Ellen Siminoff is founder and CEO of Shmoop, a free online homework and writing helper for high-school and college students.
She is also Chairman of Efficient Frontier, a pioneer of dynamic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) management services. She worked with the founders to evolve Efficient Frontier from a groundbreaking idea into the leading SEM agency in the world with business in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Latin America.
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 eventually ran the Small Business and Entertainment Business units, representing approximately 25% of Yahoo's revenue (SVP, Entertainment and Small Business). Before Yahoo!, Siminoff worked for the Los Angeles Times as Electronic Classifieds Manager, where she developed strategy and implemented the newspaper's own online businesses as well as a joint venture of Career Path with five newspaper companies.
With her husband, David, Siminoff founded EastNet, a global syndicate barter company distributing television programming to 14 emerging market countries in exchange for advertising time. Siminoff worked as a Human Resources Management Consultant in New York after graduating from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Economics.
Among other boards and advisory relationships, Siminoff serves on the board of directors for US Auto Parts, an Internet retailer with more than 550,000 top-rated discount car parts, 4INFO, a utility for mobile phones providing users the means to search, discover, and receive relevant information and content, and Journal Communications, a diversified media and communications company operating businesses in newspaper publishing, radio and television broadcasting, telecommunications and printing services. In 2005 she was one of eight industry professionals named "Masters of Information" by Forbes magazine.
Siminoff graduated Stanford's Graduate School of Business with an MBA in 1993 after having completed a summer in corporate finance at Salomon Brothers. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including ad:tech, Search Engine Strategies and Supernova.