Marissa Mayer

Education

Wausau West High School When she was attending Wausau West High School, She took part in extracurricular activities, becoming president of her high school's Spanish club, treasurer of the Key Club, captain of the debate team, and captain of the pom-pom squad. After graduating from high school in 1993, Mayer took pre-med classes at Stanford University.

During her junior year, she taught a class in symbolic systems, with Eric S. Roberts as her supervisor. The class was so well received by students that Roberts asked Mayer to teach another class over the summer.

Mayer went on to graduate with honors from Stanford with a BS in symbolic systems in 1997, and an MS in computer science in 1999. For both degrees, her specialization was in artificial intelligence. For her undergraduate thesis, she built travel-recommendation software that advised users in natural-sounding human language.

Mayer interned at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, and Ubilab, UBS's research lab based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Career Google (1999–2012)

After graduating from Stanford, Mayer received 14 job offers, She joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20, She became known for her attention to detail, which helped land her a promotion to product manager, and later she became director of consumer web products. She oversaw the layout of Google's well-known, unadorned search homepage. She was also on the three-person team responsible for Google AdWords, which is an advertising platform that allows businesses to show their product to relevant potential customers based on their search terms. AdWords helped deliver 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 new talents and cultivate them for leadership roles. Each year, Mayer selected a number of junior employees for the two-year program, where they took on extracurricular assignments and intensive evening classes. In 2005, Mayer became vice president of search products and user experience. Mayer held key roles in the development of Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Maps, Google Books, Google Product Search, Google Toolbar, iGoogle, and Gmail.

Mayer was the vice president of Google search products and user experience until the end of 2010, when she was asked by then-CEO Eric Schmidt to head the local, maps, and location services. That year, Schmidt promoted her to Google's operating committee, making her the youngest member of the committee at the time. effective the following day. She was already a member of the company's board of directors. To simplify the bureaucratic process, Mayer launched an online program called PB&J to collect employee complaints and votes on problems in the office; a problem that generated at least 50 votes would trigger an investigation by online management. Some of Mayer's management policies were criticized by The New York Times and The New Yorker.

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, and soundproofed a small space adjacent her office so that she could bring her infant son to work with her. She was consequently criticized for the ban on remote work. 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 acquisition. In July 2013, Yahoo! reported a fall in revenues, but a rise in profits compared with the same period in the previous year. Yahoo!'s monthly web traffic surpassed that of Google in August 2013, although the companies continued to trend closely over the year. In September 2013, it was reported that the stock price of Yahoo! had doubled over the 14 months since Mayer's appointment. However, much of this growth may be attributed to Yahoo!'s stake in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group, which was acquired before Mayer's tenure.

In November 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. This case was dismissed in March 2018. In 2016, former Yahoo! employee Gregory Anderson filed a lawsuit alleging that the company’s performance management system disguised layoffs as terminations for the purpose of evading state and federal WARN Acts. Anderson's suit was dismissed in 2017.

In December 2015, Yahoo stakeholders SpringOwl and Starboard Value released statements criticizing Mayer's performance as CEO and recommending that she be replaced as CEO. By January 2016, it was further estimated that Yahoo!'s core business has been worth a negative value since December 2015. In February 2016, Mayer confirmed that Yahoo! was considering the possibility of selling its core business. In March 2017, it was reported that Mayer could receive a $23 million termination package upon the sale of Yahoo! to Verizon.

In 2017, the company's operating business was acquired by Verizon Communications for $4.48 billion. It was reported that under her contract, Mayer could receive $23 million in severance upon the sale of Yahoo! Inc. to Verizon. She announced her resignation on June 13, 2017. During her time at Yahoo!, she was paid a total of $239 million, mainly in stock and stock options.

In June of 2017, she defended former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's response to allegations of sexual misconduct at Uber, suggesting that he might have been unaware that the company's culture had become toxic. On November 8, 2017, along with several other present and former corporate CEOs, Mayer testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding major state-sponsored attacks on Yahoo's data during 2013 and 2014.

2018 – present: Sunshine, artificial intelligence After leaving Yahoo! in 2017, Mayer started Lumi Labs with former colleague Enrique Munoz Torres. The company is based in Palo Alto and is focused on artificial intelligence and consumer media. On November 18, 2020, Mayer announced that Lumi Labs would be rebranded as Sunshine at the same time as she announced its first product: Sunshine Contacts. Sunshine Contacts claims to improve users' iPhone contacts and Google contacts using intelligent algorithms, contact data, public sources, and more. The app allows users to organize and share images, and plan events.

Mayer has described artificial intelligence as "potentially a renewable resource that can be very generative", describing the technology as "enlightening".

Boards Mayer serves on the boards of directors of AT&T Inc., Hilton, Starbucks, and Walmart. She served on the board of Nextdoor from May 2024 to June 2025 and previously served on the board of Maisonette.

Business investments Mayer actively invests in technology companies, including crowd-sourced design retailer Minted, wireless power startup uBeam, mobile payments processor Square, genetic testing company Natera,

Accolades Mayer was named to Fortune magazine's annual list of America's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 with ranks at 50, 44, 42, 38, 14, 8 and 16 respectively.

In September 2013, Mayer became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to be featured in a Vogue magazine spread. Mayer 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. In 2014, Mayer was ranked sixth on Fortunes 40 under 40 list, and was ranked the 16th most-powerful businesswoman in the world that year according to the same publication. In March 2016, Fortune then named Mayer as one of the world's most disappointing leaders.

On December 24, 2015, Mayer was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 14 in the list of 500 Most Influential CEOs.

Mayer appeared on the list of women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in 2017

Personal life

Mayer dated Larry Page in the early 2000s while he was the CEO of Google. Mayer married lawyer and investor Zachary Bogue on December 12, 2009.

On the day Yahoo! announced her hiring, in July 2012, Mayer revealed that she was pregnant; she gave birth to a boy on September 30, 2012. Although she asked for baby name suggestions via social media, she eventually chose the name Macallister from an existing list. On December 10, 2015, Mayer announced that she had given birth to identical twin girls, Marielle and Sylvana.

Mayer is Lutheran, but she has said—referencing Vince Lombardi's "Your God, your family and the Green Bay Packers"—that her priorities are "God, family and Yahoo!, except I'm not that religious, so it's really family and Yahoo!."

Mayer states she is not a feminist.

As of November 2025, Mayer had an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion.

Political activity During the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, Mayer donated $200,000 against an effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. This was described by Politico as "deepening the governor’s substantial Silicon Valley support."