Susan Wojcicki, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the online video sharing and social media platform, YouTube, has resigned from her position.
Suzanne, who joined the San Bruno, California company as its first employee in 1999, left the YouTube leadership after nine years as CEO.
In a statement released Thursday, the outgoing YouTube CEO said she would begin “a new chapter focused on my family, my health, and my personal projects that I love.”
“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, my health, and the personal projects I love,” read part of her statement in part.
She said:
“The time is right for me, and I feel able to do it because we have a great leadership team at YouTube. When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was to bring in a great leadership team.
In the statement, Susan Wojcicki revealed that YouTube’s current Chief Product Officer will replace her as CEO, stating that she is a perfect fit for the position.
One of those leaders was Neil Mohan, and he will be the new Senior Vice President and President of YouTube. I have spent nearly 15 years of my career working with Neil, first when he moved to Google through the acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007 and his role grew to become Vice President The first for display and video ads.Became Product Manager at YouTube in 2015.
Since then, he has built a first-class product and user experience team, played pivotal roles in launching some of our biggest products, including YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium and Short, and led our Trust and Safety team, ensuring that YouTube lives up to its responsibility. As a global platform. He has a great feel for our products, our business, our creator and user communities, and our people. Neil would make a great leader on YouTube.”
Founded on February 14, 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Gwed Karim, YouTube is owned by Google and boasts of being the second most visited website after Google Search. The platform currently has more than 2.5 billion monthly users.
Susan Wojcicki, who has spent 20 years in the tech industry, was actively involved in the creation of Google in 1998 when Steve, Chad and Javed set up their first office in her garage.
She was the company’s first female marketing director in 1999, and later led the online advertising business on YouTube and the original video service.
She was the one who suggested that YouTube be acquired by Google in 2006 in a $1.65 billion deal.