Jerry Yang, born the 6th of November 1968 in the capital of Thailand, Taipei, was the first born to the family. Yang’s father died just two years after he was born and left his mother, who worked as an English teacher, to raise him and his new little brother. When Yang was ten years old the family moved to The United States. Regardless of his mother’s English teaching profession, Yang spoke little to no English at all. In their new San Jose, California home Yang excelled very quickly and was fluent in the English language in just 3 short years. Yang showed genius attributes in school at an early age and was placed in an advanced placement (AP) English course, a program that provided him a chance to earn college credits in high school. Yang Graduated first in his high school class while managing to participate in extracurricular activities such as tennis and served as his school’s student-body president. Throughout high school Yang also worked several part time jobs for money. Yang attended and graduated from Stanford, where he received a degree in electrical engineering. Along with his degree from Stanford, Yang also acquired some very influential people in his life there. Both Yang’s wife of two children, Akiko Yamazaki, and Co-founder of yahoo, were acquainted through schooling at Stanford. It’s said that a side project of Yang and fellow electrical engineer student David Filo was indexing and filing internet links and posting them to a website of theirs. This would be a start to one of the strongest internet mega corporation partnerships. Yang and Filo would go on to Co-Found a website called “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” which would later be changed to the worldwide renowned Yahoo.com. I think that the early experience, the innovative web indexing and his genius aptitude all aligned, provided for him what it took to grow his company and make it into what it is today.
Career, Accomplishments and Contributions. Maintaining the same standard of excellence he had in achieving so much in high school, Jerry Yang received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 1990. Yang stuck around Stanford for a few more years in hopes of earning his doctrine, but left unfinished due to his engagements with his new company which was incorporated by the two in 1995 and taken public by 96’. Yahoo! quickly took off, achieving new internet trafficking records often and making the two “Chief Yahoos” as they called themselves, billionaires. This was a great achievement that would be followed by many more. In 1999 Jerry Yang was named on the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology review. In 2007 Yang’s net worth of 2.2 billion dollars ranked him 432nd among the world’s richest people according to Forbes. At its strongest, Yang’s Yahoo! empire was worth as much as 132 billion dollars, but had a steady decline to an estimated 15 million in 2008. After the company devalued, $44.6 billion dollars was offered from Microsoft to buy out the super corporation. The offer was reviewed and refuted by Yang and the executives, and was appealed for 4 more dollars per share, which was denied by Microsoft. Since 2008, as Chief Yahoo and CEO Jerry Yang has generously accepted just 1$ as an annual salary. Contributions by the genius entrepreneurs include enormous sums of money to his Alma Mater, Stanford. Including a75 million dollar pledge in 2007 which the bulk of was meant to be used for research in