YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Calls On Trump To Pass Family Leave
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Susan Wojcicki, the YouTube CEO and a grand dame of Silicon Valley, on Wednesday said that paid family leave for mothers should be the Trump White House’s top priority.
“Paid leave is a not just a mother and child issue, it’s a societal issue we have,” she told the crowd at a CNNMoney-sponsored New York breakfast.
“How can that be good for babies? How can that be good for breastfeeding?” she added, lamenting the current situation. “We’re paying for it in all these health costs as opposed to just giving women the time to be at home and recover, bond with their babies.”
Wojcicki, the daughter of a Russian Jew and Polish Catholic, has boosted the number of women at YouTube from 24% to 30% of the workforce over her three-year tenure at YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. She has five children.
Her family ties speak to her Silicon Valley royalty status – her sister Anne founded the genetics testing company 23andMe and was married for five years to Google founder (and her sister’s boss) Sergei Brin.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
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