Good morning, Broadsheet readers! AMC Network’s chairman stays close to home for his next CEO pick, Glossier mounts a comeback, and Susan Wojcicki is stepping down as CEO of YouTube. The Broadsheet will be off on Monday for Presidents’ Day in the U.S.—we’ll be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.
– Move to watch. What’s in the water this week? One after the other, female leaders from business to global politics have announced they’re leaving their positions. The latest is Susan Wojcicki, who has served as the CEO of YouTube for nine years.
“I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” Wojcicki wrote in a note to employees yesterday.
Wojcicki isn’t just the CEO of one of Alphabet’s most significant businesses, with $29 billion in revenue; she’s an integral part of the Google founding story. She famously rented her garage to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 and joined the company as its 16th employee shortly afterward. (Her sister, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, even ended up marrying—and later divorcing—Brin.)
Since 1998, there hasn’t been a Google without Wojcicki. Before her nearly decade-long run as YouTube CEO, she held roles overseeing marketing, online advertising, and analytics. She was one of the creators of Google Image Search and AdSense, and she was a critical voice behind Google’s ultimate decision to acquire YouTube in 2006.
 YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki will step down after nine years in the role and 25 at Google. Hollie Adams—Bloomberg/Getty Images Over Wojcicki’s long tenure, YouTube has transformed from a simple way to share videos to a platform that creators, who earn a cut of ad revenue, rely on for their livelihoods. Their content, in turn, earns YouTube its $29 billion in ad revenue. Her job has been to balance the interests of YouTube’s various stakeholders, from creators to advertisers to users to the bosses at Alphabet.
The departing CEO has dealt with increased criticism in recent years over content moderation on the platform, including its seeming inability or unwillingness to stem the flow of extremist viewpoints and hate speech.
Wojcicki’s job made her a rare female CEO in Big Tech. Last year, she ranked No. 20 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list. With her departure, Silicon Valley loses one of its most influential women executives—as it did with Marne Levine’s exit from Meta announced earlier this week. Wojcicki’s successor is her longtime No. 2, Neal Mohan.
Wojcicki won’t exit the Google ecosystem entirely; she said she plans to hold an advisory role across Google and Alphabet companies. “This will allow me to call on my different experiences over the years to offer counsel and guidance,” she said.
After 25 years, that experience is comprehensive. “The time is right for me,” she wrote to employees. “I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved. It’s been exhilarating, meaningful, and all-consuming.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
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- Women watchdogs. Three women have been named as likely candidates to become chair of the European Central Bank's supervisory board. If one of them succeeds, she would be the second woman ever to hold the position and reflect a growing share of women in positions of power at the ECB, including president Christine Lagarde. Bloomberg
- White men. In 2022, 70% of the 533 named executive officers in S&P 100 companies were white men. Black men have made the most progress since 2020, with 19 newly named CEOs, an increase of one-third. Hispanic women and Latinas were the most underrepresented of any group. USA TODAY
- All in the family. AMC Networks chairman James Dolan has announced the company's new CEO: his wife. Kristin Dolan's proximity to the company and position on the board maybe have given her a head start on the role, but she faces an uphill battle reviving market value for the company, which has struggled to keep up in the streaming era. Wall Street Journal
- The comeback aesthetic. Glossier's explosive success as a millennial barely-there makeup brand stalled in recent years as the company tried to evolve for Gen Z consumers. In 2022, the company regrouped with new funding and new leadership. This year, it's coming back strong with in-person offerings in Sephora, more frequent product launches, international shipping, and a much-hyped new flagship store in NYC's Soho. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: MoonPay has hired Lindsey Haswell as chief legal officer. Anu Bharadwaj was promoted to president at Atlassian.
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- Inside out. Canada's women's soccer team wore their jerseys inside out at a SheBelieves Cup training session this week, the latest move in their bitter fight for equal pay against the Canadian soccer federation. The team, which is a favorite in the upcoming Women's World Cup, threatened to skip this friendly tournament out of frustration with the negotiations until the federation warned it would sue if the team didn't play. New York Times
- CFOs bracing. Although the rate of inflation is easing, CFOs are making cost-savings moves as they brace for the possibility of an economic recession. For example, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company is changing its data centers to a more efficient architecture that can support both A.I. and non-A.I. setups. Wall Street Journal
- Prison labor. An investigation into Arizona chicken farm Hickman's shows the farm created a makeshift dormitory out of an uninsulated warehouse for incarcerated women to live while they worked, keeping the farm operational during the pandemic. Records show the farm allegedly chose women as its workers because they are more "compliant." The company declined to comment. Cosmopolitan
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A Peloton superstar’s self-reinvention The New Yorker
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Karol G’s songs conquered the world. On a new LP, she reveals herself. New York Times
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