“Before Google, I spent the summer building a program that would look at what websites you would go to and what websites other people would go to - and built a collaborative filtering program that helped you find related sites to look at.”

American business executive, software engineer, and investor

Marissa Mayer is an American business executive, software engineer, and investor. Born in 1975, she is known for her leadership roles at Google and later as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when the company was sold to Verizon. At Google, Mayer was a long-time executive, a usability leader, and a prominent spokesperson, and she was the company’s first woman software engineer. She later co-founded Sunshine, and after its assets were acquired in 2025, she founded the artificial intelligence company Dazzle AI.