A tech titan, a literacy leader, and a cookie magnate
| Obituary
Our September obituaries also include a legal trailblazer, an innovative ophthalmologist, and a publishing pioneer who forged a path for women authors.
Staunch advocacy for social reform can transform a leader into a change agent. Susan Wojcicki’s willingness to share her garage with struggling Google founders, an act that likely rewrote the tech giant’s history, led her to become Google’s premier marketing manager and its 16th employee. Wojcicki not only encouraged Google to buy YouTube, which generated roughly $30 billion in ad revenue under her leadership in 2022, but also worked to redefine corporate culture. Aiming to be “on the right side of history,” she sought to safeguard content and fiercely advocated for paid leave to support parents. Under Wojcicki’s leadership, YouTube ultimately became the ratings juggernaut for countless would-be influencers and artists.
McKinsey alumnus Sir Roderick Carnegie established the firm’s first office in his native Australia, later leading the mining company CRA Limited (now Rio Tinto) and aspiring to leave his country better than he found it. Famous Amos CEO Wally Amos—who, prior to founding his cookie company, worked with the likes of Simon & Garfunkel and the Supremes at the William Morris Agency—shared his passion for baking with others. Later in life, Amos indulged in another passion, sharing his recipe for academic success with children. Betty Jean Hall, founder of an advocacy group that helped diversify the mining industry, “believed in the underdog.” Hall fought for legislation to help workers support sick family members while retaining their jobs. Literacy Volunteers of America founder Ruth Colvin, also a champion for change, converted her basement into a classroom, going on to help immigrants, preachers, and prisoners alike. Her local literacy group has transformed into a multilingual, global company, which provides nearly 1,000 literacy programs across multiple continents.
Susan Wojcicki
Google executive helped shape the online-video landscape
She provided the garage for Google—and then helped create the business model. While working for Intel in 1998, Wojcicki rented the ground floor and garage of her Menlo Park, California, home to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google. She soon joined their quirky start-up, pioneered its advertising business, and, as a mother of five, wrote a parental-leave policy. She later headed Google’s YouTube business, turning it into a platform for countless aspiring artists and a highly profitable alternative to TV. Unlike many powerful Silicon Valley executives, she shunned the spotlight and was dubbed “the most important Googler you’ve never heard of.”
McKinsey veteran headed mining giant CRA in Australia
An early role at McKinsey shaped the thinking of one of Australia’s most respected business leaders. Carnegie studied at Oxford and earned an MBA from Harvard before joining McKinsey in 1959 and working for the firm in the United States and Europe. In 1963, he opened the first McKinsey office in the Asia–Pacific region, located in Melbourne, one of the firm’s earliest overseas outposts. He later led the international mining company CRA as CEO and chair, bolstering Australia’s trade links with North Asia. An adviser to Australian prime ministers, Carnegie was also early in recognizing the need to inspire employees with a mission. According to McKinsey senior partner Wesley Walden, “Sir Rod was one of our most prominent firm and business leaders and has left an enduring legacy for us all.”
Editor championed feminist classics and gave women a bigger role in publishing
She recognized the potential of books other editors had missed. In the late 1960s, Prashker persuaded Kate Millett, then a Columbia University doctoral student, to transform a PhD dissertation about the way women were depicted in literature into what became a feminist classic, Sexual Politics. As editor in chief at Crown in the early 1990s, Prashker published Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, another feminist classic. “Most of the other editors seemed either oblivious to what women were up against or convinced that feminism had achieved its aims,” Faludi said. Prashker also guided the careers of male authors, including Dominick Dunne and Erik Larson. Her advocacy for women in publishing brought in a wave of new talent that survives her.
Entrepreneur evolved from making cookies to promoting childhood literacy
His secret ingredients included vanilla extract and semisweet chocolate chips. Wally Amos—a former talent agent known for his Panama hats and kazoos, who worked with such stars as Marvin Gaye and the Temptations—opened his first Famous Amos cookie shop on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in 1975. The cookies tasted so fresh that they were soon in demand nationwide at supermarkets and even upscale department stores like Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus. Amos struggled to manage rapid growth, however, and sold his business in the 1980s. He later had a single cookie shop in Kailua, Hawaii, and found a new passion: teaching children to love books. President George H. W. Bush granted him a National Literacy Award in 1991.
