Indian-American Neal Mohan will take over as the new CEO of YouTube, succeeding Susan Wojcicki who will be stepping down from her role after nine years. Mohan, who is currently the company’s chief product officer, has worked with Wojcicki for nearly 15 years.
“When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was bringing in an incredible leadership team. Neal Mohan was one of those leaders, and he’ll be the SVP and new head of YouTube,” Wojcicki wrote in a letter to the employees.
Mohan will join a growing list of Indian-origin CEOs who are heading US-based global companies, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. Here are four things to know:
> Mohan is a graduate in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
> Mohan has been working as chief product officer at YouTube since 2015 and prior to this, he was employed at Google, which he joined in 2008. “Mohan will be the SVP and new head of YouTube. I've spent nearly 15 years of my career working with Mohan, first when he came over to Google with the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and as his role grew to become SVP of Display and Video Ads. He became YouTube’s Chief Product Officer in 2015. Since then, he has set up a top-notch product and UX team, played pivotal roles in the launch of some of our biggest products, including YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium and Shorts, and has led our Trust and Safety team, ensuring that YouTube lives up to its responsibility as a global platform,” Wojcicki said in the letter.
> Prior to Google, Mohan worked at DoubleClick, an online advertising company that was acquired by Google in 2007. Mohan is noted for his expertise in digital advertising and is also said to have played a key role in the development of many of Google's advertising products, including AdWords, AdSense, and DoubleClick. After the official announcement, Mohan tweeted, “Thank you, @SusanWojcicki. It's been amazing to work with you over the years. You've built YouTube into an extraordinary home for creators and viewers. I'm excited to continue this awesome and important mission. Looking forward to what lies ahead...”
> Mohan has also worked with Microsoft as a manager in corporate strategy and is on the board of Stitch Fix, and genomics and biotechnology firm 23andMe.