Anne Wojcicki

About Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki was born July 28, 1973, in Palo Alto, California, the third child born to Esther and Stanley Wojcicki.^[4] Esther Wojcicki is the child of Russian Jewish immigrants. She worked as a teacher at Palo Alto High School for 36 years and as a journalist, writing for several widely distributed publications.^[5] Wojcicki’s father, Stanley, was born in Poland but immigrated to the United States as a child to escape communism. He is a renowned physicist and the former chair of Stanford University’s physics department.^[6]

Wojcicki says her parents were very supportive of her and her sisters as children. She explains, “My parents really looked at us always as like mini-adults. I think the one thing that my parents really did is they gave us a taste of freedom. And they encouraged it. They encouraged us to find our passions, they weren’t controlling.”^[7] 

The Wojcicki parents’ supportive parenting style led each of their children to achieve major success in adulthood. Wojcikci’s oldest sister, Susan, was CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023.^[8] Her other sister, Janet, is a successful epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.^[9] 

Because of their father’s position at Stanford University, Wojcicki and her sisters grew up on Stanford’s campus.^[7] She attended Gunn High School, writing and editing the school paper and earning a scholarship for her stories.^[10] After high school, Wojcicki attended Yale University, earning a Bachelor’s of Biology in 1996. While at Yale, she was a competitive figure skater and played on the varsity women’s ice hockey team.^[11] 

Early Career

After college, Wojcicki spent ten years working as an analyst and healthcare consultant at Investor AB, Ardsley Partners, Andor Capital Management, and Passport Capital.^[12] But after a few years in the industry, she lost interest in healthcare investing. 

She explains, “The last couple [of] years in the hedge fund world, I wasn’t terribly happy with investing. There was a time period when pharma wasn’t doing a lot of innovative research. It was just about reformulating drugs or maximizing hospital payments, and that wasn’t terribly interesting to me.”^[13]

She initially thought she would go to medical school after leaving the investment world, but she instead became interested in starting a genetics company.^[13] 

23andMe

In 2006, Anne Wojcicki connected with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to start the biotech company 23andMe.^[14] The company began offering genetic tests to consumers in 2007.^[15] In 2008, TIME named the test the invention of the year.^[16]  

In 2013, 23andMe hit a regulatory roadblock when the FDA told the company its genetic tests did not comply with FDA standards. The company stopped selling medical-related genetic testing until 2015, when it received regulatory approval after showing its data was accurate.^[17]  

In 2021, 23andMe went public through a merger with a special acquisition company. After the merger, 23andMe was valued at $3.5 billion, making Wojcicki a billionaire.^[18] However, the company’s value has steadily declined since 2021. As of April 2023, 23andMe is worth $900 million, according to Yahoo Finance.^[19]  

Other Ventures

In 2012, Anne Wojcicki founded The Breakthrough Prizes with Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and her then-husband Sergey Brin. The prizes recognize major scientific advances, awarding $3 million to winners each year. Wojcicki is on the board of The Breakthrough Prizes and presents the awards to winners each year with the other board members.^[20]  

Wojcicki is also interested in longevity research and invested in longevity company Gameto’s Series A round of funding.^[21]   

While Wojcicki was married to Sergey Brin, they donated millions of dollars to charity through the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. Their contributions went toward Parkinson’s research, Wikipedia, and several other causes.^[22][23] Wojcicki continues to run her philanthropic efforts through her non-profit organization, The Anne Wojcicki Foundation. 

Personal Life

In 2007, Wojcicki married co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin. Wojcicki met Brin when he and his business partner Larry Page sublet Susan Wojcicki’s garage while Google was getting started. The couple held their wedding in the Bahamas.^[24] They have two children together—Benji, born in 2008, and Chloe, born in 2011. Wojcicki and Brin gave their children the last name Wojin, a mashup of their last names.^[25] After Brin was involved in an affair with a Google employee, the couple separated in 2013 and divorced in 2015.^[26]

Wojcicki’s next high-profile relationship was in 2017 with baseball player Alex Rodriguez, but living on opposite sides of the country and managing parenting obligations caused the relationship to end.^[27] 

In July 2019, Wojcicki gave birth to her third child, though she did not have a partner at the time. She explained her decision, saying, “Whether you’re in a relationship or not should not dictate whether or not you have the ability to have children. I’m very stubborn. When there’s something I want to do, I get it done.”^[28]

Anne Wojcicki Today

Wojcicki continues to work as the 23andMe CEO. She sees the company as an avenue for significantly improving healthcare. She says, “I do really think that we’re at a tipping point now where the medical world is really interested in adopting genetic information, but they don’t have the training.”^[29]

Wojcicki explained the direction she wants to go with her company, saying, “We are actively thinking and planning about how do we actually have our medical group be able to educate other clinicians so that they know what to do. And how does 23andMe really become that leader of genomic medicine so that we can help others deliver better kind of care?”^[29]