Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki
File:Anne Wojcicki (36938473750) (cropped).jpg Wojcicki in 2017
Born	(1973-07-28) July 28, 1973 Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Education	Yale University (BS)
Known for	Co-founder and CEO of 23andMe
Spouse(s)	Sergey Brin (m. 2007; div. 2015)
Children	3
Parent(s)	Esther Wojcicki (mother) Stanley Wojcicki (father)
Relatives	Susan Wojcicki (sister) Janet Wojcicki (sister)

Anne E. Wojcicki (/wuːˈtʃɪtski/ woo-CHITS-kee; born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and is CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza. She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize.

Early life and education

Wojcicki was born in Palo Alto, California, and has two older sisters—Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, and Janet Wojcicki, an anthropologist and epidemiologist. Her maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her parents are Esther Wojcicki (née Hochman), an educator and journalist, and Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish-born physics professor emeritus at Stanford University. The three sisters grew up on Stanford's campus. When she was fourteen, she learned how to figure skate, and later started playing ice hockey.

Wojcicki attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto where she edited the school newspaper The Oracle, and won a scholarship for her sports stories. She received a Bachelor of Science in biology at Yale University in 1996. During her time there she played on the varsity women's ice hockey team. She conducted molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health and at the University of California, San Diego.

Career

After graduating, Wojcicki worked as a health care consultant at Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based investment fund and at Investor AB. She was a health care investment analyst for four years, overseeing health care investments, focusing on biotechnology companies. Disillusioned by the culture of Wall Street and its attitude towards health care, she decided to forego taking the MCAT to enroll in medical school and instead decided to focus on biological research.

Wojcicki co-founded and is CEO of 23andMe, a direct to consumer DNA testing company, which allows for consumers to test for ancestry and health risks. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza with a goal of providing common people access to their genetic information, which could further provide information on cures for diseases or treatments, especially with the help of GSK plc and their $300 million investment. Wojcicki has expressed interest in "revolutioniz[ing] health care" with DNA testing, as it could provide consumers with enough information to predict potential genetic illnesses.

Consumers can purchase testing kits which provide information on ancestry, health, and genetic traits. The company takes saliva samples that are mailed in by buyers, and processes the genetic information, posting the results online for the buyer to view.

The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The company's personal genome test kit was named "Invention of the Year" by Time magazine in 2008. Beginning in 2015, the Food and Drug Administration started to give approval to 23andMe's health-related tests, including risk from cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, certain cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and coeliac disease. In 2018, 23andMe entered into a four-year collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to develop new medicines.

Wojcicki is a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company Xconomy. In October 2013, Fast Company named Wojcicki "The Most Daring CEO". She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize. As of 2020, she is listed as number 93 in Forbes list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women. In August 2021 Wojcicki joined the board of Cazoo. Also that year, when she took 23andMe public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, Forbes dubbed her the "newest self-made billionaire."

Wojcicki has been closely involved in the downtown business district of Los Altos, California. In approximately 2005, Wojcicki and her then husband Sergey Brin bought at least half a dozen commercial properties in downtown Los Altos. Under the name of Passerelle Investment Company, they sponsored events and urban planning initiatives throughout the downtown business district. In 2016, the firm was renamed to Los Altos Community Investments and given a tighter focus on commercial real-estate development. In 2021, Los Altos Community Investments opened a food hall in downtown Los Altos called the State Street Market.

Personal life

Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in May 2007. They have a son, born in 2008, and a daughter born in late 2011. They separated in 2013, and divorced in 2015. Brin and Wojcicki jointly run the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. They have donated extensively to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and in 2009 gave $1 million to support the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. She joined The Giving Pledge in 2022, committing to donating most of her wealth. In July 2019, Wojcicki gave birth to her third child, a daughter, through sperm donation.

Her grandfather Franciszek Wójcicki, was a People's Party and Polish People's Party politician who was elected MP during the 1947 Polish legislative election. Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress who was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.