Shark Biography

Anne Wojcicki is the CEO and co-founder of 23andMe. She co-founded 23andMe in 2006 after a decade spent in healthcare, focusing primarily on biotechnology companies. Her hope was to empower consumers with access to their own genetic information, and to create a way to generate more personalized information so that commercial and academic researchers could better understand and develop new drugs and diagnostics.

Presently, 23andMe has built one of the world's largest databases of individual genetic information. Its novel, web-based research approach allows for the rapid recruitment of participants to many genome-wide association studies at once, reducing the time and money needed to make new discoveries. The company has created a proven and standardized resource for finding new genetic association, and confirming genetic loci discovered by others.

Under Wojcicki's leadership, 23andMe has made significant advances in bringing personalized medicine directly to the public. Having graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science in biology, one of her ambitions had always been to get access to and understand her own genetic information.