Ross Levinsohn is the new CEO of Yahoo, replacing Scott Thompson who was fired for the company’s accounting scandal. Ross is one of the most powerful and influential figures in Silicon Valley, bringing a whopping 8 billion in pay-outs to Yahoo shareholders and re-energizing a company that had fallen on hard times.
Ross Levinsohn has served as an executive at PayPal, as COO at Facebook, and as CEO of Yahoo. He is currently the CEO-elect of Guggenheim Digital Media and Senior Advisor to Trifecta Capital. Levinsohn has also served as EVP of Strategy at News Corporation and was a board member at Groupon, Inc.
Levinsohn joined Yahoo! in May 2012 as interim President of Yahoo’s Americas operations, replacing Sue Decker. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was CEO of Guggenheim Digital Media, the digital investment and business development unit of Guggenheim Partners.
Prior to joining Guggenheim Digital Media, Levinsohn served as CEO of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) from January 2009 to May 2009. He also served as interim President of Yahoo’s Americas operations in August 2008 and was President of Yahoo! Search, the company’s core search advertising business. While president of Yahoo! Search, he oversaw the launch of new initiatives and the significant growth of revenue and profits in that business.
From February 2005 to December 2007, Levinsohn served as Chief Operating Officer of PayPal, Inc. From September 2002 to February 2005, Levinsohn was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), where he co-founded Automated Supercomputing Inc. (ASI) and led the investments of ASI in Sun Microsystems, Viaweb and Webvan. Prior to KPCB, Levinsohn was a vice president at AdMob (AdMob was acquired by Google in December 2009), where he led the company’s business development efforts and served as the main architect of its partnership with Vodafone. Prior to AdMob, he worked for Goldman Sachs in the Media, Telecom and Technology Investment Banking groups.
Sports Illustrated CEO Levinsohn is a board member of Groupon and Chairman of the Board of Directors for OpenTable. Sports Illustrated CEO Levinsohn earned a BS in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He serves on the board of directors for Zynga, Inc., Snapdeal, Inc., and Guggenheim Digital Media. He is a member of the board at Yahoo!, eBay and Yelp.