CALIFORNIA -- The new CEO of Yahoo, 37-year-old Marissa Mayer, first made headlines last week when she announced she was leaving her executive position at Google to become the CEO of Yahoo, and doing so while pregnant.
Many are wondering who Mayer is, but it is not the first time she has been in the spotlight.
Mayer is best known in Silicon Valley for being the 20th person hired at Google back in 1999. She has been with Google for over a decade and was their first female engineer on staff. At the age of 36, she became the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee.
Mayer’s education in technology certainly helped pave the way for her success. Before becoming youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Mayer earned both a bachelor’s and masters’ degree in computer science at Stanford University where she specialized in artificial intelligence.
She was most recently the Vice President of Location Services at Google where she oversaw projects like Google Maps. Mayer told CNN that she has artificial intelligence and interface design patents.
She has also been on Forbes’s list of the 100 most powerful women twice; once in 2008 and again in 2011.
Mayer is married to a successful entrepreneur Zack Bogue who is co-founder and co-managing partner of Data Collective. Mayer described her husband to Fortune as "a lawyer who traded practicing law to invest in ‘big-data startups.’"
