Good morning.
Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who died of cancer last week at the age of 56, was a visionary leader in tech and in life. Unlike Elon Musk, who has stoked fear about a population collapse while cutting parental leave at Twitter (now X), Wojcicki understood the importance of paid maternity leave as a retention tool. She was Google’s first employee to take it, having let its cofounders work out of her garage before joining the startup in 1999 when she was four months pregnant.
As she wrote shortly before giving birth to her fifth child in 2014, when Google increased paid maternity leave to 18 from 12 weeks in 2007, the rate at which new moms left the company fell by 50%. (Google owns YouTube.) At the time, she noted that the U.S. was the only country in the developed world that didn’t offer government-mandated paid maternity leave, according to the International Labor Organization, and one of two that didn’t offer it among the 185 countries surveyed. The other was Papua New Guinea. Ten years later, there is still no national policy, though 13 states and the District of Columbia now mandate paid family leave.
The ability to access paid leave has a marginal impact on the decision to have children—Canada has a lower fertility rate than the U.S. despite generous parental leave policies. And many Americans do have access to unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. But studies suggest that paid leave impacts labor participation rates. Pregnancy has long been a life event that catapults women off their career tracks and out of their companies. Women who get support in taking time off are more inclined to come back.
I don’t want to minimize Wojcicki’s other accomplishments. Along with being instrumental in the development of Google, she advocated for the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006 and led it from 2014 to 2023. Being a mother didn’t define her as a CEO any more than it has defined me as a journalist.
But Wojcicki shared her own experiences as a working mother to inspire others. In an industry where high-profile peers like Marissa Mayer promised to be at their desks mere days after birth—a tradition continued by leaders like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who intends to take no maternity leave when she gives birth to her third child—Wojcicki took 15 weeks off after giving birth to her youngest child. While that may sound like a lot of time off for a new CEO, she understood that creating a culture of work-life balance starts at the top.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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TOP NEWS
JD Vance backs $5,000 child tax credit—and FTC’s Lina Khan
Republican VP candidate JD Vance floated a more than doubling of the federal child tax credit—to $5,000—as he seeks to reframe a “pro-family” stance that has come under attack from Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who he belittled as “childless cat ladies.” Vance also reiterated his support of FTC Chair Lina Khan, a Biden appointee who has focused antitrust efforts on big tech companies. Fortune
‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini turns upbeat about the economy
Economist Nouriel Roubini has been such a doomsayer for so long that he’s earned the moniker “Dr. Doom,” but now he sounds uncharacteristically bullish amid Wall Street’s recent panic. “The bottom line is that there are still no signs of a U.S. recession, and the U.S. economy is doing just fine with steady growth in daily and weekly data for restaurant bookings, air travel, hotel bookings, credit card data, bank lending, Broadway show attendance, box office grosses, and weekly data for bankruptcy filings trending lower,” he says. Fortune
Oil prices may be heading down
Some of the biggest U.S. oil refiners are throttling back operations this quarter, adding to concerns that a global glut of crude is building up. Marathon Petroleum—which owns the largest U.S. refinery—plans to operate its 13 plants at an average of 90% of capacity this quarter, the lowest for the period since 2020. Similarly, PBF Energy, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy are cutting back. Fortune
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Inside Disney’s $60 billion plan to supercharge its theme parks and cruises by Brian Stelter
California’s ultra-rich are building hidden mansions beneath LA by Alena Botros
Warren Buffett’s sale of 510 million Apple shares will go down as one of the best bets of his career by Shawn Tully
See what Google’s original office looked like when it started in Susan Wojcicki’s garage by Jason Ma
Intel is the latest Fortune 500 giant to test the ‘4 wrong CEOs’ rule by Geoff Colvin
Susan Wojcicki on how she built YouTube as the new TV by Hallie Steiner
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Ian Mount.
