The founder of billion-dollar company 23andMe cuts her kids' hair, teaches them to do laundry, and protects them from the 'insanity' of megawealth
- In a New York Times profile, Silicon Valley royalty Anne Wojcicki talked about her career, her marriage to Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and how she raises her children.
- The founder of billion-dollar personal genomics company 23andme tries to keep herself and her kids grounded.
- She says she cuts her kids' hair, makes them to do laundry, and protects them from the "insanity" of megawealth.
Silicon Valley royalty Anne Wojcicki may own a billion-dollar company, but she still tries to keep her life and her kids grounded.
Wojcicki, the cofounder and CEO of personal genomics company 23andMe and former wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, said she tries to protect her children from the "insanity" of megawealth in an interview with The New York Times' Maureen Dowd.
"I have people who clean the house three days a week," she told Dowd. "And I just told them to stop doing laundry on Fridays because my kids need to learn how to do laundry on Fridays. It's so easy to be like, 'I don't have to do laundry again. I don't have to cook again.' But then you're not normal. I have a new rule lately. I just don't go out on weekdays. If I'm raising kids, I need to be focused on helping implement that normalcy."
She also said that she cuts her children's hair herself, and, to save time in the morning, sometimes lets them wear their clothes to bed.
"The other thing I used to do, when we'd travel in the summers, because I don't like to pack a lot," she told Dowd, "and so I'd have the kids bathe in their clothes and then they change into something else. And then their clothes are clean for the next day. Versus the hotel laundry, which is so expensive."
As for how she keeps herself grounded, Wojcicki says she rides her bike to work every day (even in the rain), and doesn't make "fancy cars and houses and the right dress" a priority.