Marissa Mayer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Marissa Mayer
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Mayer in 2013
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Marissa Ann Mayer
May 30, 1975 Wausau, Wisconsin, U.S.
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| Education | Stanford University (BS, MS) |
| Occupation | Software engineer, business executive |
| Title | Co-founder, Sunshine Contacts |
| Board member of |
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| Spouse(s) |
Zachary Bogue
(m. 2009) |
| Children | 3 |
Marissa Ann Mayer (born May 30, 1975) is an American business leader, software engineer, and investor. She was the head of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when the company was sold to Verizon. Before that, she was a very important person at Google, where she was one of its first employees and its first woman software engineer. Later, Mayer helped start a technology company called Sunshine.
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Early Life and Interests
Marissa Mayer was born in Wausau, Wisconsin. Her mother was an art teacher, and her father was an environmental engineer. When she was young, Marissa described herself as being "very shy."
She was always busy with many after-school activities. She took part in ballet, ice-skating, piano lessons, swimming, and debates. She was also a Brownie. Ballet taught her important skills like discipline and confidence. From a young age, she loved mathematics and science.
Education Journey
High School Achievements
Marissa went to Wausau West High School. She was excellent in science and math subjects like chemistry, calculus, biology, and physics. She was very active in school clubs. She was the president of the Spanish club and the treasurer of the Key Club. She also led the debate team and the pom-pom squad.
Her high school debate team won the state championship in Wisconsin. The pom-pom squad was also the state runner-up. While in high school, she worked at a grocery store. After finishing high school in 1993, she was chosen to represent Wisconsin at the National Youth Science Camp.
Stanford University Studies
Marissa first planned to become a brain surgeon for children at Stanford University. However, she later changed her focus to symbolic systems. This special field combines philosophy, psychology, language, and computer science. At Stanford, she continued to dance ballet and was part of the debate team. She also volunteered at children's hospitals. She even helped bring computer science education to schools in Bermuda.
During her third year, she taught a class about symbolic systems. The students really enjoyed her class. She earned special awards from Stanford for her teaching. Marissa graduated with honors from Stanford. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1997 and a Master of Science degree in 1999. For both degrees, she focused on artificial intelligence. For her first degree, she created software that could suggest travel plans to users in a natural, human-like way.
Other Academic Recognitions
In 2009, the Illinois Institute of Technology gave Marissa an honorary doctorate degree. This was to recognize her important work in the field of search technology.
Marissa also worked as an intern at SRI International in California and at a research lab in Switzerland. She holds several patents for her inventions in artificial intelligence and how computer programs look and feel to users.
Career Path
Working at Google (1999–2012)
After graduating from Stanford, Marissa received many job offers. She joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20. She was Google's first woman software engineer. She started by writing computer code and leading small teams of engineers. Her work involved developing and designing Google's search tools.
Even though she was a software engineer, she also worked on how users interact with Google's products. She became known for paying close attention to small details. This helped her get promoted to product manager, and later to director of consumer web products. She was in charge of the simple look of Google's famous search homepage. Marissa believed that other search engines were too crowded. She thought Google needed to be simpler to be easier to use. She was also part of the small team that created Google AdWords. This is an advertising platform that helps businesses show their products to people who are searching for similar things. AdWords brought in a lot of money for Google.
In 2002, Mayer started a special program at Google called the Associate Product Manager (APM) program. This program helped Google find new talented people and train them for leadership roles. Each year, Marissa chose junior employees for this two-year program. They worked on extra projects and took intense evening classes. Many successful people came from this program. In 2005, Mayer became a vice president. She played key roles in creating many popular Google products. These include Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail.
Marissa was the vice president of Google's search products and user experience until 2010. Then, she was asked to lead Google's local, maps, and location services. In 2011, she helped Google buy a survey website called Zagat. While at Google, she also taught computer programming at Stanford. She mentored students at a charter school.
Leading Yahoo! (2012–2017)
On July 16, 2012, Marissa Mayer was chosen to be the president and CEO of Yahoo!. She started the very next day. At that time, Yahoo's finances were not doing as well as Google's. Yahoo was also changing its leaders and engineers very often. To make things simpler, Mayer started an online program called PB&J. This program allowed employees to share their complaints and vote on problems in the office. If a problem got enough votes, management would investigate it.
In February 2013, Mayer made a big change at Yahoo! She asked all employees who worked from home to start working in the office. She had worked from home herself at the end of her pregnancy. She even made a special quiet space next to her office so she could bring her baby son to work. Because of this, some people criticized her decision to ban remote work. In April 2013, Mayer changed Yahoo's maternity leave policy. She made it longer and gave parents a cash bonus. This was similar to what other big tech companies were doing.
