Industry Moves: Federated Media; Spark Capital; JEGI; Austin Ventures; AdMedia; Conductor
This story was written by Amanda Natividad.
-- Federated Media: Former *CNET* exec Keith Bencher has signed on as SVP-strategy and development, where in this capacity he will manage partnerships and expand the company into new businesses. Bencher previously headed up strategy and development and *CNET*'s games, entertainment and lifestyles business unit, having earlier managed corporate development in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
-- Spark Capital: Media and tech exec Moshe "Mo" Koyfman is joining as principal. With experience in transactions and operations in the consumer Internet sector, he previously spent six years at IAC (NSDQ: IACI). Most recently, though, he was COO of Connected Ventures, parent of CollegeHumor.com, BustedTees.com and Vimeo.com. Release.
-- JEGI: The Jordan, Edmiston Group has tapped Lehman Bros. banker Elizabeth Satin as managing director, where she will focus on M&A advisor practice to the media and business info services sectors. As an advisor at Lehman Bros., her completed transactions ranged from $200 million to $14 billion, including Thomas H. Lee, Bain Capital and Blackstone's acquisition of Houghton Mifflin, Quadrangle's acquisition of nTelos Communications and more.
-- Austin Ventures: Amid its closure of two new funds, AV has announced software executive Mike Dodd as its sixth venture partner, Statesman reports. Dodd joins from Omniture, where he served as SVP-corporate development. Meanwhile, the company is in the process of securing a main investment of about $600 million, its 10th one since 1984, and a separate fund of about $300 million.
-- AdMedia: Media vet Michael J. Klingensmith is joining the M&A firm as a managing director specializing in media and publishing. Aside from having served as GM of TIME Worldwide, Klingensmith was earlier CFO and SVP of what was then the Time Inc. Magazine Company. He was also the founding publisher and president of Entertainment Weekly and president of Sports Illustrated.
-- Conductor: The search tech solutions provider has made several additions to its senior management team former ContextWeb CTO/*Yahoo* VP John Pavley is joining as CTO and former DoubleClick VP Jason Bigler is now Conductor's VP-product management. Parashuram Kulkarni and Kiril Savino have been hired as director-research and development, and director-development, respectively. Kulkarni was previously senior research engineer at *Yahoo* and Savino was CTO of ShopWiki.
By Amanda Natividad