Proving that technology is for everyone

Phoebe Simcock, 6th Jul 2021
Tags: Life Blog

When it comes to strong inspirational leaders, Susan Wojcicki is up there with the best. 

You may not instantly recognise her name, but if you love YouTube or you’re constantly Googling for answers, her work is at your fingertips every day. This in itself is worthy enough for being one of xRhythms inspirational figures, but Wojcicki also helps to support other young people in this field and intends to create a new generation of inspirational people.

Susan Wojcicki is the CEO of Youtube and worked as Google’s first marketing manager. She’s been in the Tech industry for over 20 years and has been described in ‘Time’ magazine as being one of the most powerful women on the internet.

At the age of 11, she sold rope bracelets door-to-door, which demonstrates how business-minded she was even from a young age.

She changed her journey from academia to technology after realising how much she enjoyed it, despite the women in technology being a minority.

Being a minority is hard.

In Susan Wojcicki’s keynote presentation at Dreamforce2015, she commented on this issue, “I think it’s a pipeline problem. If you look at the number of women who have degrees in computer science it’s less than 20%. And I think it’s a retention problem. Women come into tech and then they’re more likely to leave. Being a minority is hard.”

The gender discrimination within different job roles has directly affected Wojcicki, and she has used her influence as a businesswoman and inspirational person who change these experiences for other young people.

She is an advocate for getting girls into computer science, in a hope that she can take the element of gender out of the role and make it accessible for everyone.

Supporting women in industry is important to her.

Supporting women in industry is important to her, and endorsing women’s rights to reach equality. “Whether it's salary or a promotion or a job, I think it's important for women to ask for what they think they deserve”. She believes it’s imperative that women find a balance between work and family, and to help with this she has supported the expansion of paid family leave. 

Susan Wojcicki now supports young media creators through YouTube. She has worked her way up from the bottom to be a success and now encourages and helps others to do the same.

She is an inspiration to people who feel that they are a minority in their career or in their surroundings, but still strive to achieve.

She reminds us that there are no restrictions to our career possibilities.

She reminds us that there are no restrictions to our career possibilities and being in an advantageous position means we can enable others to succeed too.