On May 20, 2013, Mayer led Yahoo! to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion. In July 2013, Yahoo! reported that its profits had increased compared to the year before. In August 2013, Yahoo!'s monthly website traffic was higher than Google's. By September 2013, Yahoo!'s stock price had doubled since Mayer became CEO. However, much of this growth was due to Yahoo's investment in a Chinese company called Alibaba Group, which happened before Mayer joined. By 2016, the value of Tumblr had gone down.
In November 2013, Mayer started a new employee review system. It was based on a bell curve, which meant managers had to rank employees. Some employees felt that this system was unfair.
In December 2015, some Yahoo investors criticized Mayer's performance. They suggested she should be replaced as CEO. By early 2016, it was thought that Yahoo!'s main business was losing value. In February 2016, Mayer confirmed that Yahoo! was thinking about selling its main business. In 2017, Verizon Communications bought Yahoo!'s operating business for $4.48 billion. Marissa announced she was leaving Yahoo! on June 13, 2017. During her time at Yahoo!, she received a total of $239 million, mostly in company stock.
In November 2017, Mayer spoke before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She talked about major cyberattacks on Yahoo's data that happened in 2013 and 2014.
Sunshine and Artificial Intelligence (2018 – present)
After leaving Yahoo! in 2017, Marissa Mayer started a new company called Lumi Labs with a former colleague. The company is based in Palo Alto. It focuses on artificial intelligence and consumer media. On November 18, 2020, Mayer announced that Lumi Labs would be renamed Sunshine. At the same time, she launched its first product: Sunshine Contacts. This product aims to improve users' phone contacts using smart computer programs and public information. In November 2024, Sunshine launched the Shine app. This app uses artificial intelligence to help users organize and share photos, and plan events.
Mayer has said that artificial intelligence is like a "renewable resource" that can create many new things. She believes this technology is "enlightening." At an AI summit in San Francisco in 2024, Mayer discussed how artificial intelligence could create better advertisements in search results.
Board Memberships
Marissa Mayer is on the boards of directors for several companies, including AT&T Inc., Nextdoor, and Walmart. She also serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations. These include the San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2025, she was nominated to the board of Hilton Worldwide and was elected to the board of directors of Starbucks.
Business Investments
Marissa Mayer actively invests her money in technology companies. Some of these include Minted, which sells crowd-sourced designs, and Airtime.com, a live video platform. She has also invested in uBeam, a wireless power startup, and Brit + Co., an online community for DIY projects. Other investments include Square, a mobile payment company, and One Kings Lane, a home décor website. She also invests in companies like Natera, which does genetic testing, and HVMN, a company focused on health and performance.
Awards and Recognition
Marissa Mayer has received many awards and recognitions throughout her career.
- Fortune magazine has named her one of America's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business many times. She was on this list from 2008 to 2014. In 2008, at 33 years old, she was the youngest woman ever to be on the list.
- In 2009, Glamour Magazine named her one of their Women of the Year.
- She was also on Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
- In September 2013, Mayer became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to be featured in Vogue magazine.
- Also in 2013, she was named in the Time 100 list. She was also the first woman to be ranked number one on Fortune magazine's list of the top 40 business stars under 40 years old.
- In 2013, Mayer made Fortune magazine history. She was the only person to appear on all three of its annual lists in the same year: Businessperson of the Year, Most Powerful Women, and 40 Under 40.
- In March 2016, Fortune named Mayer as one of the world's most disappointing leaders.
- On December 24, 2015, a UK company called Richtopia listed her at number 14 among the 500 Most Influential CEOs.
- Mayer appeared on the list of women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in 2017.
Personal Life
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Marissa Mayer married lawyer and investor Zachary Bogue on December 12, 2009.
On the same day Yahoo! announced her hiring in July 2012, Mayer shared that she was pregnant. She gave birth to a boy on September 30, 2012, named Macallister. On December 10, 2015, Mayer announced that she had given birth to identical twin girls, Marielle and Sylvana.
Marissa is a Lutheran. She has said that her priorities are "God, family and Yahoo!" but that she is not very religious, so it's mostly "family and Yahoo!" She also states that she is not a feminist.
As of May 2024, Marissa Mayer's estimated net worth was $970 million.
Political Involvement
During the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, Marissa Mayer donated $200,000 to support Governor Gavin Newsom. This showed her strong support for the governor from the Silicon Valley community.
Marissa Mayer Quotes
- "I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough."
- "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room."
- "Do something you're not ready to do. In the worst case, you'll learn your limitations."
- "People are more productive when they're alone, but they're more collaborative and innovative when they're together."
- "If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen."
- "Success is never getting to the bottom of your to-do list."
- "You can't have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you."
- "I love technology, and I don't think it's something that should divide along gender lines."
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See also
In Spanish: Marissa Mayer para niños
