Empowering Young Women - Susan Wojcicki on Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone! Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. Welcome to the homeroom, I guess we say, live stream and podcast, although we are pre-recording today's session. First of all, happy International Women's Day! We have a very exciting guest today to talk about her life and the internet and YouTube—Susan Wojcicki, who is the CEO of YouTube, a small website that you might have heard of that has to deal with videos.

But before we jump into that conversation where we talk about all of those things, I will give my standard reminders. First of all, a reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization, and we can only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. So if you're in a position to do so, please go to khanacademy.org/donate.

I also want to give a special shout-out to several organizations that stepped up, especially during the pandemic, when they realized that Khan Academy's traffic was three times normal and we were running at a deficit. We wanted to accelerate a whole bunch of things to support more folks, so special thanks to Bank of America, AT&T, google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors for stepping up and helping us fill that gap. But we still need more support, especially as we go into 2021. So anything you can do is much appreciated.

And then the last announcement: there is a version of this live stream that you can get in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts—Homeroom with Sal, the podcast. So with that, I am excited to introduce Susan Wojcicki.

Susan, good to see you!

Susan: Thank you for having me, Sal. Great to be here.

Sal: Great to have you here! And you know we've known each other for a while. I've been known to do a few things on YouTube—I can't even remember when we first met; it's been so long!

Susan: Oh, it's probably on the order of 10 years. And I know your mother. We don’t live too far away from each other.

Sal: Well, there’s so much I want to talk to you about. I think most people know about YouTube, but I think it's always interesting to hear about the organization from the CEO's point of view, especially what do you hope it becomes? So what's your best sense of the mission of YouTube or what you think it can become over the next, let's say, 10 years?

Susan: Yeah, well, so we have a mission. So I'll tell you what our mission is, which is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. So if you look at the first part, to give everyone a voice—how do we enable anyone who wants to share something with the world to do that? I think YouTube has really made a lot of—I don’t know if I’d say revolutionary—positively impactful things, right? We have millions of channels and creators, but we still have a lot of work to do to continue to enable people all over the world to create video, make it easier, and continue to grow that.

But show them the world—I think that's actually where we're really aligned in terms of our mission, so that people everywhere can come to YouTube and learn anything they want or experience any kind of music, entertainment, or look up any kind of information. I’ve also said that YouTube, in some ways, is like a public video library, and we keep growing and growing in terms of offering new topics and new people sharing their ideas through video. Our goal is just to continue to be a resource for people around the world to learn.

And I've been really inspired by that. I sometimes see in different parts of the world—wherever I go, people tell me what they learned on YouTube. So that's something we want to continue to grow.

Sal: I think that's a surprising thing. You know, when YouTube was just starting to get off the ground and people started to associate it with just entertainment, very quickly humanity realized that kind of knowledge could be shared. I actually think YouTube will go down in world history as a moment in human history where, you know, humans separate themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom by having culture and shared knowledge, which for many tens of thousands of years happened through an oral tradition. Then we invented writing, and that allowed information to persist and not kind of lose as that information spread.

But writing loses a little bit of the oral, and now with on-demand video and YouTube, you have mass distribution. You kind of have all of the above—any one person can express their oral or their video or the visual tradition and their knowledge, and then it's literally available to every human being on the planet. Do you all ever view yourselves that way? It's like globally—you did say this—it's the brain of the knowledge of humanity, is being literally on YouTube.

Susan: I definitely see the impact because people everywhere tell me what they learn! Especially now during the pandemic, we played a really key role. A lot of people had to do things for the first time, like fix something in their house, give a haircut, learn a new skill, and the fact that YouTube could do that and could be there in that moment of crisis was really valuable. So I definitely understand that, and our goal is to continue to grow that and support those use cases so everybody can have that resource.

Sal: Absolutely. And obviously, most people who are watching this—many of them who are watching it on YouTube—know that I showed up on people's radar. You know, Khan Academy has a lot of things. We have videos and exercises, but it's the YouTube platform that really helped people know what we're all about and was an easy way to discover. You mentioned haircuts. My wife watched a couple of YouTube videos, and you know, I think it's... you know, my hair has issues, but it's one of the better haircuts that I've gotten. I've fixed a toilet twice over the last nine months based on YouTube videos, and I think they're working!

