Marissa Mayer was born on May 30, 1975 to Michael Mayer, an environmental engineer and Margaret Mayer, an art teacher. She is an American software engineer, businesswoman and investor. She greatly influenced the development of Google Inc. in its early years.
She went to Stanford University where she studied symbolic systems and computer science with an emphasis on artificial intelligence. She earned a B.Sc. degree in symbolic systems in 1997 and a M.Sc. degree in computer science in 1999.
Mayer joined Google in 1999 as the company’s first female software engineer and employee number 20. She soon became a prominent figure there. She designed the search interface of Google’s home page and was credited with increasing the number of daily searches from a few hundred thousand to more than a billion. Other services and products which she contributed to were Gmail (free e-mail service), Chrome (Web browser), Google Maps (mapping and directions service) and Google Earth (geographic information system software).
After her stint at Google, she became CEO and president of Yahoo! Inc in July 2012. Upon the sale of Yahoo!’s operating business to Verizon Communications, she stepped down from the company’s board in January 2017. After leaving Yahoo, she started Sunshine (formerly Lumi Labs) with former colleague Enrique Munoz Torres.
Mayer figured in Fortune Magazine’s annual list of America’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business for many years. In 2008, at age 33, she was the youngest woman ever listed. She was listed in Forbes List of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
In 2013, she became the first woman listed as number one on Fortune Magazine’s annual list of top 40 business stars under 40 years old.
Picture Credit : Google
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