Economic Alliance CEO to Leave for Internet Post

Bill Allen, one of the San Fernando Valley’s biggest cheerleaders, will step down Friday as first president and chief executive of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley to help launch an Internet start-up.

The new company, which will be based in the Valley, is designed to attract Web surfers looking for entertainment sites and offer companies an opportunity to market directly to them.

Replacing Allen will be Bruce Ackerman, who joined the alliance in November as chief operating officer after serving for two years as head of the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, the alliance’s counterpart to the east. The nonprofit business support agency will seek a new chief operating officer.

Allen, 42, who has served as president and CEO of the alliance since 1997, will serve as chief executive of the unnamed start-up that will be a venture with Bob Wallace, a longtime friend and former board member with the Family Channel. Wallace is chairman of San Jose-based EMarketplace Inc., which develops and operates a network of Internet sites.

The new company will be based temporarily in Van Nuys, but eventually will move closer to the entertainment corridor in the southeast Valley, Allen said.

“It seems that if you’re not in the Internet business you’re not in business,” said Allen, explaining the timing of his decision to walk away from his $180,000 job with the alliance.

“Over the next 10 years, Internet development will come out of Southern California,” said Allen, who will get a salary in addition to an equity stake in the new company. “The reason for that obviously: the need for entertainment content. And there’s no better example of that than AOL’s purchase of Time Warner.”

Initially, Allen had planned to announce his departure at the upcoming Summit 2000, a major symposium on the Valley economy set for Feb. 10. But with the Internet landscape changing daily, Allen and his new partner decided there was no time to lose.

“The Internet doesn’t wait for anybody,” said Allen, son of entertainment legend Steve Allen. “Nobody was going to hold up their competitive process to wait for me to wrap things up at the Economic Alliance.”

Allen, who originally had agreed to head the alliance for one year, said new infusions of cash into the organization and recent staff additions, including Ackerman, made it easier for him to leave an organization that he helped expand into a major player in the Valley business community.

Allen, chief architect of the “Valley of the Stars” marketing campaign, said that in the second half of this year, the agency raised more than $600,000 in contributions. That compares with the $30,000 in cash the organization started with when it was founded after the Northridge earthquake.

While the alliance may lose a very visible Valley booster, it gains in Ackerman an administrator with more than 20 years of service in chambers in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

“Those two areas have more in common than any two other natural areas in Southern California,” said Ackerman, 54, a West Hills resident. “We’ve had an unwritten spirit of cooperation, and I’m pledged to continuing that cooperation.”

Ackerman, who served for 11 years as chief executive with chambers of commerce in Van Nuys (now the Mid-Valley Chamber) and San Fernando, has an extensive background in economic development and specializes in the creation of public-private partnerships.

He takes over in his new post Monday.