So, that's absolutely true. You know, on the other side of that, though, there's a lot of conversation about misinformation and the spreading of—you know how people get into their own silos. How do you all think about that on YouTube? How do you all try to make sense of people who are spreading misinformation or, you know, people just gravitating to things that already confirm whatever biases they might have?

Susan: So that's a great question, and there's really a huge amount of effort to figure out the right solutions for that. Basically, we talk about all this work around responsibility. So we have what we call the four R's of responsibility. The first one is about content that we would remove if it is content that we think could lead to real-world harm.

So like, let's just talk about COVID, just to put this in perspective. There were different conspiracies that came out; one of them was that COVID came from 5G cell towers. That's against all medical consensus, and so we would say that's clearly not true. We need to remove it because we also don't want people to go out and then do risky behavior. So we are able to work with medical professionals to find content that was clearly violative. Again, we work with medical professionals on that.

But then we also raise up information—information that we knew was accurate—like how to wash your hands. I never thought we’d serve so many “how to wash your hands” videos! We worked with 85 different health professional organizations from around the world, and we made sure that all of that information was delivered. So whether you did a search or watched a video, you could see authoritative information.

Then there's some content that’s just borderline; it might be something that isn't really a big problem, but it's low quality, and that's just something that we are less likely to recommend to our users—because we want to give them high-quality information. We don’t want them to come and see something that says like, "Aliens landed in your backyard!" That's very unlikely.

Again, we don’t want to go too far and say, “Hey, we’re restricting free speech,” because that’s very important too. We can enable a broad set of opinions and perspectives, so that’s how we also handle reducing information that is low quality in terms of how we handle that in our recommendations.

You know, that last point, I always like to clarify whenever people say that, you know, this is reducing free speech. I say, you know, free speech is the right to say things that first of all, you know, somehow do not undermine government or would hurt people. But you have the right to say it, but you don't have the right for it to be amplified by, you know, other media companies. If we go back 100 years ago, I could say whatever I want. I could complain about the government or come up with conspiracy theories, but it doesn’t mean that The New York Times has to publish whatever I had to say.

There’s an analogy now that it does not have to be validated or you don’t have to—you don’t have the right to be amplified. So I think it’s an interesting nuance. Yes, you can't be arrested for coming up with a conspiracy theory, but you also can't just spread it willy-nilly and say, “That’s my right.”

You know, I would love to dig a little bit into your journey to becoming CEO of YouTube. We have a lot of young people who watch this. It’s International Women’s Day, and I think there are a lot of young women who look up to you as a real leader in the industry across the board. When you were young, what were you like, and is this what you thought you were going to do?

Susan: No, I had no idea this is what I was going to do! Maybe I’m showing my age by saying this, but we didn’t have the internet when I was young, so I couldn't even imagine that. I mean, I think as a young kid, what was I like? First of all, I was really into doing arts and crafts. I was really into being creative and making things. I would make paper and pot holders. My first business was making spice ropes and selling them to my neighbor, so I just liked to make stuff.

That's a spice rope! I would braid yarn and then tie cinnamon sticks to it, and take colored fabric and put spices in there, and I just would make stuff. For me, I had this realization that technology was about creation. It was about making things and creating things, and that’s what a lot of people didn’t seem to see—especially not then. But I totally got it! I was like, “Wow, I can make all kinds of really interesting software, and it can be distributed, and so many people can see it and they can use it, and I can interact with them.”

And once I got that idea, I just said, like, “Oh, I have to be in tech; this is the best field for me based on all my interests with creativity and making things and seeing how I could have an impact!” I didn’t know where it was going to lead, but as long as I was making things, I was happy. And that’s what got me started in tech.

Sal: No, very similar to me. It’s all about this notion of creation and that you can create things that have incredible scale, incredible impact. Once you went into tech, what did you think you were going to actually—how did you get started? Where did you take a traditional software engineering route? Connect the dots between this interest in creation and where you are now.

