Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has died at the age of 56

Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube and one of Silicon Valley’s most influential female executives, died Friday after two years of living with lung cancer, the company announced.

Wojcicki, who was 56, stepped down as CEO of YouTube last year after more than two decades leading various parts of Google and parent company Alphabet.

“Even as I write this, it seems impossible to be true,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo to employees Friday that was posted on the company’s website.

“Her loss is devastating to all of us who knew and loved her, to the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and to the millions of people around the world who admired, supported and led her them and felt the impact of the incredible things he created at Google, YouTube and beyond.”

In a post on X on Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote: “I was saddened to hear of the passing of Susan Wojcicki. She was one of Silicon Valley’s visionaries and will be missed by so many. May she rest in peace.”

Wojcicki has been a key figure at Google since the company’s early days, when he rented his Palo Alto garage to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. She soon left her job at chipmaker Intel and joined the search startup, becoming its first marketing manager in 1999. Over the years, she would oversee Google’s advertising business and its video business, playing a major role in transforming the company from a startup to what it is today. The $2 trillion tech juggernaut.

The Wojcicki family has become known as something close to Silicon Valley royalty. Wojcicki’s sister Anne, founder and CEO of genetic testing company 23andMe, was once married to Google co-founder Brin. Her mother, Esther, founded the journalism program at Palo Alto High School, the cradle of the tech industry, and was recognized on a 2012 Digital Learning Day by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for her effective use of technology in the classroom .

Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, who is a director of product management at Google, wrote in a Facebook post Friday that Wojcicki has been living with “non-small cell lung cancer” for two years. “Susan was not only my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,” the Troper wrote.

As head of YouTube, Wojcicki oversaw one of the world’s largest media sites, with an audience streaming more than 1 billion hours of video every day. The video site, which Wojcicki pushed Google to acquire in 2006, generated $8.7 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter. During Wojcicki’s nine years at the helm of YouTube as CEO, she has turned the video site into a trusted business amid a changing market while grappling, not always successfully, with the rampant spread of of disinformation.

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In an interview with wealth Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell at the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos, Wojcicki discussed the challenges of regulating the content she publishes on the site and recommends to users.

“If you’re dealing with a sensitive topic like news, health, science, we’ll make sure that what we’re recommending comes from a trusted, well-known publisher who can be trusted,” she said.

She also addressed important issues involving women in the workplace, including the US Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade decision that guarantees women the right to abortion.

“My position is that women should have a choice when they become mothers. I think that’s really important. I believe that reproductive rights are human rights and that removing a law and a right that we have had for almost 50 years will be a huge setback for women. But that’s my personal opinion,” she said. “As a company that truly focuses on free speech, we want to make sure we offer a broad set of opinions that everyone has a right to express their opinion, as long as they follow our community rules.”

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com