Marissa Mayer

As the first female engineer at Google, Marissa Mayer has always been prominent in the press and a public advocate for professional women, which is why the whole Internet is abuzz with her new role as Yahoo! CEO. Although she's just 37, it seems that she has already been racking up a lifetime of achievements. Here are some cool facts about everyone's favorite girlie geek:

• Growing up, she was always accomplished. Back in high school, she was on the debate team, dance team, and math club and was the president of the Spanish club. She also played piano and babysat.
• She got accepted to all 10 of the colleges she applied to. She picked Stanford.
• She was an overachiever in college, too. Her extracurricular activities included dancing in her university ballet's Nutcracker, volunteering at children's hospitals, and teaching in her junior year.
• She loves high fashion. Designer Oscar de la Renta once told Vogue that Mayer is one of his biggest customers, and she once paid $60,000 to have lunch with him.

Read on for more on Mayer.

Marissa Mayer, a Google leader for 13 years, will be Yahoo's next CEO — joining the small group of female chiefs in Silicon Valley. As the company's 20th employee, Marissa was Google's first female engineer. She was responsible for the clean look of Google's popular products: the simple white search homepage, Gmail, Google News, and Google Images.

A leader for women in the technology industry, Marissa told The New York Times that Yahoo was "one of the best brands of the Internet." Even more exciting? Marissa and husband Zachary Bogue are expecting their first child — she's currently six months pregnant with a baby boy!

Not familiar with the newly appointed CEO? Learn more about the woman who'll be leading an Internet legend below:

1. She bought her first computer in college, where she was studying to be a pediatric neurosurgeon, then switched to a unique mix of courses only offered at Stanford: symbolic systems — a blend of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer science.
2. Following her 14 job offers after graduation, Marissa created a matrix, ranking each position on salary, location, chance of success, lifestyle, career trajectory, and happiness. She then recruited an economist to help her analyze her data and spent hours charting pros and cons with her friend before deciding which offer to accept.

See the rest of the list — including some sound career advice for women — after the jump.

>> Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

• Sarah Burton looked Anna Wintour straight in the eye and lied to her about her involvement with Kate Middleton's royal wedding dress — not a feat most designers could pull off. According to Hamish Bowles, the editor cornered Burton and asked her point blank whether or not she was designing it, and Burton said no. "Anna was telling everyone, 'Sarah told me she's not doing the dress, so she's not doing the dress,'" Bowles said. [The Cut]
  

• A few other pieces of Alexander McQueen's creations are on display as part of the Victoria and Albert Museum's current exhibit, titled British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age. Among other items included in the exhibit is "a tattered Anarchy in the U.K. T-shirt designed by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren." [Fashion Etc]
  

• The Model Alliance today released an analysis of the modeling industry's working conditions and found that 68 percent of the models surveyed suffered from depression or anxiety, and 77 percent had been exposed to drugs and alcohol on the job. The analysis also revealed that 93 percent of models get their start in the industry before their 20th birthday. [The Fashion Spot]
  

• Marissa Mayer is known as much for her position as one of the top female engineers at Google as she is for her penchant for designer clothing. "Oscar de la Renta is an amazing designer who works really well with color and detail which I think is something that's inspiring," she says. "When you want to treat yourself to something that's really beautiful, that really inspires you and captures your imagination, you should buy it." [BuzzFeed Shift]
  

• Just how many issues of Vogue has Kate Moss covered? According to a new book, Kate Moss: The Making of an Icon, she's been on over 300 covers of international editions of the magazine, including her recent September 2011 cover of American Vogue. [Stylelist]

We just arrived back in San Francisco after a whirlwind four days at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and while we're still processing the stats, data, information, and products we've seen, there is one thing we noticed: there's an obvious disconnect in the ratio of men to women at the show.

