On February 16, 2023, Neal Mohan, an Indian-American business leader, was chosen to succeed Susan Wojcicki as the fourth and current CEO of YouTube. With Mohan’s appointment, YouTube, a Google company, will now have its first Indian-American CEO.
Mohan was raised in Florida and Michigan after being born in Lucknow, India, in 1973 or 1974. While still in high school, he made a brief trip back to India and enrolled in St. Francis’ College. He began his career at Accenture, an IT consulting company, after receiving his electrical engineering degree from Stanford University in 1996. In 1997, he joined Net Gravity, a startup.
Mohan was hired by DoubleClick in 1999, who would later buy Net Gravity in 1998. Due to Mohan’s essential contribution to the company’s core business operations, DoubleClick relied on him to make cost reductions after the dot-com bubble burst. At DoubleClick, Mohan was appointed vice president of business operations.
Mohan returned to Stanford in 2003 to finish his MBA. While he was a student at Stanford, DoubleClick started to have significant problems as a result of its 1999 acquisition of Abacus Direct. After acquiring DoubleClick and separating Abacus Direct from it, Hellman & Friedman asked David Rosenblatt, a seasoned executive, to take over as CEO of DoubleClick. Once Mohan received his MBA in 2005, Rosenblatt hired him on the condition that he would remain in California. Together, Rosenblatt and Mohan came up with a strategy to position DoubleClick as a business invested in advertising exchange, core ad technology, and a sizable ad network.
In December 2005, this proposal was made to the boards of DoubleClick and Hellman & Friedman, who approved it. For US$3.1 billion in 2007, Google and DoubleClick reached an agreement. Susan Wojcicki, a Google executive, directed this operation. In 2007, Mohan formally joined Google, where he played a crucial part in the DoubleClick integration process.
Mohan was Google’s senior vice president of display and video ads prior to being named CEO of YouTube. Mohan started working for YouTube as the Chief Product Officer in 2015. He worked for the firm from late 2010 until early 2020, managing flagship products like YouTube Music, YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, YouTube Shorts, and YouTube NFTs.
Mohan testified before Congress and attended a White House summit in September 2022 to announce stricter guidelines to combat extremism on the YouTube platform, which were made in response to political attempts to annul the 2020 US presidential election, including the riot on January 6. This summit was held in the wake of the January 6 capitol riot.
Hema Sareen Mohan, who has 20 years of experience working in the public welfare and nonprofit sectors, is married to Mohan. While working at DoubleClick in New York, he got married to his wife. He presently serves on the boards of 23andMe and Stitch Fix and has previously worked for Microsoft.
In conclusion, Mohan has a long experience in the computer sector and has worked for some of the most prestigious organizations. His selection as the CEO of YouTube is a testament to his leadership skills and accomplishments at Google and YouTube. Both the tech sector and the Indian-American community are looking forward to Mohan’s time at YouTube.
