Ellen Siminoff

Last updated
Ellen Siminoff
Born
Ellen Friedman [1]

1967 (age 56–57)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
EducationB.A., Princeton University
MBA, Stanford University
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, Investor
Years active1996–present
Known for Yahoo! (founding executive)
Shmoop (co-founder)
Spouse
​
(m. 1994)​
Children2

Ellen Siminoff (born 1967, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an entrepreneur, board member and investor. [2] Frequently quoted in The New York Times as an Internet industry commentator, [3] [4] [5] [6] Siminoff was named one of Forbes magazine's Masters of Information in 2005. [7]

Contents

Along with her husband, David Siminoff, Ellen is co-founder and former chief executive officer of Shmoop. [8]

Life and education

Siminoff obtained a BA in economics from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University, [9] where she met her husband David Siminoff while they were students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. [10] She also has a Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Software Engineering from Harvard University. [11]

Career

Siminoff is a seasoned executive in the media and technology sectors, From 2007 to 2018, she served as president and CEO of Shmoop University, an educational publishing company. [12] Prior to this role, she was president and CEO of Efficient Frontier, a company specializing in dynamic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) management services, which was later acquired by Adobe. [13]

Yahoo!

Siminoff was a founding executive at Yahoo!, [14] working at the company from 1996 to 2002. [15] She started by running corporate and business development, running mergers and acquisitions after the departure of J. J. Healy. [16] Later Siminoff moved to Senior Vice President of Entertainment and Small Business, with Toby Coppel and Jeff Weiner taking over corporate development. [17] Six months later, Yahoo announced on April 13, 2002, that Siminoff decided to leave the company but would stay through until the end of the year. [18] [16] Her departure was part of a high-profile exodus of Yahoo executives, including CEO Timothy Koogle, CFO Gary Valenzuela, sales chief Anil Singh, head of international operations Heather Killen, and marketing head Karen Edwards. [18]

Efficient Frontier

Siminoff was former chairman and CEO of Efficient Frontier. [19] In July 2006 Bloomberg Businessweek noted that Efficient Frontier was the largest buyer of search advertising keywords on Google, [20] and in March 2008 Silicon Alley Insider named Efficient Frontier one of the 25 most valuable privately held companies in Silicon Valley, valued at an estimated $275 million. [21] Adobe Inc. bought Efficient Frontier for $400 million in 2012. [22] [23]

Zynga

In 2012, she was appointed to Zynga Inc.'s board of directors. [24] In November 2012, siminoff purchased 250,000 shares of the company. [25] She served on Zynga's board from 2012 to 2022, where she was a member of the Audit Committee and chaired the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. [26]

Take-Two Interactive

Ellen Siminoff became a director of Take-Two Interactive in May 2022, following the company's merger with Zynga. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]

Other board positions

Siminoff has been on the board of directors for Journal Media Group, [33] U.S. Auto Parts, [34] Mozilla Corporation, SolarWinds, Discovery Education and Zynga. [35] [36] [37]

She serves as executive chairman of BigCommerce (BIGC) [27] and Verifone, a global payments platform, Follett Software [38] and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO). [39] [27] She has also been involved with Stanford University's Graduate School of Business Advisory Board, [40] Princeton University's President's Advisory Council, [41] and Stanford's Hoover Institution Board of Overseers. [42]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Yang</span> Computer programmer and co-founder of Yahoo!

Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang is a Taiwanese-born American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pincus</span> American Internet entrepreneur

Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John W. Thompson</span> American technology executive (born 1949)

John Wendell Thompson is an American technology executive who was the chair of Microsoft from 2014 until June 2021, and chair of Illumina from 2021 until 2023. He is a former chief executive of Virtual Instruments, a vice-president at IBM and the former chief executive of Symantec. Thompson later became an independent director on the board of Microsoft, and in February 2014, was named chairman. He led the search for Microsoft's next CEO; as a result, Satya Nadella was selected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Decker</span> American businesswoman (born 1962)

Susan Lynne Decker is an American businesswoman. She was president of Yahoo! Inc in 2007 and 2008, leading the operations of the company while Jerry Yang was chief executive officer. In 2017, Decker co-founded a social networking platform called Raftr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Corporation</span> American software company

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, some of whom are employed by the corporation itself. The corporation also distributes and promotes these products. Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla open source project, founded by the now defunct Netscape Communications Corporation, the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity. The Mozilla Corporation reinvests all of its profits back into the Mozilla projects. The Mozilla Corporation's stated aim is to work towards the Mozilla Foundation's public benefit to "promote choice and innovation on the Internet."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mårten Mickos</span> Finnish businessman

Mårten Gustaf Mickos is a technology executive based in San Francisco. He is the current CEO of HackerOne, a security vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform.

