23andMe’s former CEO Anne Wojcicki will make headlines this week with a bold $305 million bid to retract control of the DNA testing company she co-founded. In Silicon Valley, Anne is not only known as an accomplished entrepreneur, but also the youngest entrepreneur among the legendary three wojcicki sisters.
Anne, 51, is famous achievers along with her older sisters Janet and Susan. Janet is a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Susan served as CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023 (she died on August 9, 2024 at the age of 56, fighting non-small cell lung cancer for a two-year battle.)
The mother of the Wojcicki sisters, Esther Wojcicki, is a well-known educator and parenting expert, and their father, Stanley Wojcicki, is a professor of physics at Stanford University. In 2023, Mattel respects them with a range of Barbie Dolls, aiming to inspire young girls to pursue careers in the field of STEM.
This is the life of three sisters.
Anne Wojcicki
Anne Wojcicki received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Yale in 1996 and co-founded 23andme with biologist Linda Avey a decade later. By 2008, the company’s retail saliva-based genetic testing was named Time magazine’s invention of the year. The same period also marked a significant change in her personal life: She married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007, and the couple had two children before their divorce in 2015 after having a relationship with Google employees.
23AndMe became the first FDA-approved company to provide information on genetic variation directly to consumers. At its peak, it reached a market capitalization of $6 billion.
But, after the Nasdaq buzzed, the company struggled. The rate of interest rates is rising compared to consumer demand, while increasing attention is being paid to its genetic database. In 2023, hackers breached the system and exposed the personal data of millions of customers within five months, causing a major blow. By fall 2024, 23andMe lost 98% of its value, and its independent board members resigned. In March 2025, the company filed for bankruptcy. Stocks fell 50% to $0.88, and Anne resigned as CEO.
Now, just a few months later, she has made a bold effort to win control of the company she has built.
Janet Wojcicki
Janet Wojcicki is an anthropologist and epidemiologist and is a professor at the University of San Francisco. She received her PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. Her research focuses on early life risk factors for obesity, especially among high-risk populations.
In addition to her academic work, Janet has developed longitudinally born pregnant women to study how nutrition affects newborn outcomes. She also serves on the board of directors of the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki, the eldest son of three sisters, is Google’s 16th employee. She studied history and literature at Harvard, and later earned her degree in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1998, after returning to her hometown of Menlo Park, she rented her garage to Google Inc., which the company used as its first headquarters. A year later, she officially joined the company.
Over Google’s 20-year career, Susan has helped launch several key products, including Google Images, Google Books, and Adsense. She also played a central role in Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube and has been CEO for nine years. In 2023, she quits to focus on “family, health and personal programs.” The next year, she died of lung cancer.
Susan married Dennis Troper, a Google executive, in 1998, and the couple has five children. Their son Marco was 19 years old when he was a freshman in his first year at UC Berkeley.