Susan: Well, I took a computer science class my senior year in college. I took the course "Computer Science for Computer Science Majors," and at the time I thought, “Oh, it’s too late! I’m too old! Like why am I doing this?” I was a humanities major, so I was like, “I must be too old to change careers.” It’s funny when a 20 or 21-year-old says they’re too old!

Well, that was too old, I said, 20 or 21-years-old, to start learning computer science! But I realized that I wanted to do something in computer science. That was my first role—that was my first engagement with computer science. Then I grew up in the Palo Alto area, so I think that probably had something to do with it. I came back after college, and I wound up working at this educational software startup.

So here I am, I don't know how many years later, working with you around education. I had that interest then, and I still have that interest now. But I was just a project manager for making software for kids around education, and I loved it! It was creation. It involved kids writing about how they used the software, how they learned something, and the impact it had. So I just said, “This is what I’m going to do. I’m so committed to this!”

Sal: I can keep going! You want to know more?

Susan: Well, no, I do! I actually never knew about this chapter. I'm especially curious about what you think it was that you told yourself or the skills that you brought to the table that allowed you to really thrive in this world and, obviously, keep rising through the ranks. You know, you joined Google at a very early stage, and now as CEO of YouTube, what—I know it’s a hard question to answer because you’re a humble person, but be not so humble for a few seconds.

Susan: Sure! If I look back at my career, there were a few key things that really helped me. One of them was, first of all, I was not looking; I was just looking to do something interesting. I was just thinking, “How can I use my skills to help create something that will be used by people and that will be useful and make the world a better place?”

When I joined Google— I was employee 16 of Google—when I joined, nobody thought that Google was that interesting a company! But I saw that it was enabling people to find information in new ways. So, being able to focus on what was important, what I saw was adding value, whether or not other people agreed or not, was part of what helped me.

I think it was the same thing for YouTube—when I first started working on YouTube, nobody thought it was that big a deal! They thought it was a small little company with a lot of cats on skateboards that wasn't really going anywhere. But I saw that people could use it for creating and sharing ideas and information and new musicians and artists and creators.

So seeing ideas early and believing in them has definitely helped me. But then I would say there’s part two, which was maybe less inspiration and more perspiration—which is just sticking with it and working hard and not giving up. It’s about getting through all the hard times and just sticking with it—keep working on it, keep waking up every day thinking about how you can make the company better and add value. So I'd say those are the two key parts: the inspiration and the perspiration.

Sal: It makes a lot of sense! I have so many questions for you, but I know we have a lot of questions that have come in appropriately for you on video. So the first question we have is from Izzy. If we could watch that video?

Izzy: I was wondering what you wanted to do when you were my age, and did you ever think you’d be the CEO of a huge company?

Susan: No, I never thought I would be the CEO of a huge company! And when I was your age, I probably wanted to—I was just interested in a lot of different things. I didn’t really know what the future held for me, but I was interested in arts and crafts; I was interested in science; I was interested in entrepreneurship. But I would just start things. Like I said, I would make things and sell it to my neighbors. All of those turned out in the end to be useful skills.

So I just encourage all of you to explore the world, find what you love, find the areas that you want to keep working on, and that ultimately will lead you somewhere. Because you have to choose a career to choose a profession; it has to be something that is meaningful for you, or it'll be much easier, and you'll do a better job if it's meaningful to you. So choose something that you enjoy doing every day and that you see benefits the world and that ultimately you derive meaning from.

Sal: I completely agree! And the next question we have is from Lily. For young women who are looking into being in management positions or positions of power, what advice do you have for them in trying to get past those gender stereotypes of being too pushy or too bossy when trying to achieve their goals?

Susan: So there definitely are a lot of challenges. Some of the ways that I have overcome them is by, first of all, working really hard, which I’m sure all of you do. I’d say, with some of the stereotypes and/or people who might be less supportive, I’ve tried to ignore the people who might be less supportive and make friends with the people who are.

I found it really valuable over the course of my career to figure out who my allies are, to work closely with them, and develop close relationships with them. Just continue doing the work that you're doing. I do think we’re at a time where companies are working really hard to have diverse workforces because we recognize that diversity makes a stronger company, makes a better product.

