AliceHill.com - About Alice

Rare leisure snapshot

Alice Hill's Work History

2001 - Present
Young Presidents' Organization. Alice is the Chief Information Officer for a very hush-hush worldwide network of young CEOs. Wish she could say more, but then she'd have to kill you....YPO

2000-2001 CornerHardware.com     Alice was the Executive VP of CornerHardware, an e-commerce site (with amazing content) for the home improvement enthusiast. Her site redesign upped sales by a whopping 203%. Note: the new owners were not able to use the technology so the current site does not resemble Alice's work in any way.

1995-2000 CNET Inc. Alice was VP of Development and Editorial Director for CNET, she also created and launched Gamecenter.com as well as too many other CNET projects to list here. Alice's nickname at CNET was "the queen of page turns."

1990-1995 Ziff Davis Inc. Alice was as Sr. Features and Technical Editor for many ZD magazines. She was named ZD Labs Fellow and was the first and only female technical editor. Translation: geek!

1988-1990 Soros Fund Management, Inc.
Alice worked for legendary Wall St. money manager George Soros. Her job was to find new uses for his new, networked PCs - a luxurious rarity even in the late 80's.

1987-1988 Arthur Andersen & Co. Alice began her career wearing a suit and working 110 hour weeks on a hush-hush database project for AA&CO that involved clients Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Very 80s.

A Bit About AliceHill.com
By Mary Coombs, staff writer
What started as an ironic protest against vanity websites, Alicehill.com has quickly morphed into a mini-community of technology-obsessed, scooter-driving, hardware-loving people. Just like Alice herself.

When Ralph Lauren launched his own content website, Alice Hill said "that's it." Hot on the heels of Oprah magazine, and MarthaStewart.com, the truly personal content website, according to Hill, "is the latest and perhaps most annoying web trend since the B2B exchange." Which is why she decided to immediately launch her own domain.
And then something very strange happened.
Visitors
When Hill left CNET, Inc. in late January of this year she said good-by to the 2 million readers of her weekly CNET newsletter in a final mailing, and then left her AOL email address for people to say a more personal good-by. She also left town. According to AOL, Hill's mailbox reached the 2,500 message capacity in under an hour and most people were unable to get through for months. Alice herself remembered reading the wonderful emails from her readers, while desperately trying to clear her inbox as it instantly refilled with new incoming mail.
"The reader emails made all the hard work worth it. But I just couldn't keep up with the volume." she said sadly.
Hill immediately began working on a new Internet start-up, Cornerhardware.com - a site that specialized in a different sort of hardware coverage: home improvement hardware of the faucet and pipe variety. "I needed to do something new, and I had just bought a house" Hill explained. "Home Improvement to me was also the perfect commerce category." After Hill's site redesign, Cornerhardware experienced a jump in sales of over 200%. "That was easy." Hill said, downplaying her success. "CNET taught me a lot of about building websites."
Meanwhile, Alice began getting emails from CNET readers who had somehow managed to track her down. "I have no idea how they found me, but I'm glad they did" she said laughing. Hill decided that to let others find her, and to poke a little fun at vanity sites, she would create her own "dot-com." As traffic ramps with no outside sales or marketing expenditures, Hill is trying to figure out what to do with her unexpected success. "I love my readers, and I'm glad they like having this place to come to. Looks like I have a lot of work to do on this site!"
Educational Background
Alice Hill attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville New York, earning a BA. Sarah Lawrence is highly respected liberal arts college, known for its prestigious writing department and world class faculty. According to Alice, it was also known to her parents as "the second most expensive school in the country. Arrggghhh!" There was no indication at any time in college that Alice would fall in love with computers yet alone devote her professional life to technology, but Hill did spend a great deal of time writing at Sarah Lawrence.
Alice also attended Oxford University at Oxford's venerable Wadham College. The Oxford university system is comprised of over 30 different colleges. Wadham is one of the oldest. Living in England taught Alice to drive on the left (in the US, that translates to: the fast lane) and to instantly convert foreign currencies in her head when the British pound did its crazy dance during the 80's. Both skills, according to Hill have helped her get where she is today.
See sidebar on the right for Hill's professional background.
Photo: J. Marrin, 2000