Digital Media Board and Management Moves: Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo! & Others

Amazon.com has appointed Louis Castle as head of the company's Seattle game-production studio. Currently, Castle serves at Castle Production Services as executive, creative, artistic and technical director. He also serves at Westwood Studios as its co-founder. Previously, he also worked for Shuffle Master and Zynga.

Facebook Names CAO

Facebook appointed Susan Taylor, to serve as Chief Accounting Officer of the company (including as its Principal Accounting Officer). Jas Athwal, the company’s previous Chief Accounting Officer, notified the company of his intent to resign. Taylor is the VP, Controller, and Chief Accounting Officer of LinkedIn, having served in such roles since January 2012. Prior, Taylor was the VP, Controller, and CAO of Silver Spring Networks.

eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar Not to Stand for Re-Election to PayPal Board          

Pierre Omidyar informed PayPal that he will not stand for re-election to PayPal’s Board of Directors when his current term expires. He is the founder of the eBay where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015.

Yahoo! Announces New CEO and Other Senior Leaders for Altaba

As Yahoo! prepares to join Verizon, it has revealed that its remaining business under the Altaba entity will be run by its board member Thomas McInerney, 52, the former EVP & CFO of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Altaba was created in January to be an investment company, when Yahoo! announced that, following the close of its merger with Verizon, what's left of the company will be changing its name to Altaba. Altaba will be managing assets in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan, along with some non-core patents not included in the Verizon sale. It’s a successor to Aabaco, which was created by Yahoo’s board in 2015 but ultimately stalled after the company decided to do a “reverse spin-off” instead.

McInerney has served as a member of Yahoo’s Board since April 2012. He is former EVP and CFO of IAC/InterActiveCorp. He also served as CEO of the retailing division of IAC (which included HSN and Cornerstone Brands). Prior, McInerney served as EVP and CFO of Ticketmaster and worked as a Principal at Morgan Stanley.  McInerney serves on the boards of directors of HSN, Interval Leisure Group and Match Group.

The newly-announced CEO was named chairman of Yahoo’s strategic review committee last spring when the company fell under pressure to avoid a proxy battle with activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP.

Current Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer will be departing the company with a severance totaling to $23 million, according to a proxy statement filed by Yahoo!.

Joining McInerney at Altaba are current Yahoo! executives and outside advisors Arthur Chong, 63, who will be General Counsel and Secretary, Alexi Wellman, 46, who is the new Chief Financial and Accounting Officer, and DeAnn Fairfield Work, 47, who is joining as Chief Compliance Officer.

Chong served as an outside legal advisor to Yahoo! from October 2016. Prior to that, he served as a special advisor to Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, a law firm. Previously, he served as EVP, General Counsel and Secretary at Broadcom and EVP and Chief Legal Officer at Safeco.

Wellman has served as VP, Global Controller of Yahoo! since October 2015, being promoted from VP, Finance. Before Yahoo!, Wellman served as CFO of Nebraska Book Company, which owned and operated college bookstores, and was a Partner at KPMG.

Work has served as an outside legal advisor to Yahoo! since December 2016. From December 2012 to February 2016, she served as SVP, Senior Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Broadcom. Before that, she was VP and Deputy General Counsel of Broadcom.

Paychex Director Pamela A. Joseph Resigns 

Pamela A. Joseph, 57, notified Paychex of her resignation from the Company's Board of Directors. Joseph has been a member of the Board since 2005. Joseph has been the President and COO of Total System Services since May 2016.

Expedia Elects Chelsea Clinton as Director  Chelsea Clinton

Expedia expanded the size of the Board from thirteen to fourteen members and elected Chelsea Clinton to fill the newly-created directorship. Clinton currently serves as Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation where her work emphasizes improving global and domestic health, creating service opportunities and empowering the next generation of leaders. She has previously worked as an associate at McKinsey and as an Assistant Vice Provost at New York University, where she focused on interfaith initiatives and the university’s Global Expansion Program.

Auto Trader Group Appoints New COO       

UK's largest digital automotive marketplace Auto Trader Group announced that Nathan Coe has been appointed COO and Executive Director of the company. Nathan joined Auto Trader in 2007 to oversee the transition from a magazine business to being a pure digital company. Prior to joining Auto Trader, Nathan was at Telstra, where he led Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Development for its media and internet businesses.

Criteo Hires EVP, Americas from NinthDecimal

Digital advertising firm Criteo announced that Greg Archibald has joined the company as EVP, Americas. Archibald joins Criteo after four years serving as Chief Revenue Officer for NinthDecimal, where he was instrumental in transforming the Wi-Fi ad network into a true mobile location data player. Before joining NinthDecimal, Archibald held senior-level strategic revenue positions at Datalogix, Yahoo and Intuit.

