Keen On

If Silicon Valley has an official matriarch, it might be the Palo Alto based educator and writer Esther Wojcicki. Popularly known as the “Godmother of Silicon Valley”, Wojcicki is the mother of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki and anthropologist and professor Janet Wojcicki. And, of course, she’s also the mother-in-law of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. So how does “Woj”, who, as the founder of the Media Arts program, taught for many years at Palo Alto High School, make sense of the last twenty years in which the zeitgeist has shifted from an evangelical faith in technological progress to a deep suspicion of it. And how does Wojcicki look back at her own family history in this period which has been marked by both astonishingly good fortune and terrible tragedy?Esther Wojcicki is an educator and the author of the 2019 bestseller, "How to Raise Successful People."Wojcicki's daughters are YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki and anthropologist