# Marissa Mayer

Marissa Ann Mayer (born May 30, 1975) is an American information technology executive, formerly serving as the president and chief executive officer of Yahoo!, a position she had held starting July 2012. It was announced in January 2017 that she would step down from the company's board upon the sale of Yahoo!'s operating business to Verizon Communications for $4.8 billion. She would not join the newly combined company, now called Oath, and announced her resignation on June 13, 2017.

## Quotes

* I’ve tried to be gender-blind and believe tech is a gender-neutral zone but do think there has been gender-charged reporting. We all see the things that only plague women leaders, like articles that focus on their appearance, like Hillary Clinton sporting a new pantsuit. I think all women are aware of that, but I had hoped in 2015 and 2016 that I would see fewer articles like that. It’s a shame.
** according to Marissa Mayer hits out at 'gender bias' as Yahoo is sold for $5bn (25 Jul 2016)
* David Karp is just incredibly special. I like to think that I’m good at empathy, but I will say that David Karp is just incredibly empathetic and really in tune with the community of people that he has, that are contributing and creating on Tumblr.
** fortune.com.
* I think I’ve always thought of culture as DNA. I don’t know a lot about genetics, but I understand some of it and I think that what you really want are the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves in culture.
** fortune.com.
* It was the height of the first boom, so it was 1999. It was a good year to be a graduate in computer science.
** fortune.com.
* I was at Google. And if you looked at Tumblr and Yahoo!, you know when you look at a map and you can see the way that South America and Africa used to fit together, I sort of joked that as we got to know Tumblr we were like we kind of felt like those continents, like our users were older, their users were younger.
** fortune.com.
* I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner. Yahoo! has always been a very friendly company.
** huffingtonpost.com.
* I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough.
* If you can find something that you're really passionate about, whether you're a man or a woman comes a lot less into play. Passion is a gender-neutralizing force.
* You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms.
* It's really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people.
* I’m proud of what we achieved at Yahoo. That said, we had a quickly decaying legacy business. All we really managed to do was offset the declines.
** The New York Times: "Marissa Mayer Is Still Here" (18 April 2018)
* There are different phases of companies. When you’re in the tens of people, the idea itself either attracts people or it doesn’t. People are there because they think the problem you’re trying to solve is just that important.
** The New York Times: "Marissa Mayer Is Still Here" (18 April 2018)
* I've heard both the founding stories of Google and Yahoo, and for both those companies, the founders didn't even have to get into a car. They could literally go to the law office, the venture capitalists, the bank... on a bike. It's all that close together.
** as quoted in: Fisher, Adam (10 July 2018). Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom). ISBN 9781455559015.

## See also

* Google
* Silicon Valley