Allison Goldberg (pictured), last year’s Global Corporate Venturing Rising Star, has been appointed senior vice-president of Time Warner Investments, succeeding Rachel Lam, who will be leaving Time Warner this spring after 14 years leading the group.
Goldberg had been managing director and vice-president at Time Warner (TW) Investments, the corporate venturing unit of the US-listed media group, since 2001 and has done more than many to support New York City’s burgeoning venture ecosystem.
She is a director or active observer on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Amino, Bustle, Discord, Dynamic Signal, Fuse Media, Joyus, Mashable, Outpost Games, Trion Worlds and YieldMo.
Her previous investments include Adify, later sold to Cox, AdMeld, later sold to Google, Bluefin Labs, later sold to Twitter, Everyday Health, which is public, MediaVast, later sold to Getty Images and Tremor Video, which is also public.
Prior to joining Time Warner, Goldberg worked as a venture capital associate at Groupe Arnault and in Morgan Stanley’s Global Media Group.
Lam had last year described Goldberg for her Rising Stars award as having “deep industry knowledge of the digital media sector and made invaluable contributions to the Time Warner Investments team”.
In making the announcement, Olaf Olafsson, executive vice-president of international and corporate strategy at Time Warner, said: “Allison has played a pivotal role in numerous strategic initiatives with our investments group. She is highly respected both within the venture capital community and within our company for her innate ability and foresight to identify potential investments that benefit investee companies as well as enhance our businesses. I am confident that she will lead our investments group to continued success.”
He added: “On behalf of the company, I want to thank Rachel for her leadership, her friendship and her valuable contributions to Time Warner. Over the past 14 years she has led and built our very successful investments group, serving our strategic goals while achieving first-rate financial returns. She will be greatly missed, and I thank her for her dedication, insight and expertise as I wish her all the best in her next chapter.”
Lam, who has headed Time Warner Investments since 2003 and was ranked 19th in last year’s GCV Powerlist 100 awards, currently serves on the boards of Mashable, Kamcord, Simulmedia and Tremor Video.
Lam’s board seats for Mashable, Kamcord and Simulmedia will transition to Goldberg, Scott Levine, a vice-president in the team, and potentially Time Warner divisional executives, she told news provider Fortune’s Term Sheet. Lam added to Fortune that she would stay on the board of Tremor Video (the company acquired Time Warner investment ScanScout in 2010).
She said to Fortune she planned to take some time off before “one more adventure that will ideally have an impact on the women/diversity equation in venture investing”.
Aside from Goldberg’s exits, Time Warner has sold the following portfolio companies: Maker Studios (sold to Disney), Bluefin Labs (sold to Twitter), Playspan (sold to Visa), CrowdStar (sold to Glu Mobile), Kosmix (sold to Walmart), iSocket (sold to the Rubicon Project) and ScanScout (sold to Tremor Video).
This year’s list of 100 GCV Rising Stars will be announced at an invite-only dinner in California on Tuesday, sponsored by GE Ventures.
editor note: update with Lam’s quote from Fortune.