Profile · Wausau, Wisconsin
Marissa Ann Mayer
Born Wausau, May 30, 1975
$1.4 billion
Marissa Ann Mayer is the Wausau-born technologist who became Google's twentieth employee and first female engineer, then chief executive of Yahoo. She was born in Wausau on May 30, 1975, grew up with an art-teacher mother and a father who designed water plants, and graduated from Wausau West High School in 1993 after a crowded résumé: grocery clerk, debate captain on a state-championship team, pom-pom captain, Spanish club president, and a Governor Tommy Thompson pick for National Youth Science Camp. Stanford was supposed to lead to brain surgery. She switched to symbolic systems—linguistics, psychology, and computer science—earned a master's in computer science, and joined Google in Mountain View. Over thirteen years she worked on Search, Maps, Gmail, and Images, the products that defined the company. Yahoo named her CEO in 2012; Verizon bought Yahoo's operating business in 2017 for $4.5 billion. Her later ventures include Sunshine and Dazzle. The Wausau tie is birth, childhood, and Wausau West. The over-scheduled high-school captain who bagged groceries is still the clearest origin story for a career that remade Silicon Valley's public face.