Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer is the current CEO of Yahoo!
since July 2012.
Previously, she was a long-time executive and key spokesperson for Google.
Mayer was ranked eighth on the list of America's most powerful businesswomen of 2013 by Fortune
magazine.
Early life and education Mayer was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, the daughter
of Margaret Mayer, an art teacher of Finnish descent, and Michael Mayer, an environmental
engineer who worked for water companies.
After her 1993 graduation from Wausau West High School, Mayer was selected by Tommy Thompson,
then the Governor of Wisconsin, as one of the state's two delegates to attend the National
Youth Science Camp in West Virginia.
Mayer graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in symbolic systems
and an M.S. in computer science.
For both degrees, her specialization was in artificial intelligence.
In 2009, the Illinois Institute of Technology granted Mayer an honoris causa doctorate degree
in recognition of her work in the field of search.
Mayer interned at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, and Ubilab, UBS's research
lab based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Career Google
Mayer joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20 and was the company's first female engineer.
During her 13 years with the company, she was an engineer, designer, product manager
and executive.
Mayer held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books,
Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail.
She also oversaw the layout of Google's well-known, unadorned search homepage.
In her final years with Google, she was Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services
and, before that, vice president of search products and user experience.
Yahoo! On July 16, 2012, Mayer was appointed President
and CEO of Yahoo!, effective the following day.
She is also a member of the company's board of directors.
In 2013, Mayer ranked 32 in the Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women.
Also in 2013, Mayer became the first woman listed as number one on Fortune magazine's
annual list of the top 40 business stars under 40 years old.
In an effort to simplify the bureaucratic process and "make the culture the best version
of itself", Mayer launched a new online program called PB&J.
PB&J collects employee complaints, as well as their votes on problems in the office;
if a problem generates at least 50 votes, online management automatically investigates
the matter.
In February 2013, Mayer oversaw a major personnel policy change at Yahoo! that required all
remote-working employees to convert to in-office roles.
Having worked from home toward the end of her pregnancy, Mayer returned to work after
giving birth to a boy, and had a nursery built next to her office suite—Mayer was consequently
criticized for the telecommuting ban.
In April 2013, Mayer changed Yahoo!'s maternity leave policy, lengthening its time allowance
and providing a cash bonus to parents.
CNN noted this was in line with other Silicon Valley companies, such as Facebook and Google.
On May 20, 2013, Mayer led Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr in a 1.1 billion dollar acquisition.
The acquisition was just one in a series of major purchases that occurred since Mayer
became the CEO of the company.
In July 2013, Yahoo! reported a fall in revenues, but a rise in profits compared with the same
period in the previous year.
Reaction on Wall Street was muted, with shares falling 1.7%.
In September 2013, it was reported that the stock price of Yahoo! had doubled over the
14 months since Mayer's appointment.
In November of 2013, Mayer instituted a performance review system based on a bell curve ranking
of employees, suggesting that managers rank their employees on a bell curve, with those
at the low end being fired.
Employees complained that some managers were viewing the process as mandatory.
Boards and honors As well as sitting on the boards of directors
of Walmart, Jawbone, and Yahoo! Mayer also sits on several non-profit boards such as
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Mayer actively invests in technology companies, including crowd-sourced design retailer Minted,
live video platform Airtime, and mobile payments processor Square.
Mayer was named to Fortune magazine's annual list of America's 50 Most Powerful Women in
Business in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 with ranks at 50, 44, 42, 38, 14 and
8 respectively.
In 2008, at age 33, she was the youngest woman ever listed.
Mayer was named one of Glamour Magazine's Women of the Year in 2009.
She was listed in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2012
and 2013, with ranks of 20 and 32 respectively.
In September 2013, Mayer became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to be featured
in a Vogue magazine spread.
In 2013, she was also named in the Time 100 and became the first woman listed as number
one on Fortune magazine's annual list of the top 40 business stars under 40-years-old.
Mayer eventually made Fortune magazine history in 2013, as the only person to feature in
all three of its annual lists during the same year: Businessperson of the Year (No. 10),
Most Powerful Women (at No. 8), and 40 Under 40 (No. 1) at the same time.
Personal life Mayer dated Google co-founder Larry Page in
the early 2000s.
Mayer married lawyer and investor Zachary Bogue on December 12, 2009.
On the day Yahoo! announced her hiring, Mayer revealed that she was pregnant and Mayer gave
birth to a baby boy on September 30, 2012.
Although she asked for suggestions via social media, the name Macallister was eventually
chosen for her baby's name from an existing list.
Mayer is Lutheran, but said, referencing Vince Lombardi's "Your God, your family and the
Green Bay Packers" quote, her priorities are “God, family and Yahoo, except I'm not that
religious, so it's really family and Yahoo.”
In August 2013, Business Insider reported that Mayer lives in a penthouse suite at the
Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco with her husband.