1. Google was set up in her garage

She offered up her garage to Google co founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at a “slight above-market” rent of $1,700" because she was worried about how she’d pay her mortgage. She later  quit her job at Intel to join the pair at Google. 

2. She was a career pivoter 

She pivoted her career plans from academia in which she intended to complete a PhD in economics, to a career in technology. She told Fast Company in an interview that “no one in my family had ever worked in business beforehand. So there was the expectation that I would just go into academics.” 

According to an interview with Time, she even had a brief stint as a protest photographer in India before pivoting into the world of tech.

3. Her advice for getting ahead? Get direct.

In a 2016 interview with Financial Times, she explained that "because she was a woman, people assumed she worked in advertising sales, rather than developing the advertising product".

Later in a 2019 interview with CNBC, she offered up her advice to others who feel their voice is not being heard: "What I find is, you can't say comments in a timid, unsure way – no one's going to listen to you and no one's going to take you seriously. You have to be able to state your opinion in a way that is confident." 

Her advice to others stuck in this situation? Take a very direct approach. 

"You have to say something like: 'No, I completely disagree with your point of view, you're going in the wrong direction. Let me tell you what I think is the right step for the future.' And then you've opened the door and people are paying attention." 

4. Time blocking is her go to for balancing work and raising her five children

She was pregnant with her first child when she joined Google in 1999 and gave birth to her fifth and youngest child after becoming CEO of YouTube. She’s long been a vocal advocate for normalising the challenges that working mothers face, even tweeting a photo of her breast milk chilling whilst at Davos in 2016.

She told Time that her tip for balancing motherhood and work is time blocking: “I’m not the kind of person who hangs out in the coffee area for an hour and has random conversations with people,” she says. “I like to be home for dinner with my kids, so I am ruthless about blocking my time.” 

5. And she has a proven track record in paving the way for others

She was Google’s first employee to take maternity leave and made sure to pave the way for others following in her footsteps too. She spearheaded generous maternity leave packages for other parents at Google and then at YouTube, setting an example for many other companies worldwide. 

And it was clearly a successful move; she told CNN Money in 2016: "When we increased our maternity leave to 18 weeks, we saw the number of women who left Google cut by 50%."