One of Chicago's early tech breakout stars just named a new CEO.
Elizabeth Harz has been hired as CEO of Sittercity, the company announced Wednesday.
Harz was previously CMO at travel marketing insights company Adara, and has held leadership positions at Chegg, Electronic Arts, Yahoo and CNET. Her background is in sales, operations and business development. She takes over the top job from Martin Clifford, who ran Sittercity for eight years.
"I am honored to be leading the company that invented tech-enabled child care," she said in a statement. "It's an exciting time to be here. The combination of demographic trends and comfort with on-demand marketplaces allows for radical simplification of the way parents and caregivers interact."
Sittercity was founded by Genevieve Thiers in 2001 as a technology platform that connected parents to trusted caregivers. Over the years, Sittercity raised $43.6 million in venture funding (and $4.3 million in debt financing). In 2015 the company launched Chime, an on-demand babysitter platform that allowed parents to find caregivers nearby, and do bookings and transactions within the app.
Focusing on Chime, as well as catering to the growing population of"digital natives" and millennial parents will be a key focus for Harz, she said.
"Already more than one million digital natives are becoming parents every year, and this number will only grow," Harz added. "So we see an opportunity to lead the next wave of innovation in the category we established."
Harz also announced her first hire: Sandra Dainora, previously senior director of product at Grubhub, will be senior vice president of product at Sittercity.
