(CNN) YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said on Thursday that she is “stepping back” from her leadership role at the company after running the video-sharing platform for nearly a decade.
In a blog post, Wojcicki said she plans to “start a new chapter focusing on my family, health and personal projects that I’m passionate about.”
Wojcicki has been involved with YouTube’s parent company Google since its inception, when the two founders worked to build a search engine out of her garage in California. She later became Google’s 16th employee and has been with the company for nearly 25 years.
“Susan has a unique place in Google’s history and has made the most incredible contribution to products used by people around the world,” Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said in a statement. “We are so grateful for everything she has done over the past 25 years.”
Wojcicki was CEO of YouTube for nine years. Neal Mohan, YouTube’s current chief product officer, succeeds her.
“With everything we’re doing in Shorts, streaming and subscriptions, along with the promises of AI, YouTube’s most exciting opportunities lie ahead and Neal is the right person to lead us,” Wojcicki wrote.
Wojcicki oversaw YouTube during the crucial transition from the web to social media, as well as as online platforms came under increasing scrutiny for spreading misinformation, hate speech, and other harmful content.
She added that although she would be leaving her role, she would continue to work with a number of YouTube teams and advise Google CEO Sundar Pichai, providing “advice and guidance for Google and Alphabet’s portfolio- businesses”.
“I’m so proud of everything we’ve accomplished,” Wojcicki wrote. “It was exciting, meaningful and all-consuming.”
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