Paysafe Group Appoints Female Non-Executive Directors

Online payments company Paysafe Group named Jennifer Allerton and Karen Guerra as independent Non-Executive Directors of the company. Jennifer Allerton brings a wealth of international experience in payments technology, data innovation, operations and IT strategy. She is the former CIO of the pharmaceutical division of Hoffmann-La Roche, where she was a member of the pharmaceutical executive committee which doubled sales and quadrupled profits in a five-year period. Jennifer is currently a non-executive director on the boards of Sandvik, Iron Mountain and Aveva Group.

Karen Guerra has significant senior-level experience in the consumer goods sector, having been Managing Director and Chairman of Colgate-Palmolive's UK company between 1996-1999, followed by heading the larger French subsidiary between 1999-2006 operating across Oral, Personal & Household Care. She is a non-executive director of Davide Campari-Milano.

Groupon Adds IAC CEO Joey Levin to Board of Directors   

Groupon announced that Joey Levin, CEO of IAC will join its Board of Directors. Levin, has enjoyed a 14-year career at IAC and currently oversees the media and Internet company composed of widely known brands such as HomeAdvisor, Vimeo, About.com, Dictionary.com.

Blackhawk Network Witnesses Board and Exec Transitions 

Digital payment solutions provider Blackhawk Network Holdings and JANA Partners announced Robert Henske and Jeffrey H. Fox as new independent directors. Robert B. Henske served as a Managing Director at Hellman & Friedman from July 2007 through 2014, and as a Senior Advisor from 2014 to 2016. From May 2005 until July 2007, he served as SVP and GM of the Consumer Tax Group of Intuit.

Jeffrey H. Fox is a principal of The Circumference Group. He was President and CEO of Convergys from 2010 to November 2012, and then Executive Chairman until April 2013.

Jerry Ulrich, the company’s CFO, announced that he plans to retire by the end of 2017 after 11 years with the company. The company has initiated a search to identify a replacement for Ulrich.

As previously disclosed, the Blackhawk Board has also been engaged in succession planning for Bill Tauscher’s responsibilities as Head of International leading the company’s international business and its corporate development strategy and execution. Mr. Tauscher anticipates stepping down from his international responsibilities in 2017 as a search and transition is completed. In addition, a similar transition is planned for Mr. Tauscher’s corporate development responsibilities following the transition of his international responsibilities. Mr. Tauscher intends to continue serving as Chairman of the Blackhawk Board.

Travelport Worldwide Appoints Board Members and Senior Leader 

Travel commerce platform Travelport Worldwide appointed Elizabeth L. Buse and John B. Smith to the Board. The Board also designated Rose Thomson, EVP and CHRO as an executive officer of the company.

Buse was previously employed as CEO and Director by Monitise Plc, EVP Product Development & Management by Visa USA, VP Strategic Initiatives by First Data, EVP Solutions by Visa, and Senior Engagement Manager by Windermere Investment Associates.

Smith served as COO of Burberry Group and CEO of BBC Worldwide.

TrueCar Appoints Retired American Honda Motor EVP as Board Member; Names Leaders to Drive OEM Program Initiatives      John Mendel 

Automotive pricing and information website Truecar nominated John Mendel to its board of directors. Mendel recently retired from American Honda Motor Company, where he was the EVP, Automobile Division. Prior to joining American Honda, Mendel spent 28 years with Ford Motor Company and served as EVP and COO for Mazda North American Operations.

Abhishek Agrawal, board member since 2013, informed TrueCar that he will not stand for re-election to the Company’s Board of Directors.

Michael Darrow has become the company’s EVP of OEM Development for new OEM program initiatives in support of TrueCar’s ongoing commitment to create modern automotive marketplace. Prior to joining TrueCar, Mike spent more than 14 years with Edmunds.com, where he played a key leadership role in the company’s growth and development.

Etsy Hires CFO from Leaf Group

Peer-to-peer e-commerce website Etsy named Rachel Glaser as CFO. Rachel brings more than 30 years of senior financial experience to Etsy and will oversee global financial operations. She joins from Leaf Group, where as CFO she helped scale their global marketplace and consumer media businesses. Rachel succeeds Kristina Salen, whose departure was announced earlier. Karen Mullane, Etsy's VP, Corporate Controller, will serve as interim CFO until Rachel officially starts.

CommerceHub Names Former Oracle Exec as Chief Revenue Officer 

Cloud-based e-commerce technology platform CommerceHub named Gary Nafus as Chief Revenue Officer. Most recently he was CRO at Marchex. Nafus is an enterprise-class software sales executive spending 10 years at Oracle, where he was VP of Sales for several verticals including Oracle Retail North America.  He was also Managing Director of Americas for Kenshoo.

Date Range: March 7th - April 6th