People
Thomas Hoegh
Managing Partner (London)
Thomas focuses on the "user-experience" from a creative, strategic and economic point of view. His background as an artist and businessman forms the core aspect of Arts Alliance's competitive edge.
As an artist, Thomas has directed over 20 major theatre, television and multimedia performance pieces in Norway, Japan and the United States.
Thomas holds a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree in fine arts in theatre from Northwestern University.
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Joshua Green
Principal (London)
Joshua joined Arts Alliance in August 2003 and is responsible for a variety of analytic, financial and deal making processes for our activities in Europe. With Adam Valkin, Joshua helped to set up Lovefilm where he served as its interim CFO. Joshua previously held the role of Associate Director of Strategic Development for Arts Alliance Media, and in this role, led the financial and business planning for the Digital Cinema initiative, culminating in a successful bid for US$20m of lottery money via the UK Film Council.
Before joining Arts Alliance Joshua was involved in a number of start-up companies as a founder, which followed a background in Intellectual Property and IT Consultancy with PA Consulting Group. Joshua has an MA from Cambridge (Theoretical Physics) and an MSc from the University of London (Finance).
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Jeh Kazimi
Associate (London)
Jeh started working for Arts Alliance in October 2006, following his Sloan Fellowship at the London Business School. At Arts Alliance, Jeh works with early stage portfolio companies to build business propositions and help project manage the launch process.
Prior to Sloan, Jeh worked for Zensar-Fujitsu in the UK, setting up their Knowledge Management practice for EMEA. He built this US$3m practice over 3 years (2002 -2005), working with clients in the financial, media, telecoms and energy verticals. In 2001, Jeh was part of the initial project team that set up Reliance Infocom (part of the Reliance business group) in India. Jeh began his career as a mechanical engineer in India in 1995, but gradually moved to business & technology consulting, working with various clients in the US, Europe, South Africa, Singapore and Japan.
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Oliver Shapleski
Head of Business and Legal Affairs (London)
Oliver joined Arts Alliance in May 2005 and is head of business and legal affairs. Oliver manages Arts Alliance's investment process from identification through to investment by our client funds, as well as restructurings and refinancings. Oliver also serves as company secretary and legal advisor for a number of Portfolio Companies.
Before joining Arts Alliance, Oliver was a lawyer at Russell McVeagh and Minter Ellison in New Zealand. Oliver has bachelors degrees in law and finance from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.
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Adam Valkin
Advisor (London)
Adam currently serves as Executive Vice President, Digital Media & New Business at Endemol. Adam worked for Arts Alliance for nine years ultimately as Partner and continues his relationship with Arts Alliance as an Advisor. Adam still serves on the boards of Daylife and Servista and previously was a director of Blinkbox, inLive, Player X, LOVEFiLM International, Propertyfinder, and Pi Capital. In 2003, he set up LOVEFiLM and served as its interim CEO.
Before joining Arts Alliance Adam worked in new product development and marketing for Barnes & Noble in New York. Prior to that he was a product marketing manager at Firefly Networks in Boston (sold to Microsoft).
Adam has a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University.back to the top
Olly Olagbegi
Financial Analyst (London)
Olly Olagbegi, a qualified accountant (CIMA), joined AA Advisors in May 2007 as a financial analyst to assume financial control and some investment process responsibilities.
Prior to joining Arts Alliance Olly spent over 2 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers – Business Recovery Services, where he worked on reporting, as well as operational projects aimed at creating new internal processes and procedures. His time there included managing projects to improve professional services provided and deliver better value for money to PwC clients.
Before that he was a management accountant for Gainsborough Business Centres, serviced office space providers (now part of Regus). He has a degree in Economics & Politics from the University of Bristol.
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Barbara Brett
Office Manager (London)
An experienced administrator and organiser, Barbara has worked with Arts Alliance since December 1997 and administers their deal flow and exhibition participation, as well as staff, advisors and Portfolio Company gatherings.
Before joining Arts Alliance, Barbara's varied work experience included conference and exhibition management, project management in the tourism, arts, environment and charity fields and marketing/administration.
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Bruce Leigh
IT Manager (London)
Previously at a multimedia production company, Epic Group, based in Brighton where he lives, Bruce has brought four years of experience of system/network administration as well as a thorough understanding of many multimedia issues and processes to Arts Alliance, since joining in October 1998.
Bruce has a wide range of experience in computing environments and is happy using PCs and Macs as well as NT and UNIX. Prior to this (and his degree) Bruce worked for a ship management company. Bruce has a BA (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex, which may explain a lot of things (but probably doesn't).
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Tina Thomas
PA to Thomas Høegh (London)
Before joining Arts Alliance, Tina was PA for over five years to a Senior Partner in Andersen Corporate Finance. Prior to that she was PA to the Senior Civil Servant leading the privatisations of National Power, Power Gen and British Energy at the Department of Trade & Industry.
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Victoria Hackett
Venture Partner (Boston)
Victoria joined Arts Alliance in 1997. She has led the Company's strategy and investment efforts in the United States. Victoria currently serves on the boards of estyle and Pocket This. She has served on the boards of ububu, Mascot Network, Upoc (sold to Dada Mobile in 2006) and Spinner.com (sold to AOL in 1999). Prior to joining Arts Alliance, Victoria was vice president of Strategic Alliances for Firefly, an Internet start-up company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Firefly was sold to Microsoft in 1998.Prior to Firefly, Victoria worked as a consultant to media and New Media companies including America Online and Cablevision. She began acting as a consultant to America Online in 1995 and worked closely with management on efforts such as creating the original business plan and investor documents for Digital City, the company's local content offering, and negotiating joint ventures with media/content companies.Victoria has held positions as an associate in strategic planning at both PepsiCo and the Boston Consulting Group. In addition, she was a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she provided financial advisory to companies on a variety of transactions including mergers, acquisitions and corporate financing.
Victoria received her master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree in political science with honours from Queen's University in Canada.
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