She was born in 1975 (Wausau, Wisconsin) Mayer was interested in fine arts; took ballet and piano lessons during high school and she was an excellent student. Also prominent in extracurricular activities: she was captain of both the debate team and the pom-pom squad. In 1993, after her high school graduation Marissa was elected as one out of two delegates to travel to West Virginia and make an appearance at the National Youth Science Camp.
In 1997, Mayer graduated with honors from Stanford and in 1999 in computer science, both her specialties being in Artificial Intelligence. Marissa built software for her undergraduate thesis that guided users regarding human language in natural-sounding. Later on the Illinois Institute of Technology honored Mayer with a doctorate degree, giving her credit for of her work in the search field in 2009.
Mayer owns numerous designs associated to the interface project and artificial intelligence, she was an intern at SRI International in Menlo Park and at Ubilab which is research laboratory located in Zurich Switzerland.
When she joined Google, Mayer was the first female engineer there and had a huge part in the company; not only as a programmer holding key roles (in Google Search, iGoogle, Gmail, Google toolbar and more) but also as recruiting new talents, cultivating and training them for leadership roles at the company.
Marisa was the acting Google Product Search Vice President until 2010 and also worked as a teacher in Stanford and mentor at the East Palo Alto Charter School. In 2011 she secured Google’s purchase of survey website Zagat for $125 million.
In 2012, Mayer became President and CEO of Yahoo and is a participant of the company’s director panel. Following year she managed to purchase Tumblr in a $1.1 billion acquisition for Yahoo. Now in 2016 during February Marissa Mayer confirmed that Yahoo is considering selling its primary business.