I encourage all of you to pursue your passions and just to continue to work hard and don’t give up. Find your allies, and if you find someone who’s not supportive, just do your best to keep working through that. Certainly, while there are different stereotypes—the stereotypes are always changing—and I really hope by the time a lot of you grow up that some of the stereotypes you mentioned are not anything that you have to face in the future.

Sal: And just following up on that— for those who don’t know, Susan, you and your siblings and your mother are kind of famous; you know? As sisters, all of you have been wildly successful. You have a sister who's a physician, you have a sister who's a CEO of 23andMe; your mother is world famous as an educator, a journalism teacher, etc., etc. Is there something that your mother gave you or you had between yourselves as sisters that you could share with kind of sisters around the world that really helped you?

Susan: I wish I could say it was just one thing. But I do think, though, one thing my mom gave to all of us was certainly the focus on persistence—believing in yourself and not getting embarrassed. My mom was always the first person to ask a hard question in an audience. She used to always be the one who would say she felt like if she had been wrong, she needed to speak up about it. Sometimes, as a kid, that was really embarrassing. But I learned over time it's really important to use your voice; it’s really important to say what you believe and to speak up for yourself.

I do think that those skills have helped all of us, because if you believe in yourself, you speak up for yourself, but you're working hard and doing a great job at what you’re doing, you're going to find a way to be successful. I think we learned a lot of skills from my mom and my dad, who’s a professor and who was consistently hardworking. We learned that those are all things it takes, and if you keep it up and work hard, you’ll end up with something that is compelling for you.

Sal: Well, we have another question here from Imari.

Imari: What are some activities or actions that you recommend for young women entering college to prepare them for career success?

Susan: For people who are entering college or entering the workforce, I would really encourage you to think about what is meaningful for you because it’s very hard to do a job that you don’t like! You have to find something that really speaks to you. I see that among my own kids and among all the kids that I work with—that people come from very different places and they have different passions.

To the extent that you can look inside yourself and think about what would be really meaningful for you and find a way to explore that. If your work speaks to you in a deep way and you take meaning from it, it will help you get through the hard times. It will help you stick with it and make a difference. So I encourage you to really think about what your passions are.

You have to be practical too—realistically, I think that’s something I learned from my mom, also. Like, I would've probably said, “Oh, if you had asked me as a kid, I’d always said, ‘Oh, I just want to be an artist and draw pictures and make candles…’”

As compelling as all that is, she also encouraged me, like, “Yes, you need to be able to make a living! You have to be able to do something where you can support yourself!” So marrying the two—what your passion is and where there's market and demand for the things that you’re interested in—that would be those are good places for you to look at future careers.

I also encourage people to look at things that are growing. In many ways, I benefited from being in tech, which was a growing industry. So there were always new jobs; there was always something new to explore. The extent that you can choose an area that is expanding—the whole area is growing—it’s going to be easier to get more jobs and it’s going to be easier to get promoted. So that’s another thing to consider as you factor your future career and what areas you’re going to go into.

Sal: I love that advice! I always tell folks actually on one part of your brain, you should be hyper-pragmatic. Look at the industries that are growing, that compensate well, and that you know are bearable. You can enjoy working in that. But as you do that, carve out some space to also be hyper-idealistic and have your passions. And we’re in a unique time—I mean YouTube shows us this, my narrative shows us, your narrative shows this—that those things will intersect in surprising ways. There are ways to publish your passions. There are other people in the world that will also have those passions, and it can turn into a career in and of itself.

There’s another question here from Ruby.

Ruby: You must have faced a lot of obstacles getting to where you are today, and I’m wondering if you felt like giving up. If so, how were you able to overcome that?

Susan: Oh, great question! Yeah, great question! I definitely have had hard days, and there have been moments where I have felt like giving up. But I’ve often realized that if I give up, then, well, then I don’t get to keep doing what I love doing! And if I give up because someone was difficult, like, well then they win, and they get what they want. I don’t get to continue to make my points of view heard.

So usually when I have a bad day, I just call it a night and go to bed early. I wake up, and most days, like, I feel ready to do it again and ready to revisit the situation. I find a way to smooth over whatever was really hard.

