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Susan Wojcicki’s roles as a key player in Google’s founding and later as CEO of YouTube have earned her a place in Silicon Valley history. But to her friends in the Peninsula Jewish community, she was also a down-to-earth, friendly face at synagogue and a generous philanthropist who lived her values.

Wojcicki, a Los Altos resident, died Friday at the age of 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. The mother of five, whose youngest is 9 years old, also faced immense grief in her final months. Her 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died in February during his freshman year at UC Berkeley. She told J. in March, “We’re all in shock and very, very sad.” 

Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, shared the news of her death on Facebook on Friday night.

“My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer. Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,” he wrote. “Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time.” 

Wojcicki famously rented out her Menlo Park garage in 1998 to Google’s 25-year-old co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in the earliest days of the company. Wojcicki was hired as Google’s 16th employee in 1999, starting as the company’s marketing manager. She became CEO of Google-owned YouTube in 2014. 

Her husband is also a longtime Google employee. A director of product management, Troper has worked there for more than 21 years. 

In February 2023, Wojcicki announced that she was stepping down to focus on her “family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.” 

Along with her family, she was a member and regular participant at Congregation Kol Emeth, a Conservative synagogue in Palo Alto, according to Rabbi David Booth. 

“Susan was a really remarkable person, and that was true, of course, in her professional life, but it was also true when I saw her as a parent,” Booth told J. on Monday. “She was a remarkably thoughtful mother. She really made it a priority to make sure that her kids knew that they were the most important thing for her.”

He added that Wojcicki was humble and unassuming at synagogue, often sitting in the back during services, he said. “She listened to everybody. She was interested in everyone, which is a remarkable thing.”

Booth said that Wojcicki’s Jewish values influenced major policies and practices at Google. For instance, in 2014, before beginning maternity leave for the fifth time, she penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with the headline, “Paid Maternity Leave Is Good for Business,” advocating for more companies to follow Google’s lead and increase their paid family leave to at least 18 weeks.

“Her advocacy for maternity and paternity leave at Google transformed the industry,” Booth said. “At YouTube, she fought against antisemitism in an industry-leading way. Those are incredible things that were deeply informed by her as a person, by the value she got from her family, by her Jewish identity. They just infused her.”

That same year — 2014 — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included Wojcicki in a series of meetings in Silicon Valley to push for investments into Israel’s tech industry, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Her close friend Debbie Togliatti said that Wojcicki lived by the values of tikkun olam.

As one of the most important women leaders in tech — the first to lead a major company — she was committed to expanding opportunities for women throughout Silicon Valley.

Sheryl Sandberg, former executive at Google and Facebook

Togliatti was Marco’s preschool teacher in 2009 at the Oshman Family JCC. The JCC was just settling into its new Palo Alto campus at the time, and Togliatti, an avid gardener, desperately wanted to build a preschool garden. Togliatti recalled that one day Wojcicki came to the preschool and handed her a check to build the garden. 

Months later, Wojcicki hired Togliatti to turn a vacant 3-acre property in Los Altos Hills into her family farm. It was a dream come true for Togliatti, who now leads gardening education at the JCC preschool. 

“She wanted her kids to know where food comes from,” Togliatti said. That extended to the JCC preschoolers, who make field trips to the farm multiple times a year. Small groups of JCC families come, too, to learn about gardening and to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Tu Bishvat, planting a new fruit tree every year, said Togliatti, who has been Wojcicki’s farm caretaker for 14 years.

“When she was there, she was at peace,” Togliatti said. “She just loved being there.”

Wojcicki held a deep appreciation for educators, Togliatti said, given that her mother, Esther Wojcicki, is a retired teacher, journalist and author.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, Esther Wojcicki described feeling “soul crushing grief” over her daughter’s death.

“I am eternally grateful she was in my life. She was an amazing daughter, mother, and leader and she made the world a better place for all of us. Though she is not here physically, she lives in my heart every minute of every day,” she wrote.

Sheryl Sandberg, another Jewish tech executive and vice president of Google’s sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 before becoming COO of Facebook, wrote on social media on Saturday that Wojcicki was influential early in Sandberg’s career.

“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization at the beginning of my career in tech,” wrote Sandberg, author of the bestselling book “Lean In” about succeeding as a woman in the workplace. “She was the person I turned to for advice over and over again. And she was this person for so many others too. As one of the most important women leaders in tech — the first to lead a major company — she was committed to expanding opportunities for women throughout Silicon Valley. I don’t believe my career would be what [it] is today without her unwavering support.”

In 2019, the Jerusalem Post included Wojcicki on its list of the most influential American Jewish women, writing that she “encouraged a new generation of girls to use the internet.”

Wojcicki, who was born in Santa Clara, came from a family of highly accomplished professionals. She is survived by her sisters, Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of the genomics and biotech company 23andMe, and Janet Wojcicki, a Fulbright-winning anthropologist and professor at UCSF. 

Their father Stanley Wojcicki, who died last year, was a Stanford University physics professor.

Even after stepping down as CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki maintained leadership roles serving on the boards of​​ UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, the children’s literacy nonprofit Room to Read and S.F.-based software company Salesforce. 

Last month, Wojcicki was announced as a new member of the board of directors for Planet, a publicly traded company founded by three NASA scientists that provides global daily satellite imagery of Earth and geospatial solutions. 

Through her and Troper’s family foundation, Wojcicki was also a generous philanthropist to academic institutions and nonprofits dedicated to supporting children’s literacy and education, researching cancer, combating climate change and addressing food and housing insecurity. Since 2006, the foundation has donated more than $100 million to scores of charities and causes. The Oshman Family JCC, Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, Congregation Kol Emeth and Camp Tawonga are among the Northern California Jewish organizations that received large gifts in recent years from the foundation, according to its tax filings.

She was also a giving friend, Togliatti recalled. “She paid for me to go to Poland one year to visit the Krakow JCC,” she said.

Added Booth, “She just had this gentleness, and humility and kindness about her.”