Who is Susan Wojcicki, ex-YouTube CEO whose son died in his UC Berkeley dormitory?

The son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was found dead in his dormitory last week. 19-year-old Marco Troper was a freshman at UC Berkeley’s campus.

Troper was found in the afternoon, following which the Berkeley Fire Department alerted campus police. The department said they were “attempting life-saving measures” on Troper, as per a statement from the University of California Police Department, Berkeley. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

Who is Susan Wojcicki?

Susan was CEO of YouTube from 2014 until February 2023. At present, she serves in an advisory role to Google and Google-parent Alphabet.

“In 1998, Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page rented Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park, California and developed Google’s search engine there,” Forbes says. “She was hired in 1999 as Google employee number 16, and worked on everything from AdSense and Google Analytics to Google Books and Google Images.”

Susan advocated for the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube back in 2006. This grew to 2.5 billion monthly viewers.

Susan previously worked in the marketing department at Intel, as well as a management consultant at Bain & Company.

How did Marco Troper die?

A cause of death has yet to be revealed. However, campus police ruled out foul play.

However, Esther Wojcicki, Troper’s grandmother, believes he died of a drug overdose. “He ingested a drug, and we don’t know what was in it. … One thing we do know, it was a drug,” she told the San Francisco outlet SFGATE.

Esther said Troper was “loving” and a “math genius.” “He was everything you could have wished for in a son and a grandson. He was destined to make a difference,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”