Marissa Mayer: The First Ever Pregnant CEO Of A Fortune 500 Tech Company?

Colleen Taylor

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch and TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked as a reporter for GigaOM, the Financial Times’ Mergermarket newswire, and the semiconductor industry newsletter Electronic News. Disclosure: Colleen holds a small amount of shares in AOL, which were awarded as part of her employment contract with TechCrunch. She personally... → Learn More

Monday, July 16th, 2012
marissamayer

Talk about a big news day. Marissa Mayer, who was just appointed to be the new CEO of Yahoo (her first day on the job is tomorrow), has announced that she is a pregnant and due to give birth to a boy in October 2012. She gave the news exclusively to Fortune, but word starting spreading like wildfire seconds after it went public.

We’re still doing some digging, but from the looks of this it could be a major first. Is there another time that a CEO of a publicly traded Fortune 500 technology company has been pregnant? Female CEOs at public tech companies are incredibly rare, but for them to be 30-something is even rarer. So from the start Mayer was standout, but it’s hard to think of a time when a CEO of a major listed tech company has gone on maternity leave. It could certainly be a trailblazing turn.

The 37-year-old Mayer has been married to entrepreneur and Founders’ Den managing partner Zack Bogue for several years now, so it makes sense for them to add to their family at this point.

Anyway, enough gossip about tech execs’ personal lives. This kind of coverage doesn’t happen with males, I know, but surely anyone would recognize that Mayer is breaking some new ground here. So, mazel tov to Bogue and Mayer. It’s exciting and inspiring to see people who are working incredibly hard in their professional lives while also having growth on the personal side, too.

Feature photo of Marissa Mayer at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012


Person: Marissa Mayer
Companies: Yahoo!, Google

Marissa Mayer is CEO of Yahoo. Previously as a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer led the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 36 years old, she was also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 12 years at Google, Marissa led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news,...

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Company: Yahoo!
Website: yahoo.com
Launch Date: January 1, 1994
IPO: December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

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