Management
Jeff Weiner
Chief Executive Officer
Jeff Weiner was named CEO of LinkedIn in June of 2009, after joining the company as Interim President in December 2008. Prior to LinkedIn, Jeff was an Executive in Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners where he advised the firms' consumer technology portfolio companies and evaluated new investment opportunities. Jeff previously served as EVP of Yahoo!'s Network Division, a roughly $3 billion annual revenue business with over 3,000 employees and products reaching over 500 million consumers. Jeff also serves on the Board of Directors for DonorsChoose.org and Malaria No More.
Steve Sordello
Chief Financial Officer
Steve joined LinkedIn from Tivo, Inc., where he served as Chief Financial Officer. He previously was CFO for Ask Jeeves until 2005, leading the company through a transition from unprofitable back to a profitable, high-margin company. During his tenure at Ask Jeeves, revenues and earnings grew significantly, and the company’s market value increased from under $40 million to over $2 billion when the company was acquired by IAC/Interactive Corporation in 2005. Steve’s career also includes working in senior finance roles at Adobe Systems and Syntex Corporation. He holds an MBA and BA from Santa Clara University.
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder, Executive Chairman
Reid Hoffman is Executive Chairman and a co-founder of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal where he was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Reid was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in significant technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. In addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart, Kiva.org, and Mozilla Corporation. Reid graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a BS in Symbolic Systems and from Oxford University with a Master’s degree in philosophy and a Marshall scholarship.
Allen Blue
Co-founder, Vice President, Product Strategy
Allen is one of the co-founders of LinkedIn. He was formerly Director of Product Design at SocialNet.com, a social networking service supporting dating, recreational and professional activities, where he was responsible for product design and implementation of SocialNet’s member-data focused business model. Previously, Allen has worked as a contract product and web designer for a variety of clients including PayPal and Microsoft’s Virtual Worlds project. Allen also lectured in Drama for three years at Stanford, where he graduated with honors with a BA in Drama and a BA in English, and was winner of the Golden Medal for creative excellence.
Steve Cadigan
Vice President, People Operations
Steve Cadigan is Vice President of People Operations at LinkedIn. Steve has over 21 years of global human resources experience in the US,Canada and Asia-Pacific and has worked on acquisition integrations around the globe. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Steve served as vice president of HR at Electronic Arts where he was responsible for the Games Label group, with 2,500 employees and approx. $2B revenue, as well as M&A integrations. Among Steve’s accomplishments includes helping build Cisco’s world class acquisition integration team from 1998 to 2002. He also held key HR leadership roles at: PMC-Sierra, AMD, Fireman's Fund and Esprit.
Patrick Crane
Vice President, Marketing
Patrick served as Vice President of Marketing for the Yahoo! Network Division before joining LinkedIn. At Yahoo! he was responsible for taking Yahoo! Answers to market in 2005 and for marketing the product to its position today as the #1 Q&A site on the web. Patrick also led the marketing of Yahoo! Mail, helping it become the world’s top web mail provider in 2006 as measured by comScore. Prior to Yahoo!, Patrick served as Marketing Director for Vodafone U.S. and launched Australia and New Zealand’s first wireless internet portal, extending some of the services into the Japanese market. He is a graduate of the University of Huddersfield and Henley Management College, both located in the United Kingdom.
Kevin Eyres
Managing Director, Europe
Kevin Eyres is focused on developing, leading and delivering the company’s strategy and growth initiatives in Europe. Prior to LinkedIn Kevin was European Managing Director at SideStep. Kevin was previously the General Manager of AltaVista International, prior to the acquisition by Overture, and a Director at Shopping.com. Eyres started his career as an engineer at Compaq Computers where he spent ten years leading development teams during Compaq’s hyper growth phase. Kevin holds a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Texas in San Antonio and has six patents.
Mike Gamson
Vice President, LinkedIn Corporate Solutions
Mike Gamson was named VP of Sales of LinkedIn’s Hiring Solutions business in June of 2008, after joining the company as GM of the Linkedin Research Network in August, 2007. Prior to Linkedin, Mike was Director of Product Marketing at Advent Software, the leading provider of enterprise software for investment managers, where he led the Trading and Order Management business. Mike began his career as an entrepreneur in Costa Rica founding a restaurant and boutique hotel in 1996 before selling the business and spending two years in Corporate Finance at Bank of America in Chicago.