Safra Ada Catz is an Israeli-American billionaire banker and technology executive. She is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, she was named co-president and chief financial officer (CFO), reporting to founder Larry Ellison. In September 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would step down as CEO and that Mark Hurd and Catz had been named as joint CEOs. In September 2019, Catz became the sole CEO after Hurd resigned due to health issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marissa Mayer</span> American business executive and engineer, former CEO of Yahoo!

Marissa Ann Mayer is an American business executive and investor who served as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017. She was a long-time executive, usability leader and key spokesperson for Google. Mayer later co-founded Sunshine, a startup technology company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shantanu Narayen</span> Indian-American business executive and CEO of Adobe

Shantanu Narayen is an Indian-American business executive who has been the chairman, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Adobe Inc. since December 2007. Before this, he was the company's president and chief operating officer since 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Burgess</span> Canadian businessman

Rob Burgess is a Canadian executive in the technology industry. He was the chief executive officer of Macromedia Inc. from 1996 to 2005 and chairman from 1997 to 2005. Prior to that, he was CEO of Alias Research from 1991 to 1995.

Powerset was an American company based in San Francisco, California, that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet. On July 1, 2008, Powerset was acquired by Microsoft for an estimated $100 million.

Karen Richardson is an American executive in the software industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Lilly (computer scientist)</span> American venture capitalist

John Lilly is a venture capitalist and former CEO of Mozilla. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Applications Foundation and Code for America. He earned his B.S. in computer systems engineering and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane Greene</span> American businesswoman

Diane B. Greene is an American technology entrepreneur and executive. Greene started her career as a naval architect before transitioning to the tech industry, where she was a founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008. She was a board director of Google and CEO of Google Cloud from 2015 until 2019. She was also the co-founder and CEO of two startups, Bebop and VXtreme, which were acquired by Google and Microsoft, for $380 million and $75 million.

David E. Siminoff is a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Kovacs</span> Canadian businessman

Gary Kovacs is a San Francisco Bay Area technologist. He was the chief executive officer of AVG Technologies. Kovacs has worked for Mozilla Corporation, Adobe, SAP, and IBM, and led Zi Corporation, a mobile text messaging company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blake Irving</span>

Blake Irving is the American former Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of GoDaddy. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake Irving worked for Yahoo! and Microsoft where he helped develop NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, and Hotmail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Goldberg</span> American businessman (1967–2015)

David Bruce Goldberg was an American management consultant and businessman. He was the founder of LAUNCH Media and the CEO of SurveyMonkey. He was married to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Hogan</span> American business executive

Kathleen Hogan is executive vice president for human resources and chief people officer at Microsoft.

Shmoop University Inc. is a for-profit online educational technology company that specializes in test preparation materials, mental health tools, and learning content for K–12 schools. Shmoop offers free study guides aimed at teens on a range of subjects, including literature, biology, poetry, U.S. History, civics, financial literacy, and music.

