12 Aug 2024
She was YouTube's CEO from 2014 to 2023 before resigning in February 2023 for family and health reasons.
Born in Santa Clara, California, which is now Silicon Valley, Susan studied history at Harvard and worked as a photojournalist in India. She then returned to California to pursue advanced degrees in Economics before joining Intel Corp in a marketing role.
Susan gave Larry Page and Sergey Brin space in her garage, which became Google’s first office in 1998. She became one of the first 16 employees to join Google in 1999. She was the first marketing employee of Google and held charge when the company branched out to Google Video in 2005 and bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.
She was among the pioneers behind digital advertising and nurtured Google’s advertising prowess. She is survived by her husband, Dennis Troper, a Director at Google, and four children. Her 19-year-old son Marco Troper died of an accidental drug overdose in February this year at UC Berkeley.