People associated with
Yandex.ru

Vish Makhijani was the CEO and President of Yandex Labs, based in Silicon Valley. In May 2009, Vish announced he would be leaving Yandex Labs for a Senior Operating role at Zynga.
Prior to joining Yandex in 2008, Vish was SVP and General Manager of the Yahoo Search Group. He is a seasoned Search executive with over eight years in the industry leading both consumer and advertiser search businesses on a global scale.
Vish was the Vice President of Yahoo Search Marketing International and International Monetization. Prior to that role, he was Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo’s consumer International Search business.
Before joining Yahoo, Vish served as Vice President and General Manager of Inktomi. Under his leadership, the Inktomi Web Search business experienced continued growth, gained significant traction for its paid inclusion programs and made innovative technology enhancements to its search technology. Mr. Makhijani had been with the company since early 1999, and, prior to his role in Web search, he headed-up Inktomi’s investor relations program where he built strong relationships with company stakeholders and financial analysts.
Before joining Inktomi, Mr. Makhijani worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in both the company’s New York Metro and Silicon Valley practices where he helped Fortune 500 clients and leading technology, media and start up companies with financial reporting, mergers, acquisitions, and public offering issuances.
Mr. Makhijani earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut.

Arkady Volozh is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Yandex. He is also a co-founder and Board member of InfiNet Wireless, a manufacturer of WiMAX-type equipment in Russia, as well as a founding member of the Centre of Telephony Integration, an IP-telephony company. Arkady co-founded CompTek International, one of the largest distributors of network and telecom equipment in Russia, and managed the company from 1989-2000. He actively contributed to the process of liberalizing the frequency spectrum for wireless networks and legalizing IP-telephony. Arkady has a degree in applied mathematics from Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas.

Ilya Segalovich is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Yandex. Prior to co-founding Yandex, Ilya led the retrieval systems department for CompTek International from 1993-2000. He began his career working on information retrieval technologies in 1990 at Arcadia company, where he headed that company’s software team. IIya helped create the National Corpus of Russian Language (Ruscorpora) and ROMIP, the Russian Information Retrieval Evaluation Seminar. Ilya has a degree in geophysics from S. Ordzhonikidze Moscow Geologic Exploration Institute and together with his wife Maria, supports the Maria’s Children Arts & Rehabilitation Center for orphans and disadvantaged children.

Esther Dyson is an active investor in a variety of start-ups, focusing on technology. Her portfolio of private space and air travel investments includes XCOR Aerospace, Space Adventures/Zero G (recently merged), Constellation Services, Icon Aircraft, Coastal Aviation Software and Airship Ventures. She has flown weightless on Zero-G four times, but hopes to go up again soon.
She is also the organizer of Flight School, an executive workshop for start-ups in air and space. It’s in hiatus for 2008, but will resume in 2009.
On the IT side, her investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us, both sold to Yahoo! and Medstory, sold to Microsoft. Currently, she sits on the boards of 23andMe, Meetup, WPP Group, Eventful.com, Evernote, Boxbe and Yandex, the leading Russian search company.
Dyson sold her business EDventure Holdings, along with its Release1.0 newsletter and PC Forum conference, to CNET Networks in 2004; PC Forum and Release 1.0 played key roles in the early development of the PC software marketplace and the commercial Internet. Dyson left CNET at the end of 2006 and (with permission) has resumed doing business under the name of EDventure Holdings.

Elena Chebunina is the Chief Accounting and Administrative Officer of Yandex and has led the financial management of the company since its creation in 2000. Prior to joining Yandex, Elena served as Chief Financial Officer of CompTek International. Elena holds a degree in information technology from Moscow Civil Engineering Institute.

Elena Kolmanovskaya is the Chief Editor of Yandex and has served in this capacity since the company’s creation in 2000. Prior to joining Yandex, Elena worked at CompTek International focusing on the development and promotion of information retrieval technologies. Prior to that, she worked as a programmer for East Coast Sheet Metal Corp. in New York, NY, USA, as an analyst for Pragma and as a software engineer at the All-Union Research Institute for Geological Exploration and Petroleum (VNIGNI). Elena is the author of numerous publications on Internet technologies. Currently, Elena participates in field seminars on Internet marketing and online advertising. Elena has a degree in applied mathematics from Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas.

Nilesh Lakhani is the Chief Financial Officer of Yandex. Prior to joining Yandex, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of CTC Media, a leading Russian independent TV broadcaster that trades on the NASDAQ. Before CTC Media, Nilesh was Vice President of global operations at Electronic Arts. He also served as the Chief Financial Officer of Pogo.com, an online entertainment company that was subsequently acquired by Electronic Arts. Nilesh also spent several years with Transamerica Corporation and GE Capital where he was responsible for financing mergers and acquisitions. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Manchester, England and an M.B.A in Finance from the University of San Francisco, where he received the Scholastic Excellence Award.

Dmitry Ivanov Dmitry Ivanov is the Chief Product Officer of Yandex and has held this position since 2005. He joined the company in 2003 to head the Yandex.News service. Earlier, Dmitry had worked as head of the Internet department at the Foundation for Effective Policy, leading the development and online promotion of media projects. He graduated from Moscow State University and has a Ph.D. in political science.

Alexei Tretiakov is the Chief Sales and Business Development Officer of Yandex and has held this position since 2002. He is responsible for the sales strategy and the structure of the company’s commercial department. Previously, he led Yandex’s maintenance and technical support service. Alexei joined Yandex in 2000 from CompTek International where he held a similar maintenance and technical support position. Before CompTek International, Alexei had been the Chief Technology Officer at various business units of Pioneer Group Russia. Alexei has degrees in physics and information technologies from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Mikhail Fadeev Mikhail Fadeev is the Chief System Operations Officer of Yandex. He has held this position since 2005 and has played a pivotal role in building out the company抯 entire IT infrastructure. Prior to joining Yandex, he worked at CompTek International. Mikhail has degrees in physics and mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.