Marissa Mayer

Marissa Ann Mayer is the current president and CEO of Yahoo!, a position she has held since July 2012. Previously, she was a long-time executive, usability leader, and key spokesperson for Google

The Yahoo chief's pay package jumped 69% to $42 million in 2014, making her one of the country's highest-paid CEOs. Since taking the helm three years ago, Marissa Mayer has upgraded content -- including hiring journalists Katie Couric and Matt Bai -- and pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy aimed at boosting mobile revenues. But sales growth has remained sluggish, and Mayer has faced pressure from activist investors to cut costs and improve financial performance. In January 2014, Mayer announced plans to spin off Yahoo's stake in Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba. The move will put the focus back on Yahoo's core business and Mayer's ability to turn it around. Much of Mayer's personal fortune comes from what she accumulated during her 13 years at Google, where she was among its earliest employees.

Mayer's 14th job offer came from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who quizzed her on artificial intelligence while sitting at a ping-pong table that the company used for conferences. In 1999, Google wasn't yet an Internet search giant. In fact, the company had only 19 employees. Upon accepting an offer to lead Google's user interface and Web server teams, Mayer became the company's 20th employee and its first female engineer.

Her tenure at Google involved work on some of the company's most recognizable and successful products, including Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View, Google News and Gmail. Known as a fashionista with an eye for design, Mayer is widely credited for the unique look and feel that has come to characterize the Google experience. For example, she was responsible for approving each "doodle" (the custom logos commemorating holidays and events) appearing on the Google home page.

Mayer spent more than a decade at Google accumulating accolades for her work ethic, eye for detail and vision. In a 2008 interview, however, she seemed to be looking ahead to her next act. "I helped build Google," Mayer said, "but I don't like to rest on [my] laurels. I think the most interesting thing is what happens next."

What happened next for Mayer captured tremendous interest both in Silicon Valley and around the world. In July 2012, she was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo, a company besieged by declining stock prices, layoffs and slowing ad revenue. Tasked with course-correcting the company, Mayer became the fifth CEO hired by Yahoo in five years, as well as one of only 20 women running a Fortune 500 company. As a female technology CEO, Mayer follows in the footsteps of former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. And many believe that she just may have what it takes to turn Yahoo around.

In September of 2013, Mayer was ranked number one by Fortune magazine in its annual "40 Under 40" list of business leaders. It was also during this month that Mayer posed in the September issue of Vogue magazine. The photo featured Mayer on a chaise lounge in a form-fitting blue dress. The divisive image brought about a debate over whether the seductive pose took away from her authoritative role as a CEO.