I encourage you just to find something you love and stick with it!

Sal: Yeah, and I always remind folks, you know, there’s no movie where the protagonist does not have to deal with adversity. So whatever those adverse moments happen, say, “Well, this is just part of my movie.” A movie would not be interesting without these moments!

And you’re absolutely right—the things that you think are existential crises—within reason—a week later, you’re like, “I just have to power through it.” There are ways that that can sometimes get better, and you just have to sometimes realize that, you know, staying in the game is half the battle. Many times, things didn't go the way I wanted; many times things failed; many times I made mistakes, and then I had to come back and say, “Oh, I learned from that.”

But that’s how life is. What makes you stronger is overcoming that and internalizing that and saying, “What did I learn from that, and how can I change how my life is going forward?” If you are continuously learning, if you are having experiences and then benefiting from them and figuring out how you can do everything better, then that all adds up.

There are a lot of times where we’re at work, and people come to me with different ideas, and I’m like, “Oh, I know about doing that because I did it, and it didn’t work!” I can tell you why, because there are a lot of things I’ve done that have not worked.

But I learned from it, and I’m not doing them again! I’m actually telling other people too, like, “Don’t do that!” Sometimes I even say, “Hey, you know what? You can try it! The world’s different; maybe things have changed.” I’m also open to how something could be different now than it was in the past, but I tell them like, “This is why it didn’t work for me; you should take that into consideration as you consider your future plans.”

You know, related to that, when people look at you—even when I look at you—you’re like, “Oh, Susan, you know. Titan of tech, has it all figured out!” She’s made it! What are the things that you feel sometimes unsure about or that you stress about? Because I think that’s something— you know, it’s very easy; we all know what the things we all stress about, but when we look at the success of the world, it feels like we have it all figured out.

So, you know, show us that you’re like the rest of us!

Susan: Well, there are definitely a lot of times I’m doing things I’ve never done before! Just because tech is in a new place that it’s never been before, we’re having to figure out a lot of challenging situations based on the size or where we are and how we can do better.

I mean, there are so many different examples, and I mean maybe I can just think of like all the times that my kids have told me how we’ve screwed up! And I actually just think that when you screw up, you should just say that—just be honest about it.

So, you know, I look at like our rewind video that we did two years ago—it was the most disliked video on the internet! Maybe I was under a rock, but the most disliked… every kid on this video, they know what I’m talking about!

They know about this video that other videos on YouTube took years to dislike, had this many dislikes, and then our video, in a matter of weeks—or sorry, a matter of days—became the most disliked video on the internet. So I just was like, “Yeah, the video was cringy! My kids were like, ‘It was cringy!’”

I was like, “Okay, it was a cringy video, so what? We made the worst video! Like the most disliked video? Fine! We’ll just make something different next year!” Sometimes you just gotta go with, “Yeah, we made a mistake; things didn’t go well,” and so I can tell you that at that moment, it was not—people at YouTube were not feeling good that the video was becoming the most disliked video on the internet!

But you learn from it, and I think having some humor about it too sometimes is, you know, when you can—when it’s something like that where you can just say, “Let’s just laugh and move on!”

Sal: No, and I have to say it takes incredible security to bring up. You know, if you asked me to bring up my major failures over the last year, three years, or ten years, there’s a part of my brain that says, “Sal, don’t bring it up! Then people are going to know all your weaknesses!”

It takes a lot to bring that up, but I really appreciate that. We have another question from Imani.

Imani: I was just curious what strong women have inspired you to become the powerful leader that you are today?

Susan: Who has inspired me? Well, many people along the way. My mom definitely inspired me. And as a kid, I was always really impressed with Marie Curie. She was my icon as a kid; she is someone who holds two Nobel Prizes, and I don’t think there are a lot of other people who have achieved that in different fields—her daughter also has a Nobel Prize, which I always thought was really impressive.

So, she was one of my icons. But I would also say that a lot of the people who mentored me and helped me get to where I am were not always women—in fact, most of the time they were men—because most of the people in positions above me at Google, in tech, were men.

