Anne Wojcicki is an American entrepreneur, and the personal genomics company 23andMe’s co-founder and CEO. 23andMe is a private genomics and biotech firm based in Sunnyvale, California. It is popular for providing a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a laboratory-analyzed saliva sample. The sample, to produce information on the client’s ethnicity and genetic predispositions to health-related topics. In addition, the name of the company is about a normal human cell for the 23 pairs of chromosomes.
Caption: Anne Wojcicki
Source: Forbes
Also, read Steve Wozniak, Susan Lucci, David Hefner
Anne Wojcicki: Early life, education, and family
Wojcicki was born in San Mateo County, California, and is the youngest of three daughters. Her parents are Esther Wojcicki, a Russian-Jewish-descended educator, and Stanley Wojcicki, an emeritus professor of physics at Stanford University. Similarly, her two sisters are YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and a former Google executive, and anthropologist Janet Wojcicki at the University of California, San Francisco. Wojcicki was bred on campus at Stanford. Likewise, she learned to figure skate when she was two, but later quit, and began playing ice hockey. She attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. However, she also was an editor for the school newspaper, The Oracle, and she won a scholarship for her short stories.
Caption: Anne Wojcicki in her childhood with her family
Source: Pinterest
Wojcicki attended Yale University where she was a competitive ice-skater and played on the ice-hockey team of varsity women. She holds a B.S. degree in Biology. In addition, she has done research on molecular biology at the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, San Diego.
Anne Wojcicki: Career and achievements
After graduating, Wojcicki worked as a healthcare consultant at Passport Capital, an investment fund based in San Francisco and at Investor AB. Besides, she has been a 4-year healthcare investment analyst, overseeing healthcare investments, focusing on biotechnology companies. Disillusioned by the Wall Street culture and its attitude towards health care, she quit in 2000 with the intention of taking the MCAT and enrolling in medical school. She also decided instead to focus on the research.
In 2006 she and Linda Avey co-founded 23andMe. In 2008, Time magazine named the company’s personal genome test kit “Invention of the Year”. Similarly, as of 2015, the FDA began approving health-related assessments of 23andMe including risk from cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, other cancers, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and coeliac disease. 23andMe entered into a four-year agreement with GlaxoSmithKline in 2018 to develop new pharmaceutical products.
Beside, Wojcicki is also a member of the Economists, an ad hoc editorial advisory board for Xconomy, the tech news and media service. Fast Company named Wojcicki ‘ The Most Daring CEO ‘ in October 2013. She is a Breakthrough Prize co-founder and Board member.
Anne Wojcicki: Personal life and boyfriend
In May 2007 Wojcicki married Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. They have a son, Benji Wojin, born in December 2008, and Chloe Wojin, a daughter born in late 2011. However, talking about god, Wojcicki isn’t religious. In 2013, the pair eventually stopped living together and divorced in 2015.
Caption: Anne Wojcicki with ex-husband Sergey Brin
Source: Pinterest
Her grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a politician of the People’s Party and the Polish People’s Party who had been elected MP during the 1947 Polish parliamentary election. Her grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was in the Library of Congress a Polish-American librarian who was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.
Anne Wojcicki: Net Worth and social media
The entrepreneur has a net worth of $440 million. Similarly, her company, 23andMe received a $300 million investment in July 2018 from GSK, formerly GlaxoSmithKline; they are partnering on drug development. 23andMe also makes its own drug discovery and boasts a valuation of $2.5 billion, with backers like Google.
The businesswoman is accessible on Instagram with the name, ‘annewoj23‘ and has more than 2k followers. Likewise, she is also available on Twitter by the name ‘annewoj23‘ with 18.4k followers.