The Keller Center and the Bendheim Center are pleased to welcome Ellen Siminoff '89, Former President and CEO of Shmoop, to campus on Tuesday, October 1st for a conversation with students over lunch at the Princeton Entrepreneurial Hub.
Who Can Attend
This event, sponsored by the Gilbert Lectures, Keller Center and Bendheim Center, is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Space is limited and registration is required.
Speaker Bio
Ellen Siminoff is a long-tenured media and technology executive and board member. From 2007 to 2018, she was President and CEO of Shmoop University, an educational publishing company which reduces the friction in learning. Shmoop’s mission is to distribute its curriculum and test preparation materials across all platforms in all corners of the world. The company communicates with a distinctive edgy voice, which has been roundly lauded by educators, students, and parents alike. Shmoop grew from a singular personal vision to now encompass tens of millions of unique visitors and dozens of awards. Shmoop’s products are licensed to high schools, libraries and school districts and distributed through the website www.shmoop.com.
She was President and CEO of Efficient Frontier, a pioneer of dynamic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) management services. Siminoff joined near the company’s founding and built Efficient Frontier to $1 billion in spend under management. Efficient Frontier was sold to Adobe for $425MM. Prior to Efficient Frontier, Siminoff had six adventurous years as a founding executive at Yahoo!. During her tenure, she led Business Development (VP, Business Development and Planning), Corporate Development (SVP, Corporate Development) and ran the Small Business and Entertainment Business units.
Earlier in her career, she ran the online classifieds for the Los Angeles Times and founded EastNet, a distributor of television programming into Eastern Europe and Russia. Among other boards and advisory relationships, Ms. Siminoff served on the board of directors for SolarWinds, a leading provider of downloadable, enterprise-class network management software; and serves on the board of Zynga, the world’s leading provider of social games. In 2005 she was one of eight industry professionals named "Masters of Information" by Forbes magazine. She is also currently a member of the Advisory Board of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Other prior board experiences include US Auto Parts Network, Journal Communications, and Mozilla Corporation, the developers of Firefox browsers.
Siminoff graduated from Stanford's Graduate School of Business with an M.B.A. and Princeton University with an A.B. in economics.