] In October 2013, Fast Company named Wojcicki "The Most Daring CEO".[6][20] She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize.[21]

Personal life

Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in May 2007.[8] They have a son, Benji Wojin, born in December 2008, and a daughter, Chloe Wojin, born in late 2011.[22] Wojcicki is not religious.[23] The couple stopped living together in 2013,[24] and they divorced in 2015.[25]

Her grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a People's Party and Polish People's Party politician who had been elected MP during the Polish legislative election, 1947.[26] Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress who was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.[27]

References

1. "Elle X Klossy | Episode 1 | Anne Wojcicki Founder of 23andMe". February 9, 2016. Retrieved April 30, 2019.
2. Clifford, Catherine (June 18, 2018). "How Anne and Susan Wojcicki's parents raised the founder of 23andMe and the CEO of YouTube". CNBC. Archived from the original on January 3, 2020.
3. Barry Schwartz (February 27, 2013). "Anne Wojcicki, Google's Co-Founders Wife, On TMZ With Google Glass". Search Engine Roundtable. Archived from the original on 2013-06-03. Retrieved July 2, 2013. Anne Wojcicki, married to Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin and the sister of Susan Wojcicki, a Google executive...
4. Sellers, Patricia (February 1, 2012). "Before Google, the Wojcicki girls learned from Mom". Fortune Magazine. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
5. Clifford, Catherine (2018-06-18). "How Anne and Susan Wojcicki's parents raised the founder of 23andMe and the CEO of YouTube". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
6. Murphy, Elizabeth (October 14, 2013). "Inside 23andMe Founder Anne Wojcicki's $99 DNA Revolution". The Fast Company. Archived from the original on 2014-10-03. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
7. Duke, Scott (May 16, 2007). "Google co-founder Sergey Brin gets hitched in the Bahamas". San Jose Mercury News. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
8. Hafner, Katie (May 29, 2007). "Silicon Valley Wide-Eyed Over a Bride". The New York Times. Retrieved July 2, 2013. Anne Wojcicki, the 33-year-old former health care investment analyst who this month married a handsome young computer scientist..
9. "100 Marathons' Worth of Miles Awaits Sam Fox '09 in Charitable Effort for Parkinson's". August 4, 2011. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
10. 23andMe. "board members". Archived from the original on 2012-10-23. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
11. Cha, Ariana Eunjung (June 27, 2014). "23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki's Washington charm offensive". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2014-10-18. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
12. 23andMe. "corporate info". Archived from the original on 2012-11-13. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
13. "Fact Sheet". 23andme.com. Archived from the original on 2013-01-19. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
14. Hamilton, Anita (October 29, 2008). "Best Inventions of 2008". Content Time. Archived from the original on 2012-03-22. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
15. Silverberg, David (2018-12-03). "Good genes? The sisters who put the rest of us to shame". Retrieved 2019-03-12.
16. Johnson, Eric (2018-10-20). "23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki says 'one of our biggest competitors' is fake science on sites like Goop". Recode. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
17. Herper, Matthew. "23andMe Gets $300 Million Boost From GlaxoSmithKline To Develop New Drugs". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
18. "Glaxo invests $300m in 23andMe to use its genomic data for research - BioNews". www.bionews.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
19. "About Our Mission, Team, and Editorial Ethics". Xconomy. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
20. 23andMe (October 19, 2013). "CEO Anne Wojcicki named "The Most Daring CEO in America" by @FastCompany Read the cover story". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2015-01-29. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
21. "Breakthrough Prize – Board". breakthroughprize.org. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
22. Welch, Liz (May 29, 2012). "The Way I Work: Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe". Inc.
23. Bloom, Nate (September 10, 2013). "Jews in the News: Diane Von Furstenburg, Michael Kors and Barbara Hershey". Tampa Jewish Federation. Brin wed biologist Wojcicki in 2007 and the couple now have two children. Neither Brin nor Wojcicki (whose mother is Jewish) are religious, but they did have some Jewish touches at their secular wedding: a chuppah-- and Brin stepped on a glass
24. Gannes, Liz (August 28, 2013). "Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe Co-Founder Anne Wojcicki Have Split". All Things Digital. Archived from the original on 2013-09-07. Retrieved 2013-09-07.
25. Lorenzetti, Laura (2015-06-24). "Google's Sergey Brin and 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki legally divorced". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2015-06-26. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
26. "Oficjalna strona Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej / Aktualności / Wydarzenia / Prezydent spotkał się z prezes YouTube". www.prezydent.pl. Retrieved 2019-03-29.
27. Zalewski, Wojciech (2011-10-01). "Janina Wójcicka Hoskins (1912–1996): Portrait of an Esteemed Librarian". Slavic & East European Information Resources. 12 (4): 224–236. doi:10.1080/15228886.2011.623117. ISSN 1522-8886.