Arts@Work 2: a Monthly Profile Series Which Showcases Humanities Graduates Who Have Forged Extraordinarily Successful Careers Across a Variety of Professional Fields

Arts@Work 2: a monthly profile series which showcases humanities graduates who have forged extraordinarily successful careers across a variety of professional fields.

Susan Wojcicki, CEO You Tube

Susan Wojcicki is an American technology executive and has been the Chief Executive Officer of YouTube since 2014. YouTube is a video-sharing platform, founded in 2005 and bought by Google in 2006 - an acquisition which Wojcicki was instrumental in.

Wojcicki studied history and literature at Harvard University, graduating in 1990 with honours. She then went on to receive a Masters of Science in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master of Business Administration from UCLA.

At the beginning of her career, Wojcicki worked in marketing at Intel Corporation in California, before becoming Google’s first marketing manager in 1999. She was one the founding members of Google, having met the founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) through leasing her garage for their initial office in California. In the following 20 years, Wojcicki would work on different projects within Google, from Google Images and Google Books to directing Advertisement and Commerce for the tech company. She was the driving force behind AdSense, Google Analytics and Google Video service, and also suggested and led the acquisition of YouTube by Google.

Within a space of a year, as Chief Executive, Wojcicki nearly doubled the value of YouTube from $1.65 billion to $3.1 billion. She has overseen the development of the platform in multiple areas, including introducing specific applications for different groups of users interested in particular content such as gaming, family, or music. In recent years, Wojcicki has also guided the company around issues of hate speech and violent extremism, and censorship. She is also a prominent public figure in America, visiting schools and encouraging students to follow paths which they are passionate about. This is coupled with her emphasis on educational content on YouTube as a priority for the company; YouTube Learning invests in grants and promotion to support education-based creator content.

“I value my humanities degree. It helps me grapple with big questions and the implications of decisions.”