Anne Wojcicki

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Person.png Anne Wojcicki   TwitterRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(businesswoman)
Anne Wojcicki.jpg
BornJuly 28, 1973
NationalityUS
Alma materYale University
Parents • Esther Wojcicki
• Stanley Wojcicki
SpouseSergey Brin
Interests • digital healthcare
• personalized medicine
• Big Pharma
Relatives • Susan Wojcicki
• Janet Wojcicki
Businesswoman with big stake in "the Google of gene-based medicine". Also ex-wife of Google-founder Sergey Brin, and sister of Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Anne E. Wojcicki is an American businesswoman who was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin (divorced 2015) and is sister of Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Anne co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe, selling home tests. The FDA from selling it as a medical device in 2013, but the company reorganized and received a partial approval in 2015.

The 23andMe home testing wasn't in any case primarily intended to be a medical device. The real business idea is to create a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering operation. “The long game here is not to make money selling kits, although the kits are essential to get the base level data,” Patrick Chung, a 23andMe board member admitted in 2013. “Once you have the data, [the company] does actually become the Google of personalized health care”.[1]

"The database creates a one-way portal into a world where corporations have access to the innermost contents of your cells and where insurers and pharmaceutical firms and marketers might know more about your body than you know yourself."[1]

GlaxoSmithKline invested $300 million in the company in 2018.

Early life

Wojcicki was born in Palo Alto, California, and has two older sisters, Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube,[2] and Janet Wojcicki, a PhD anthropologist and epidemiologist.[3] Her parents are Esther Wojcicki (née Hochman), an educator who is Jewish, and Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish-born physics professor emeritus at Stanford University. The three sisters consequently grew up on the university's campus.[2]

Education

Wojcicki attended Gunn High School, in Palo Alto, California.[3][4]. She received a B.S. in biology at Yale University in 1996. During her time there she played on the varsity women's ice hockey team.[5][6][7] She has also conducted molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health and at UC, San Diego.[4]

Career

After her graduation, Wojcicki worked as a health care consultant at Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based investment fund[4] and at Investor AB.[8] She was a health care investment analyst[5] for 4 years, overseeing health care investments, focusing on biotechnology companies. Allegedly disillusioned by the culture of Wall Street and its attitude towards health care,[9] she quit in 2000, intending to take the MCAT and enroll in medical school. Instead, she decided to focus on research.[8]

Wojcicki is best known as the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, a privately owned, direct to consumer DNA testing company, which allows for consumers to test for ancestry and health risks.[5][10] Anne founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza,[11] with the stated goal of solving the pain point that a majority of people do not have access to their genetic information, which could provide information on cures for diseases or treatments, especially with the help of Glaxo and their $300 million investment.[10] Anne has expressed interest in “revolutioniz[ing] health care” with DNA testing,[10] as it could provide consumers with sufficient enough information as to predict potential genetic illnesses.

The company is named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The company's personal genome test kit was named "Invention of the Year" by Time magazine in 2008.[12]

In 2013 the Food and Drug Administration temporarily banned 23andMe from selling its health-related tests at all. Following the FDA’s ban in 2013, 23andMe spent the next two years devising genetic health tests that wouldn’t overpromise.[13]

From 2015, the FDA started to give approval to 23andMe's health-related tests, including risk from cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, certain cancers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and coeliac disease.[14][15] In 2018, 23andMe entered into a four-year collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to develop new medicines.[16][10]

Wojcicki is a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company, Xconomy.[17] In October 2013, Fast Company named Wojcicki "The Most Daring CEO".[8][18] She is a co-founder and board member of the Breakthrough Prize.[19]

As of 2020, she is listed as number 93 in Forbes list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.[20]

Personal life

Wojcicki married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in May 2007.[5] They have a son, Benji Wojin, born in December 2008, and a daughter, Chloe Wojin, born in late 2011.[21][22] The couple stopped living together in 2013,[23] and they divorced in 2015.[24]

Brin and Wojcicki, although divorced, still jointly run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[25] They have donated extensively to The Michael J. Fox Foundation and in 2009 gave $1 million to support the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.[26]

Wojcicki and Alex Rodriguez, the former baseball star, broke up in 2016 after dating for nearly a year.[27]

Her grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a People's Party and Polish People's Party politician who had been elected MP during the Polish legislative election, 1947.[28] Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress who was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.[29]


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References

  1. ↑ a b https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23andme-is-terrifying-but-not-for-the-reasons-the-fda-thinks/
  2. ↑ a b https://web.archive.org/web/20200103010613/https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/how-the-wojcickis-parents-raised-23andme-founder-youtube-ceo.html
  3. ↑ a b https://web.archive.org/web/20141006072036/http://fortune.com/2012/02/01/before-google-the-wojcicki-girls-learned-from-mom/
  4. ↑ a b c https://web.archive.org/web/20141006090638/http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5910106
  5. ↑ a b c d https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/technology/29google.html
  6. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20141006101728/http://www.yalebulldogs.com/sports/m-track/2011-12/releases/20110804uw40s1
  7. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20121023132810/https://www.23andme.com/about/board/
  8. ↑ a b c https://web.archive.org/web/20141003144551/http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can-tell-you-what-might-kill-you-inside-23andme-founder-anne-wojcickis-dna-r
  9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20141018024358/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/23andme-co-founder-anne-wojcickis-washington-charm-offensive/2014/06/27/b465b086-f240-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html
  10. ↑ a b c d https://www.bionews.org.uk/page_137417
  11. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20121113132310/https://www.23andme.com/about/corporate/
  12. ↑ https://www.webcitation.org/66MEJiyIx?url=http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1852747_1854493,00.html
  13. ↑ https://gizmodo.com/consumer-dna-testing-may-be-the-biggest-health-scam-of-1839358522
  14. ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46361764
  15. ↑ https://www.recode.net/2018/10/20/18002614/anne-wojcicki-23andme-dna-fake-science-goop-gwyneth-paltrow-kara-swisher-podcast-recode-decode
  16. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/07/25/23andme-gets-300-million-boost-from-glaxo-to-develop-new-drugs/
  17. ↑ https://www.xconomy.com/about/#The%20Xconomists
  18. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150129071904/https://twitter.com/23andMe/status/391666315657621504
  19. ↑ https://breakthroughprize.org/Board
  20. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/power-women/list/
  21. ↑ http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/liz-welch/the-way-i-work-anne-wojcicki-23andme.htm
  22. ↑ https://www.jewishtampa.com/jews-in-the-news/jews-in-the-news-diane-von-furstenburg-michael-kors-and-barbara-hershey
  23. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130907124312/http://allthingsd.com/20130828/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-and-23andme-co-founder-anne-wojcicki-have-split/
  24. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150626134355/http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/google-sergey-brin-anne-wojcicki-divorce/
  25. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130926225622/http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/ffindershow.cgi?id=RINF001
  26. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25donate.html
  27. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/style/anne-wojcicki-23andme-genetics.html
  28. ↑ https://www.prezydent.pl/aktualnosci/wydarzenia/art,551,prezydent-spotkal-sie-z-prezes-youtube.html
  29. ↑ Zalewski, Wojciech (2011-10-01). "Janina Wójcicka Hoskins (1912–1996): Portrait of an Esteemed Librarian". Slavic & East European Information Resources. 12 (4): 224–236. doi:10.1080/15228886.2011.623117. ISSN 1522-8886


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