Ellen Siminoff

Ellen Siminoff is President, and CEO of Shmoop University, an educational publishing company which aims to reduce the friction in learning. Shmoop’s mission is to distribute its learning guides and other 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 is entirely self-funded and grew from a singular personal vision to now encompass millions of unique visitors and dozens of awards. Shmoop’s test prep and teacher products are licensed to high schools, libraries and school districts.

She was President and CEO of Efficient Frontier, a pioneer of dynamic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) management services. Ms. Siminoff joined near the company’s founding and built Efficient Frontier to $1 billion in spend under management.

Prior to Efficient Frontier, Ms. 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).

Among other boards and advisory relationships, Ms. Siminoff serves on the board of directors for US Auto Parts, an Internet retailer with more than 550,000 top-rated discount car parts; Solarwinds, a leading provider of downloadable, enterprise-class network management software; Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox browser; and Journal Communications, a diversified media and communications company operating businesses in newspaper publishing, radio and television broadcasting. In 2005 she was one of eight industry professionals named "Masters of Information" by Forbes magazine.

Ms. Siminoff graduated Stanford's Graduate School of Business with an MBA and Princeton University with a B.A. in economics.