Volunteer launched a global program to teach literacy
In 1961, when she was in her mid-40s, Colvin was shocked to read that more than 11,000 people in her county, Onondaga in New York State, were illiterate. The news spurred her to set up a voluntary teaching program, Literacy Volunteers of America. The program initially operated out of her basement, where she stored teaching materials in a broken refrigerator. Her program eventually became ProLiteracy, with branches around the world. Colvin, who lived to age 107 and described herself as “a very determined person,” traveled as far as Papua New Guinea and Madagascar to help establish literacy programs. She was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 2006.
German–Canadian entrepreneur built a giant in plastics machinery
When the young man from Germany emigrated to Canada in 1951, he had $25 and a letter of introduction from Albert Einstein, a family friend. Schad’s first venture was designing a snowmobile. “It wasn’t much of a snowmobile,” he admitted. “It only worked on asphalt.” He then founded Husky Injection Molding Systems, a global supplier of machines to make plastic bottles, cups, and auto parts. He stressed customer service, not short-term profitability. “I see myself as a machinery person,” he said. “A financial person can run a company downhill. You need a vision.” He devoted much of his philanthropy to environmental protection and naturopathic medicine.
“He stressed customer service, not short-term profitability.”
J. Richard Munro
CEO shifted Time Inc. from magazines to cable TV and movies
By the time Munro became chief executive of Time Inc. in 1980, the publisher of Time, People, and Sports Illustrated already had diversified into the cable-TV world with Home Box Office. HBO, the first major subscription cable channel, had thrived under his leadership. But Munro foresaw challenges. Sony, Hachette, and Rupert Murdoch were creating global entertainment companies. Time risked being swallowed up. Munro negotiated a merger with Warner Communications, a movie and recorded-music giant, in 1989. Time Warner became the world’s largest media company but was eventually broken up after an ill-fated merger with AOL in 2000. After retirement, Munro supported educational causes and tutoring through Head Start.
She wanted no special treatment from film directors: “If a man can do it, so can I,” Cheng insisted. That included jumping through windows. Born in Shanghai, she became a star in Hong Kong in the 1960s and was known for graceful leaps and midair somersaults. In a midlife comeback, she starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, released in 2000 and directed by Ang Lee. Her previous movies were little known outside of Asia, but this one was a global hit. “Love in Chinese and Western films is communicated differently,” Cheng said, “but fights are the same, and we can understand what they’re fighting about.”
Growing up in eastern Kentucky, Betty Jean Hall saw that women struggled to make a living on their own. Later, as a lawyer, she formed the Coal Employment Project and filed a federal complaint that forced mining companies to stop denying jobs to women. In a campaign with wider ramifications, she advocated for passage of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, requiring most companies to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for the birth of a child or to care for ailing family members. A former female miner said Hall “helped to forge a sisterhood that continues today.”
Ophthalmologist restored sight with artificial corneas
Other researchers, going back to the 19th century, “gave up too early,” Dohlman said. The Swedish-born ophthalmologist persisted. While working at what is now the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston, he created artificial corneas, approved by US regulators in 1992. These replacement parts for the outer layer of the eye are provided to people whose conditions preclude eye transplants. The button-size devices have restored sight to more than 19,000 people, according to the Mass General Brigham medical system. More than 700 of the world’s leading corneal experts were trained by Dohlman, the Champalimaud Foundation estimated. He modestly likened his work to “putting a window on a house so you can see out.”
Our July obituaries also include a CEO and media mogul, an early transgender-rights activist, a Pritzker Prize–winning architect, and an astronaut whose work inspired the establishment of Earth Day.
Our June obituaries include former CEOs of Ford and Boeing, a mathematician-turned-trader who put quants on the map, and a Caribbean-born titan of francophone literature.