And there were a lot of super supportive mentors that I had, and I always remind people, whether they’re a mentee or a mentor, that anyone—regardless of their backgrounds—you can mentor someone. They don’t have to look like you or be like you; you can just find someone who is talented that you want to mentor, and again, your mentors can be different from the backgrounds you came from. They can be really helpful to you, so I’m very thankful for all the people who mentored me along the way, even though they came from different backgrounds than I did, and they definitely helped me. I learned from them.

Sal: Absolutely! And I know we’re running low on time. I could talk to you for hours! There are so many questions I have about your life, about YouTube. I'm—you know, we touched on the subject of learning. Obviously, Khan Academy is very focused on learning, and YouTube has been a big part of that journey! When I was making content for my cousins and still do, I made three videos that I uploaded onto YouTube yesterday, so I’m still very active there!

What’s your dream, if you fast forward five, ten, or twenty years? I don’t know if you think in terms of legacy, but what’s the impact that you want to have through YouTube?

Susan: So we definitely think about YouTube and how we can continue to grow it. I’m always just amazed at all the new topics and new ways that we can enable voices around the world to come and share their story. Part of our goal is to enable the next generation of storytellers and help them be able to do that and to make a business.

The flip side of that is that we can have incredibly compelling content for people around the world on any topic. If you look at YouTube, I see that we bring mini value—and of course, like enabling all the fun videos and music videos—but we also deal with a lot of really important topics that just were not talked about before, whether that involves mental health issues or hearing from people of different backgrounds that weren’t represented in media traditionally. Those are really compelling and important points of view.

Sal: Just, you know, one last question—it feels like there are two competing winds. There’s one wind where there are more tools and resources—YouTube, Khan Academy, you know, all the other things that Google provides—that are enabling the individual to publish, to express themselves, to discover points of view, to learn. It really does feel like we’re at an inflection point or a renaissance, so to speak, in human society.

On the other side, there are reasons why people can get cynical. It feels like we are more polarized as a country or as a world; it feels like, you know, inequity is growing; it feels like people aren’t listening to each other anymore; you know, the climate's in trouble. If there's a young person watching and there's a pandemic and people are feeling isolated and lonely, what message can you give to someone who's kind of trying to navigate these two currents?

Susan: YouTube does enable people to connect with each other as humans, and there's something very human about the fact that people are—many times—going to YouTube and talking about how they feel, what their deepest challenges were about the diseases they have. There’s something really cathartic about people going and sharing the challenges that they have, and we've seen other people really be able to relate and benefit from that.

So I do see a human connection that’s incredibly powerful on YouTube for us to understand each other more as humans. I've also seen that there's an incredible amount of good that comes—whether it's something like the 20 million trees that are being planted and organized on YouTube or fundraisers to support people during hard times. I do see that YouTube can be used for all kinds of good outcomes. I encourage you to use, like, you know, YouTube and all social platforms. If there's a cause you believe in, you can make a difference!

You can make a video; you can organize groups. I encourage you to speak your voice! Now is the best time ever to be able to do that, so I encourage you to do what's important for you and to speak up now.

Sal: Thank you so much for that! I'm inspired! I'm gonna go use some social media to try to change the world! Well, Susan, thank you so much! I know you’re incredibly busy, and thank you for making the time out for all of us and all the students who are watching and their questions.

I’m excited to be part of your journey, which you, you are empowering Khan Academy on so many levels, and see where we can take the world—oh, thank you! And I'm glad we have been a part of your journey too! Thanks, everyone, for joining! As you could tell, you know, these conversations, when you have a guest like Susan, I could talk for hours! There’s so much to learn from her, and I find her to be incredibly inspiring.

You know, I've known Susan and her family for many years now, and you know, every time I chat, I never cease to be impressed by what actually she, her sisters, and her mother, are accomplishing on a regular basis. So, thank you all for joining. We do have—we're actually going to have our next show on March 10th. The guest is Mark Sternberg; it'll actually be hosted by Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer Kristen Deserbo, and they're going to be talking—this is Mark Sternberg from the Walton Family Foundation—and we'll talk about philanthropy, learning, and impact on education.

So look forward to seeing all of you all there. Have a good weekend!