David Henke
Vice President, Operations and Engineering
David Henke is responsible for the Technology Stack at LinkedIn, including Engineering, Operations, IT, and Data Systems. Prior to LinkedIn David was Senior Vice President Engineering at Yahoo! for four years, responsible for the Engineering/Operations at Yahoo! Search Marketing and the Production Operations Infrastructure for the entire company. Prior to Yahoo!, David ran Engineering/Operations for AltaVista Company for 4 years. Prior to AltaVista David served in development and management roles for Silicon Graphics for 8 years. Prior to SGI, David was a founder in two software companies, CAE Systems and TeamOne Systems, both of which were acquired. David holds a BA in mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Robby Kwok
Head of Corporate Development
Robby is responsible for corporate development and business development activities at LinkedIn. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Robby held a variety of leadership roles in corporate development, business development and business operations with Yahoo! for 8 years. While at Yahoo! he was instrumental in defining and executing Yahoo!’s consumer initiatives in the search, social search, travel, and local spaces, including the acquisitions and integrations of Inktomi, Overture, Farechase, Flickr, and del.icio.us. Before joining Yahoo!, he was an investment banker with Epoch Partners and Merrill Lynch. Robby holds a BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ellen Levy
Vice President, Strategic Alliances
Ellen Levy was on the Advisory Board of LinkedIn for the first five years of the company before joining full time as head of Corporate Development and Strategy in April 2008. Prior to LinkedIn she was the founding Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect, working with large corporations and entrepreneurs on opportunities for innovation; and the Network Advisor to global venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Ellen was previously head of Corporate Development for both WhoWhere (sold to Lycos), and Softbook Press (sold to Gemstar/TVGuide). Before founding Silicon Valley Connect, Ellen ran the MediaX program at Stanford University, facilitating collaboration between corporations, Silicon Valley, and the University research community. Additionally, Ellen has held roles at Softbank, Apple Computer, PriceWaterhouse, and Clinton Global Initiative. She has a BA from the University of Michigan, and MA/PhD from Stanford University in Cognitive Psychology.
Deep Nishar
Vice President, Products
Deep Nishar is responsible for setting and executing the global product strategy at LinkedIn. He comes to LinkedIn from Google, where he helped shape the company's strategy in Asia-Pacific. Deep was also responsible for building Google's global mobile business. Deep holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated with highest honors as a Baker Scholar, a MSEE from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a B. Tech with Honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Deep holds 3 patents and was awarded the Google Founders Award, an accolade given to employees who have made extraordinary contributions to the company for his work on the Google Ads System Automation.
Steve Patrizi
Vice President, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Steve Patrizi leads the sales and operations organization for LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions business, which connects marketers with LinkedIn's audience of affluent, influential, and successful professionals. Steve joined LinkedIn in September of 2007 from Microsoft Advertising, where he led media sales for the Northwest Region. Prior to Microsoft, Steve spent 10 years with The Wall Street Journal in various roles in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco, including 5 years as Director of Western Region Advertising Sales for The Wall Street Journal Online. Steve is a graduate of Rutgers University.
Arvind Rajan
Vice President, International
As LinkedIn’s Vice President, International, Arvind Rajan leads the company’s initiatives in markets outside the United States and Europe. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Arvind was the CEO of Grassroots Enterprise. Also a co-founder of the company, Arvind developed pioneering online grassroots communications programs for a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies, trade associations and nonprofit organizations. Arvind began his career with the Boston Consulting Group, and has held a wide range of leadership positions in emerging growth technology companies.
Erika Rottenberg
Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Erika is Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Erika served as General Counsel for two public technology companies, providing valuable experience in dealing with the regulatory policies and challenges specific to technology centric public companies. Most recently, Erika was Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, for Nasdaq-listed SumTotal Systems. Prior to SumTotal, Rottenberg was Vice President, Strategic Development and General Counsel of Creative Labs, the company that brought multimedia to the PC with the Sound Blaster sound card. Erika received her law degree from Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law and started her legal career at the Silicon Valley technology based law firm of Cooley Godward.
Jean-Luc Vaillant
Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer
As Chief Technology Officer, Jean-Luc focuses on LinkedIn’s technical architecture. Jean-Luc is one of the co-founders of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Jean-Luc was as Director of Engineering for Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) in charge of the integration of video into MSN 6. Jean-Luc, a native of France, also served as Director of Software Development at Spotlife until the company was acquired by Logitech. Before that, Jean-Luc was VP of Development of MatchNet, which acquired SocialNet in May 2001. Jean-Luc has also held engineering management positions at Fujitsu Software Corporation and at the research labs of France Telecom. Jean-Luc holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Marseille and a post-graduate degree in Network Engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST).