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Glamour’s Women Of The Year 2009 – The Visionary

November 9th, 2009

Los Angeles

What does Oscar de la Renta, Google, Armani, and coding have in common? Well, for one of Glamour’s Women of the Year only one person came to mind, Marissa Mayer. Marissa Mayer is Vice President of Search and User Experience, and is a 10-year veteran of Google.

Mayer was recently featured in Vogue and it’s not everyday that a woman in tech is featured in a Fashion magazine. However, it’s very refreshing, because Mayer is not a typical geek. Sitting in her office at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA, making decisions in Manolos and beaded Carolina Herrera separates, you’re going to stand out amongst all the other geeks. MarissaMayer

In 1999, Mayer joined Google as one of their first female engineers. She led the user interface and web server teams at that time. As Google has grown, so has Mayer’s responsibilities. She oversees the development, code-writing, and launch of Gmail, Google Maps, iGoogle, Google Chrome, Google Health, and Google News.

For me, the tech industry is not only still defined by mostly geeky men, but even when we think of women that work in the industry, they are thought of as being just as geeky. Marissa Mayer really defies that stereotype. On her 34th birthday this past May, she happens to be at her office, on a Saturday of all days. She is interviewing people for the associate-product-manager position. Five o’clock rolls around and she goes home to San Francisco wearing turquoise-fringed Manolos and an Alberta Ferretti dress to celebrate her birthday. When I read that in the Vogue article, I thought to myself “I wonder which dress it was from Ferretti?” . My point is, women like Mayer are very inspiring for young girls that want to get involved with computer science, technology, or want to work for companies like Google, but still be “girls”.