The Yahoo executive exodus continues.
MySpace has snatches another high-level Yahoo sales maven “Valeh Vakili” as senior VP of sales strategy and operations.
Valeh Vakili, director of U.S. sales operations for Yahoo, is exiting the company to take up a new position at News Corp.’s MySpace, as SVP of sales and strategy and operations.
Sales and marketing specialist Vakili joined Yahoo after graduating from Harvard, and during the course of eight years, rose quite high up its corporate ladder. Now, she has moved from her position as the director of media sales operations to join MySpace in a similar capacity.
At Yahoo, Vakili was responsible of incorporating the sales teams from acquired properties like Right Media into Yahoo’s own; at MySpace she will be in charge of the social network’s account management team. Vakili will remain based in New York. (MySpace’s headquarters are in Los Angeles.)
Yahoo’s “executive exodus” has been well-recorded, with dwindling search share and a disastrous takeover bid from Microsoft dampening employee morale.
Vakili is the third exec in line that MySpace has picked up from Yahoo since July, when they appointed Manu Thapar, former head of engineering, and Tish Whitcraft, who came on to MySpace as SVP of customer care.
The social networking company formed the title of “Senior Vice President, Sales Strategy and Operations” especially for Vakili. Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, seems to think she will play a pivotal role in the organization. “Valeh will help take us to the next level as one of the most powerful forces for marketers not just in the digital landscape, but in all of media,” he said in a statement.
Berman then casually took a small shot at Vakili’s former employer, continuing, “Especially now that MySpace has passed Yahoo! as the largest display advertising site online, we are thrilled to offer our brand partners the benefit of Valeh’s experience and savvy.”
In the newly formed position, Vakili will supervise the account management team and focus upon pricing, packaging and inventory management for the social networking site. She will be based in Gotham and report to Jeff Berman, prexy of sales and marketing.
Yahoo, meanwhile, lost again in a competition to News Corporation as the two stocks went down 5.06 and 2.09 percent today, respectively.