Vanessa Colella (pictured) has replaced Chris Kay as head of US-listed bank Citigroup’s corporate venturing team.
As managing director and head of global investing at Citi Ventures, Colella’s team will be “seeking, evaluating, investing in and working with start-ups to commercialize their technologies and drive growth for Citi”.
She joined Citi Ventures in April 2013 coming to the team from Citi’s consumer business as head of North America marketing for the past three years.
Prior to Citi, Colella was an entrepreneur-in-residence with US Venture Partners, leading efforts to evaluate investment opportunities in media, technology and financial services and advising portfolio companies on marketing, distribution and business models. She also spent two years at internet services provider Yahoo! restructuring business-to-business marketing and building a global data analytics and insights business as senior vice-president of North America marketing and senior vice-president of insights, respectively. In addition, Vanessa was a partner at management consultancy McKinsey, working in strategy development and organizational change for media, technology and entertainment companies.
Kay had spent three years as global head of ventures and incubation at Citi Ventures under Deborah Hopkins, chief innovation officer, and built out its direct investments team. Last year saw Citi Ventures’ successfully sell portfolio company Silver Tail Systems to database provider EMC for about $230m.