Vice President of Search Product Management, Yahoo!, Oakland, California
Mel Guymon trained as a concert pianist before enlisting in the Navy and heading to Oregon State to study nuclear physics. He graduated at the top of his class and was deployed as an officer on a ballistic missile submarine. After a 10-year Navy career, Guymon spent the next decade in the worlds of 3-D gaming and virtual commerce.
Google hired him after he attempted to sell his second entrepreneurial venture, IMVU.com, to the company. “Google couldn’t acquire my company, so they acquired me,” he said. Guymon led Google’s 3-D virtual worlds and then its advertising platform while putting his background in nuclear physics to work by leading the company’s effort to explore investments in nuclear energy. He is considered an expert in the economics of nuclear energy, next generation nuclear technology designs, and public policy.
“I think I’m most proud of and most excited about how close we came to helping the nuclear industry make a comeback in the United States as part of the green energy portfolio,” he said. Google’s investment direction changed after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011. Two years later, Yahoo lured Guymon away from Google by offering a vice presidency. He has overhauled Yahoo’s partner products portfolio, revitalized and streamlined the international organization, and achieved positive annual growth for the first time in five years.
“Most recently, we were able to displace Google from Firefox as the default search provider — something that no one ever thought was going to happen,” he said.
Degrees
- B.S. Nuclear Engineering, 1992