Indian-American Neal Mohan will now be taking over as the new CEO of Google's YouTube division, replacing Susan Wojcicki, who stepped down from her role after nine years.
Wojcicki has a long history with Google, as she was part of the company from its inception in 1998, when she rented garage space in her parent's house to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Though, she officially joined the company as the 16th employee a year later.
He will be joining the growing list of Indian-origin global tech chiefs, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.
Prior to this Mohan was YouTube's chief product officer and was responsible for the platform's products, safety initiatives, and user experience.
Here are a few things you should know about the new chief of YouTube:
Education
Mohan holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He also has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, an award that is only presented to the top 10 per cent of the class with the highest grade point averages (GPA).
Early roles
The 49-year-old Neal Mohan started his career at Accenture in 1996, and then he moved to a startup called NetGravity. In 2002, DoubleClick, an Internet Advertising firm, acquired the company.
MBA
Mohan decided to complete his two-year MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business from 2003 to 2005, after which he rejoined DoubleClick.
Entry into Google
Mohan entered Google after the company acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2007. When he was at Google, Mohan played a key role in advancing Google's advertising products, which included AdSense, DoubleClick, and AdWords. He also built solutions for advertisers and media partners, helping grow the mobile app ecosystem and the online mobile industry.
Acquisitions
Mohan was part of many acquisitions, including Admeld, Teracent, and Invite Media. These acquisitions helped bolster Google's advertising offerings.
YouTube
It was Wojcicki who invited Mohan into her team as her lieutenant after she took over as CEO in 2014. Since then he served as the chief product officer and has played a key role in the launch of some of YouTube's biggest products, like YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube Kids, YouTube Shorts, and YouTube TV. He was also responsible for the TV, desktop, and mobile apps, in addition to tools for content creators, media partners, the government, and more.
Mohan was also leading the streaming platform's trust and safety team, which oversaw the creation and implementation of platform policies and community guidelines. The team was also governing the content available on the platform.
Board roles
Currently, he is serving on the boards of companies like Stitch Fix, a personal styling service, and 23andme, a genetic testing company. He had previously also served as a member of the boards of directors of the Internet Advertising Bureau from 2012 to 2016 and the Mobile Marketing Association from 2012 to 2015.
