Anne Wojcicki has made two decisions most people would call unthinkable. In 2019, divorced with two kids, she chose to have a third child on her own. In 2025, when the genetics company she co-founded collapsed into bankruptcy, she resigned as CEO so she could fight to buy it back, and won. Both decisions came from the same place: she runs her life on conviction, with the math done first.
Her single-mom status, stated plainly: Wojcicki and Google co-founder Sergey Brin divorced in 2015, and they share two children. In July 2019 she had her third child, a daughter, through sperm donation, as a single parent and by her own choice (background). She is the by-choice story on this shelf, and she made the choice while running a high-profile company.
Before
Wojcicki studied biology at Yale and spent four years as a healthcare investment analyst before deciding she would rather change the system than rate it. In 2006 she co-founded 23andMe to put genetic information directly into customers’ hands, a spit tube and a report instead of a gatekeeper (career history). The bet was contrarian from the start. Regulators pushed back, the medical establishment scoffed, and she spent years working through an FDA process most startups would not have survived. The company became the household name in consumer DNA testing anyway, with millions of customers, and in June 2021 it went public at a valuation around $3.5 billion (source).
The turn
The by-choice decision came first. In 2019, at 45, already co-parenting two children after her divorce, Wojcicki decided her family was not finished and had her third child through a donor. She did it openly, talked about it publicly, and kept running the company while doing it. For every reader weighing solo motherhood by choice, the shape of her decision is the useful part: she counted her resources, defined what she wanted, and refused to treat the absence of a partner as a veto.
The second turn was harsher. 23andMe’s value slid for years after the 2021 peak, and in March 2025 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Wojcicki resigned as CEO the same day, saying she was stepping down so she could pursue the company as an independent bidder (US News, July 2025). Founders rarely do this. The easier moves were to ride the process out or walk away rich in experience. She chose to become a buyer of her own broken company.
The build
What happened next ran on conviction and paperwork:
- 2006: co-founds 23andMe; the company grows into the best-known consumer genetics brand and goes public in June 2021 (source).
- July 2019: welcomes her third child as a single mother by choice, via donor (source).
- March 2025: 23andMe files Chapter 11; Wojcicki resigns as CEO to bid for the company independently (US News).
- June 2025: her nonprofit TTAM Research Institute outbids a major pharmaceutical company at $305 million, and the bankruptcy court approves the sale, with commitments to customer privacy and data choice written into the deal (23andMe announcement, June 2025).
The new owner’s name tells you how personal the fight was: TTAM is an acronym built from the first letters of Twenty-Three And Me (Deseret News, July 2025). She paid a real price along the way, and so did shareholders; nothing here is investment guidance, and the collapse was as real as the comeback. The point for our readers sits elsewhere. When the structure failed, she did not confuse the structure with the mission. She moved the mission into a new vehicle she could defend.
“I am thrilled that TTAM will be able to build on the mission of 23andMe to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome.”
Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe press announcement, June 2025
That sentence was written the week she won the auction, two years into the hardest stretch of her professional life. There is no bitterness in it, just the mission restated and the next step taken. She raised three kids through that stretch, one of them a child she chose to have alone, on purpose, at the busiest possible time.
What you can take from this
- By-choice motherhood is a project plan. Wojcicki counted her income, her support system, and her limits before choosing a third child alone. If you are weighing the by-choice path, run the same numbers on your own scale. The Money toolkit gives you the one-income math to start with.
- Separate the mission from the structure. Her company failed; her mission did not. If your job, your business, or your household arrangement stops working, list what you are trying to protect, then ask which new structure protects it. The Business toolkit has frameworks for rebuilding on your own hours.
- Bet on yourself with your eyes open. She resigned, publicly, to bid on a bankrupt company, knowing she might lose the auction. Confidence with a spreadsheet behind it looks a lot like this. More women who placed that bet are on our Stories of Success page.
More stories, more tools
Anne Wojcicki’s story is one of a growing shelf. Read the rest on our Stories of Success page, and join the weekly SoloMom email from the homepage to get each new story in your inbox with the tools to use it.
Verification note: single-mom-by-choice status, company facts, and the quote above were checked against the linked sources in July 2026. Quotes are reproduced verbatim. This story describes business events, and none of it is financial advice.
