Marissa Mayer is an American businesswoman and investor. She is an information technology executive and co-founder of Sunshine Contact. Mayer previously served as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo!, a position she held from July 2012. In January 2017, it was announced that she would leave the company’s board following the sale of Yahoo!’s operating business to Verizon Communications for $4.8 billion. She would not join the newly combined company, now called Verizon Media (formerly Oath), and announced her resignation on June 13, 2017. She graduated from Stanford University and was a longtime executive, usability leader, and key spokesperson for Google (employee no. 20).
After graduating from Stanford, Mayer received 14 job offers, including a teaching position at Carnegie Mellon University and a consulting job at McKinsey & Company. She joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20. She began by writing code and leading small teams of engineers, developing and designing Google’s search offerings. Known for her attention to detail, Mayer earned a promotion to product manager and later became director of consumer web products. She oversaw the design of Google’s famously clean search homepage. She was also part of the three-person team responsible for Google AdWords, an advertising platform that enables businesses to display products to relevant potential customers based on search terms. AdWords generated 96% of the company’s revenue in the first quarter of 2011.
In 2002, Mayer started the Associate Product Manager (APM) program, a Google mentorship initiative to recruit and groom new talent for leadership roles. Each year, Mayer selected several junior employees for the two-year program, which included extracurricular projects and intensive night classes. Notable graduates include Bret Taylor and Justin Rosenstein. In 2005, Mayer became vice president of search products and user experience. She held key roles in Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail.
Mayer served as vice president of search products and user experience at Google until late 2010, when CEO Eric Schmidt asked her to lead the company’s local, maps, and location services. In 2011, she led Google’s acquisition of the review site Zagat for $125 million. While at Google, Mayer taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford and mentored students at East Palo Alto Charter School. She received Stanford’s Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award.
On July 16, 2012, Mayer was named president and CEO of Yahoo!, effective the following day. She also served on the company’s board of directors. At the time of her appointment, Yahoo!’s numbers had been trailing Google’s for over a year, and the company had gone through multiple leadership changes. To reduce bureaucracy and “make the culture the best version of itself,” Mayer launched an online program called PB&J, which collects employee complaints and votes on office issues; if an issue receives at least 50 votes, online management automatically investigates it. In February 2013, Mayer enacted a major personnel policy change at Yahoo! requiring all remote employees to return to office-based roles. Having worked from home near the end of her pregnancy, Mayer returned to work after giving birth and built a mother’s room next to her office suite; she was criticized for the telecommuting ban. In April 2013, Mayer revised Yahoo!’s maternity leave policy, extending time off and offering a cash bonus to new parents. CNN noted this aligned Yahoo! with other Silicon Valley firms such as Facebook and Google. Mayer has been criticized for many of her management decisions in reports by The New York Times and The New Yorker.
On May 20, 2013, Mayer led Yahoo!’s acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion. In February 2016, Yahoo! acknowledged Tumblr’s value had dropped $230 million since the acquisition. In July 2013, Yahoo! reported a revenue decline but an increase in profit compared to the same period the previous year. Wall Street’s reaction was muted, and shares fell 1.7%. By September 2013, Yahoo!’s stock price had doubled in the 14 months since Mayer’s appointment, although much of that growth was attributed to Yahoo!’s stake in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group, acquired prior to Mayer’s tenure.
Mayer was included in Fortune magazine’s annual list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business from 2008 to 2014, ranking 50, 44, 42, 38, 14, 8, and 16 respectively. In 2008, at age 33, she was the youngest woman ever on the list.
She was named one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year in 2009. She also appeared on Forbes’ list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2012, 2013, and 2014, ranking 20, 32, and 18, respectively.
In September 2013, Mayer became the first Fortune 500 CEO to appear in Vogue magazine.
That same year, she was included in Time‘s Time 100 list and became the first woman ranked number one in Fortune‘s 40 Under 40. Mayer made history by appearing on all three of Fortune’s annual lists in the same year: Businessperson of the Year (No. 10), Most Powerful Women (No. 8), and 40 Under 40 (No. 1). In March 2016, Fortune named Mayer one of the world’s most disappointing leaders.
On December 24, 2015, Mayer was ranked number 14 on Richtopia’s list of the 500 most influential CEOs.
In 2017, Mayer appeared on the Fortune 500 list of female CEOs, ranking 498 out of 500.