References

  1. ↑ Trewyn, Phill. "Ex-Yahoo! exec from Milwaukee plots next move," Milwaukee Business Journal (Feb 17, 2002).
  2. ↑ "Entrepreneurial Women Who Inspire Us | Posts | 8VC". www.8vc.com.
  3. ↑ Markoff, John (2007-05-05). "Rumors Fly on Microsoft and Yahoo". The New York Times .
  4. ↑ Helft, Miguel (2006-12-07). "Industry Insiders Praise Yahoo Choice for Key Post". The New York Times .
  5. ↑ Helft, Miguel (2008-04-03). "Google Cutting 300 Jobs at DoubleClick". The New York Times .
  6. ↑ Helft, Miguel (2007-02-05). "A Long-Delayed Ad System Has Yahoo Crossing Its Fingers". The New York Times .
  7. ↑ Hardy, Quentin (2005-09-05). "2005 E-Gang: The Keyword Keeper". Forbes.com. Archived from the original on November 24, 2005. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  8. ↑ Ringle, Hayley. "Silicon Valley edtech company founded by former Yahoo executive moves HQ to Scottsdale: Affordable talent a driving factor in company relocation, exec says," Phoenix Business Journal (July 1, 2019).
  9. ↑ "Q&A with Efficient Frontier's Ellen Siminoff". iMediaConnection.com. Archived from the original on 2014-01-22. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  10. ↑ Journal, Kara SwisherStaff Reporter of The Wall Street (6 January 1999). "The Couple of Silicon Valley: They Are Definitely Connected". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 27 May 2020. They met at Stanford Business School in 1991 and fell in love while making a killing.
  11. ↑ "Past Lecturers and Fellows | The G. S. Beckwith Gilbert '63 Lectures". gilbertlectures.princeton.edu.
  12. ↑ Thomas, Owen. "Zynga Taps A Veteran Of Yahoo's Glory Days To Its Board". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
  13. ↑ "Zynga appoints former Yahoo exec to board". Reuters.
  14. ↑ Musil, Steven. "Zynga adds ex-Yahoo exec Ellen Siminoff to board of directors". CNET. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  15. ↑ MacMillan, Douglas (2012-07-19). "Zynga Adds Diversity to Board With Yahoo Veteran Ellen Siminof". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  16. 1 2 Angel, Karen (2002). Inside Yahoo!: Reinvention and the Road Ahead. John Wiley & Sons. p. 233. ISBN   978-0-471-42102-3.
  17. ↑ "Yahoo! Directors & Officers". Yahoo. Archived from the original on 2013-03-19.
  18. 1 2 Hu, Jim. "Yahoo loses key senior exec". CNET. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  19. ↑ "Board Members". Efficient Frontier. Archived from the original on 2008-07-04.
  20. ↑ "Efficient Frontier: Hacking Madison Avenue". BusinessWeek . 2006-07-23. Archived from the original on 2012-06-22. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  21. ↑ "23. Efficient Frontier". Business Insider. 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2014-05-05.
  22. ↑ Bloom, Jeremy (2015). Fueled By Failure: Using Detours and Defeats to Power Progress. Entrepreneur Press. p. 74. ISBN   978-1-61308-307-9. [David Karnstedt] later went on to run North American sales for Yahoo! And became CEO of a unified software advertising platform called Efficient Frontier, a company that would later sell to Adobe for $400 million.
  23. ↑ "Adobe Completes Acquisition of Efficient Frontier". Adobe. 2012-01-16. Retrieved 27 May 2020. Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the completion of its acquisition of privately held Efficient Frontier
  24. ↑ "Zynga appoints former Yahoo exec to board". Reuters.
  25. ↑ Thomas, Owen. "A Zynga Board Member BOUGHT $560,000 Worth Of Zynga Stock Last Week". Business Insider.
  26. ↑ "Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. -". ir.take2games.com.
  27. 1 2 3 "Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. -". ir.take2games.com. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
  28. ↑ Bilton, Nick. "At Mozilla, a Chief’s Support of Gay Marriage Ban Causes Conflict," New York Times (MARCH 31, 2014).
  29. ↑ "Leadership Changes" (blog). Mozilla. March 24, 2014. Retrieved March 24, 2014.
  30. ↑ Alistair Barr. "Three Mozilla Board Members Resign over Choice of New CEO". WSJ. Archived from the original on 2020-04-25. Retrieved 2017-08-04.
  31. ↑ Newton, Casey (3 April 2014). "Outfoxed: how protests forced Mozilla's CEO to resign in 11 days". The Verge. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  32. ↑ Kim, Susana (April 3, 2014). "Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich Resigns After Protests from Gay Marriage Supporters". ABC News. Retrieved April 3, 2014.
  33. ↑ "Journal Communications, Inc. Elects Ellen Siminoff to Board of Directors" (Press release). Business Wire. February 14, 2007.
  34. ↑ Siminoff, Ellen F. "Ellen Siminoff: Executive Profile & Biography". BusinessWeek . Archived from the original on May 19, 2011. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  35. ↑ Tracy, Abigail (2012-07-20). "Zynga adds Ellen Siminoff to Board of Directors". Inc. Retrieved 2016-11-29.
  36. ↑ "Zynga Appoints Ellen Siminoff to Board of Directors". Zynga. 2012-07-19. Archived from the original on 2013-06-24.
  37. ↑ Anderson, Will. "SolarWinds' board transformed in wake of private equity buyout". Austin Business Journal. Retrieved 27 May 2020. Former board members who are no longer directors include: [...] Ellen Siminoff, president and CEO of California educational website Shmoop University
  38. ↑ "The Jewish Graduate Student Initiative". www.gojgo.org.
  39. ↑ "Corporate Governance Highlights | Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc". www.take2games.com.
  40. ↑ "Ellen Siminoff: "Learn How to Sell"". Stanford Graduate School of Business. 2024-04-30. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
  41. ↑ "Ellen Siminoff, '89". New Ventures. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
  42. ↑ "ellen siminoff". Hoover Institution.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.