An Introduction to Jennifer Zhu Scott and Marissa Mayer
Introduction to Jennifer Zhu Scott
**Jennifer Zhu Scott** is the cofounder of Radian Partners, a private investment advisory firm for family offices and ultra-high net-worth individuals. Radian Partners specializes in high-tech investments focusing on AI, blockchain, and renewable energy.
Prior to Radian Partners and with a background in Applied Mathematics from Sichuan University, Scott served as an advisor to fintech startups. A trailblazer in her field, she is an inaugural member of the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council.
**‘Blockchain’ is a type of financial network and online ledger** that is increasingly used by companies, replacing their centralized traditional working systems. WEF’s Blockchain Council raises awareness among businesses and developers, ensuring that everyone can benefit from blockchain while simultaneously reducing corruption, increasing trust, and empowering users.
Zhu Scott’s Early Life & Education
Zhu Scott is 51 years old and was born in the Sichuan Province in Southwestern China, where she was raised in extreme poverty. Despite it all, she excelled academically and, following high school, she studied Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Sichuan University.
She continued her studies to earn an MBA in Finance from Manchester Business School in 2011, earning a distinction for her research on how private equity and the venture capital sector could play a fundamental role in China’s growth.
Following her MBA, Zhu Scott went to Yale University to complete a public policy and leadership program. In 2018, she was chosen to participate in Princeton University’s inaugural executive program focused on advanced energy sustainability and leadership.
Zhu Scott’s Career
Zhu Scott’s career is extensive, especially in the **fintech industry**. She is a leading authority in **AI, blockchain and data ownership**, specifically as those relate to the Chinese landscape.
While at university in Sichuan, she cofounded one of the first education companies in China, which she sold before moving to the UK. The company’s goal was to facilitate students and parents navigating the prospect of studying abroad and help with the process of applying to universities. “Back then in China…quality overseas education was sometimes the only path for our generation to change our lives completely…I moved to Shenzhen and set up my company to help parents navigate this path,” Zhu Scott has said.
When she was studying for her MBA at Manchester Business School, Zhu Scott was simultaneously the Head of Business Development and Strategy for Thomson Reuters in for the Asia-Pacific region (APAC).
Radian Partners & The Common Project
Following her MBA and her time at Thomson Reuters, Zhu Scott founded **Radial Partners** in Hong Kong, a private direct investment firm focusing on **AI, renewable energy, and deep tech**, aimed at large family owners and UHNWIs.
Zhu Scott is currently the Executive Chairman of The Common Project Foundation, which uses technology for the public good and focuses on building and operating “shared platforms and health services that neither governments nor tech companies are well-positioned to create.”
Key products of The Common Project include CommonHealth – the Android version of Apple Health, and CommonPass, an app which provides Covid-19 related health data.
Zhu Scott at the World Economic Forum
**Zhu Scott has been a trailblazer in AI** and has received numerous recognitions, many of them by the World Economic Forum. In 2013, she was honored as Young Global Leader by the WEF and, in 2014, she was appointed as one of the 18 council members of the China Council for WEF’s think tank, the Global Agenda Council.
In 2016, Zhu Scott was appointed by the WEF as one of the 20 members of its inaugural Council of the Future Blockchain, and, in 2020, she joined WEF’s Data Policy Council as a Council member.
Furthermore, she has authored and co-authored numerous White Papers, i.e., authoritative reports that provide information about a specific issue, for the WEF on business adoptions of blockchain technology. Among them is a practical framework for business leaders called _Blockchain Beyond the Hype_, whose goal is to help executives understand whether blockchain is an appropriate and helpful tool for their business needs.
Zhu Scott’s Other Positions, Recognitions & Activities
Alongside her positions in several Councils of the WEF, **Zhu Scott is a Fellow of the China Fellowship Program of the Aspen Institute**, which is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. and aims to “drive change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the greatest challenges of our time.” She is also a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Zhu Scott also holds a dual Fellowship at The Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, an independent policy institute and a trusted forum for debate and dialogue offering solutions to global challenges. Furthermore, she is a Board Trustee of Web Science Trust, a UK charity that brings together world class thinkers and research in web science.
In 2018, Zhu Scott was included in Forbes’ ‘World’s Top 50 Women in Tech,’ and, in 2021, Mike Bloomberg named her an inaugural member of the Health Council of the New Economy Forum.
She is a frequent public speaker in matters of AI and deep tech, and acted as senior technical consultant for the Seasons 5 and 6 of HBO’s show Silicon Valley.
Introduction to Marissa Mayer
**Marissa Mayer** was born in 1975 in Wausau, Wisconsin. While she was very shy growing up, she was involved in many after-school activities, including ballet, ice-skating, piano, swimming, and the debate team. The variety, which provided her with different opportunities, encouraged her to multitask, “My mom will say she set out to overstimulate me—surround me with way too many things and let me pick. As a result, I’ve always been a multitasker; I’ve always liked a lot of variety,” recalls Mayer.
She graduated from Wausau West High School where she excelled at chemistry, calculus, biology, and physics. She applied to 10 different universities including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, and was accepted by all of them.
Initially, Mayer’s goal was to become a children’s neurosurgeon “who taught at a medical school while taking exceptional cases,” as she described it. However, she changed her mind and went to Stanford, majoring in **symbolic systems, which combined philosophy, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and computer science**.
Mayer obtained both her BS. (1997) and MS. (1999) in computer science from Stanford University, specializing in artificial intelligence.
Mayer’s Google
Upon graduation from Stanford in 1999, Mayer was offered a teaching job at Carnegie Mellon University, which she turned down in order to join Google. The company had just been launched, and Mayer joined as their 20th employee. She was also Google’s 1st female engineer.
She started out writing code and overseeing small teams of engineers, eventually becoming Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, during which time **she designed the well-known Google home page**. She did so based on her personal aesthetic: her love for **bold colors against simple, clean lines**. The simple white background with splashes of blue, red, yellow, and green mirrors Mayer’s childhood Wausau home and her then San Francisco penthouse. “It used to be people would come over to my apartment and say, ‘Does your apartment look like Google or does Google look like your apartment?’” Mayer said at the time.
Mayer is credited with increasing the number of daily Google searches from a few hundred thousand to more than a billion during her tenure at the company, all due to the appeal and user-friendliness of her design of Google’s landing page. She was also responsible for supervising the design and introducing **more than 100 products,** including Gmail, Google Images, and Google Maps.
Yahoo
In 2012, **Mayer was appointed President and CEO of Yahoo!**, one of Google’s biggest competitors. At that point, Yahoo! had been struggling financially for several years, and the expectation was that Mayer would revitalize the company.
Mayer oversaw the redesign of Yahoo!’s home page, which was launched in 2013. However, all efforts to keep web traffic and ad revenues from falling weren’t successful and failed to turn around Yahoo!
In 2016, it was announced that the company’s internet operations were being sold to Verizon Communications for US$4.48 billion, and Mayer resigned from Yahoo! in 2017.
On November 8, 2017, Mayer testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding major security breaches at Yahoo! that occurred in 2013 and 2014. Mayer said that she found out about the breaches at full scale in 2016 but learned of a Russian intrusion into the network in Dec. 2014.