CNET brought together some of the most influential and powerful women in the tech field — including Padmasree Warrior of Cisco, Marissa Mayer of Google, Caterina Fake of Hunch, and Lindsey Turrentine of CNET — at this year's CES to talk about the state of the tech industry, pink gadgets, and how to strike a balance between work and home. You can see the entire panel (it's about an hour long) in the embedded video after the break, but first, a few highlights:

• The general consensus is that women have come a long way in terms of the technology field, but there's a lot more work to be done.
• Marissa Mayer says that more students (men and women) should be exposed to computer science at the high school level, so that they have more of a chance to get into the technology industry after college. "When speaking about women in technology, it becomes a numbers game, but it's not about the size of the slice of pie, it's the size of the pie as a whole; we need to make the pie bigger, and expose women to computer science earlier."
• Caterina Fake lets her daughter in on her work life in order to make her feel included. She conducts family meetings every morning around the breakfast table to talk about what worked yesterday, what they could do better today, and the goals they have for the week ahead.
• Lindsey Turrentine says that one of the most important things you can do for your children is to show a strong partnership at home. When raising kids — girls and boys alike — it's important to show that you can do both: have a strong family and lean on each other to pick up the slack when work needs to be done. No one's career is more important than the other.

See what all of the amazing women had to say about the state of the tech industry for women in the full video after the jump.

Forbes's list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women has been released, and we're excited to see quite a few techies in the group.

Forbes selects candidates within six categories: billionaires, business, lifestyle (including entertainment and fashion), media, nonprofits, and politics. From those categories, each person is ranked upon three metrics: "dollars, a traditional and social media component, and power base points."

Nine women with technology connections made the prestigious list. Find out who they are and their rankings below.

• 5. Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook — According to Forbes, Sheryl has helped to grow active Facebook users to represent 11 percent of the world's total population. She is also an outspoken advocate of empowering women in the workforce.
• 6. Melinda Gates, cofounder and cochair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — A computer scientist in her own right, Melinda Gates now focuses on the foundation named after her and husband. In the last year alone, the organization gave away $2.4 billion in global charitable contributions with an emphasis on immunizations.
• 16. Susan Wojcicki, SVP of Advertising, Google — Dubbed "the most important Googler you've never heard of," Susan was the one to rent her legendary Palo Alto garage to the Google founders. She currently oversees AdWords and mobile advertising products and is responsible for bringing in 96 percent of the company's total revenue.
• 20. Cher Wang, cofounder and chair, HTC; VIA Technologies — As cofounder of Taiwan-based HTC, Cher has grown the company to be the maker of more than out of every five smartphones.
• 37. Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! — As CEO of the Internet search engine, Carol has made Yahoo! into a leading digital media group with an audience reach over 700 million.

The remaining four most powerful women with a tech focus after the break.

Marissa Mayer isn't just one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley as a senior executive at Google, she's also an awesome role model for female geeks everywhere. Named one of Glamour's Women of the Year in 2009, Marissa recently sat down with the Huffington Post to chat about her career at Google, her favorite tech toys, and how to cultivate a community of women programmers that won't be turned off by the term "geek." Check out these interesting tidbits, and more facts you may not have known about Marissa Mayer below!

1. She bought her first computer in college where she was studying to be a pediatric neurosurgeon, then switched to a unique mix of courses only offered at Stanford: symbolic systems — a blend of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer science.
2. After receiving 14 job offers after graduation, Marissa created a matrix ranking each position on salary, location, chance of success, lifestyle, career trajectory, and happiness. She then recruited an economist to help her analyze her data and spent hours charting pros and cons with her friend before deciding which offer to accept.
3. The gadget she can't live without is her phone, and her favorite apps are Google Maps and Bejeweled Blitz.

See the rest of the list, including some sound career advice for women after the jump.

At just 34-years-old, as Google's vice president, search and user experience, Marissa Mayer, will soon be celebrating her 10-year Google anniversary. Being the very first female engineer to be hired by the search engine company way back in 1999, Mayer climbed her way to the top and is now a very prominent figure at Google, which now employs over 19,000 people worldwide.

This month, Glamour Magazine is honoring Mayer with a Woman of the Year award. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and 2002 Woman of the Year explains why Mayer was selected for this award:

"She has been a powerhouse of creativity and business acumen for one of the world’s most innovative companies. Marissa Mayer is leading the way in keeping America number one."

A very deserving recipient indeed — smart, geeky, and not to mention, incredibly stylish!

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