(Newser)
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If you were impressed by yesterday's announcement of Marissa Mayer's big jump from Google to the helm of Yahoo, get ready to be a little more wowed: The 37-year-old is making the leap while pregnant with her first child, a boy due Oct. 7, reports Fortune. (Dad is investment-fund founder Zach Bogue.) Mayer says she told the Yahoo board's search committee she was in the family way late last month. As for their response, "They showed their evolved thinking," she says (and even moved the September NYC board meeting to Sunnydale, Calif., to accommodate her). And Mayer is showing her driven way of doing things: She expects to take a "few weeks" of maternity leave and will "work through it."
Some reaction:
- What a role model, writes Claire Cain Miller for the New York Times. "By taking such a powerful leadership role while she is pregnant, Ms. Mayer, who has always been outspoken about encouraging girls to study computer science and pursue technology jobs, is becoming an example in the mold of Sheryl Sandberg."
- We think this is a first, notes Colleen Taylor for TechCrunch. "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."
- But writing for the Atlantic Wire, Dashiell Bennett takes a glass-half-empty view, noting that Mayer was already entering a seemingly "no-win situation" considering how many CEOs the struggling company has churned through. "But now she's not just fighting for all women, she's fighting for all the moms out there too. It doesn't take a giant leap of imagination to see that Mayer will now become the poster mom for the 'can women have it all?' debate."
