YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Calls On Trump To Pass Family Leave

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By Daniel J. Solomon May 4, 2017

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

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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