Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Citigroup is selling its trust business, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is concerned about Elon Musk using Tesla resources to benefit his other companies, and we remember Susan Wojcicki.
- Rest in peace. Silicon Valley lost a pioneering executive who broke barriers for working women on Friday, when former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki died at 56 after two years living with lung cancer.
Wojcicki was famously part of Google from its earliest days, renting her garage to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. She advocated for the tech giant to buy YouTube in 2006 and served as its CEO for nine years as the platform grew to define the modern media era, with the accompanying challenges of massive growth. Today, users stream more than 1 billion hours of video via the platform every day.
In a Facebook post mourning Wojcicki, Sheryl Sandberg remembered her as the first woman to lead a major tech company. Beyond her professional achievements, Wojcicki laid a path for working women to follow. No doubt, she was influenced by her family of origin; her mother Esther Wojcicki wrote a book about raising successful children, including Wojcicki's sister, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki. Wojcicki herself was a mother of five, and was the first Google employee to take maternity leave.
While building a career as one of Silicon Valley's most successful female executives, she didn't shy away from her identity as a mother. In a 2014 interview at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, for example, she spoke about how her kids helped her understand the appeal of the then-relatively new YouTubers who streamed themselves playing video games.
Wojcicki's friends, colleagues, and admirers noted her impact on Google and the rest of Silicon Valley. "I don't believe my career would be what it is today without her unwavering support," Sandberg wrote. Melinda French Gates remembered Wojcicki as a "visionary leader who intentionally pried open doors for the many young women who have followed her footsteps." Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai called Wojcicki "one of the most active and vibrant people I have ever met."
Recently, Wojcicki's family had suffered tragedy. Her son Marco Troper died at 19 in February. Her husband, Denis Troper, wrote on Facebook that Wojcicki "was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many." To the women who followed her in the tech industry and beyond, she was a role model who, in many ways, made their careers possible.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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