Former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki died in August of lung cancer at the age of 56. She was Google's 16th employee and reportedly rented out her garage to Google's founders Sergey Brin AND Larry Page in the late 1990s when they were forming the company.
Monday, YouTube shared a letter they titled, “From Susan,” which Wojcicki wrote before she died. It would be one blog post she created for Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
“Susan wrote a post in the last weeks of her life that she planned to publish this fall,” Neal Mohan, YouTube's current CEO, wrote of Wojcicki.
Wojcicki battled lung cancer for two years and spent her time educating people about the disease and advocating for research funding.
“Through Susan, I learned that lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in women,” Mohan said. “She wanted to change those odds.”
IN PAPERWojcicki said she was “completely shocked with this diagnosis” because she never smoked and ran several kilometers a day.
The 'most important lesson' I learned
In the letter, Wojcicki, who was YouTube's CEO for nearly a decade (2014-2023), said the “most important lesson” she learned “is just to focus and enjoy the present!”
“Life is unpredictable for everyone, with many unknowns, but there is a lot of beauty in everyday life,” she added. “My goals moving forward are to enjoy the present as much as possible and fight for a better understanding and cure for this disease.”
Read the full letter, here.