“My first week at Stanford, I bought a computer, and it was the first computer I ever owned. I had to be taught how to turn it on and even how to use a mouse, even though, for a lot of people, a mouse is very intuitive.”

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.