Digital director spotlight: Ellen Siminoff: 'pretty much everybody who has approached me to join a board is looking for someone who has digital expertise.'.

• Position: DIRECTOR RECRUITING - Interview

Silicon Valley veteran Ellen Siminoff is a prominent member of the class of highly sought after executives for corporate board appointments now that more and more companies acknowledge the necessity to compete as digital enterprises. The former founding executive and senior vice president at Yahoo! Inc. recently served as chairman of search engine marketing company Efficient Frontier prior to its 2012 sale to Adobe for more than $400 million. She is now president and CEO of Shmoop University Inc., a Sunnyvale, Cal.-based online educational company that produces highly engaging learning guides for students and teachers on a wide range of literary works and curriculum subjects (www.shmoop.com). Directors & Boards Roster editor Kelly McCarthy spoke with Siminoff about how she is lending her digital know-how to the corporate boards of Journal Communications Inc., SolarWinds Inc., U.S. Auto Parts Network Inc., and her most recent board, Zynga Inc., the social gaming developer to which she was elected in July 2012.

--James Kristie

What was your first corporate board and how did your digital background come into play?

I got a call from Journal Communications CEO Steve Smith. He had done his homework. He knew I'd worked at the Los Angeles Tines, where in 1994 I was running the online classifieds business. He also knew that I was born and raised in Milwaukee where Journal Communications publishes the Milwaukee Journal. He left me a voice message saying, "I know this is probably not one of the things on the top of your list right now, but we really need digital expertise and I bet you think you should do something good for your hometown. I just want you to know your parents would be proud if you did this." You don't get a lot of digital people who have experience in the newspaper industry. It was a unique fit. I was from Milwaukee, I had worked at newspapers, and I was in the digital world. I went on the board in 2007.

What was it about the company that attracted you to join its board?

Journal Communications was hungry for digital knowledge. They knew what the issues were and they really wanted to evolve as a corporation. They were being aggressive as they saw the newspaper margins shrinking from the classified ad migration to the online world.

Can you recall an idea where your digital expertise was implemented and was successful?

I would never take full credit for anything, but will say I was involved as the company began thinking about the...