Viant hires COO

The company that helps large corporations build Web sites and plan e-commerce strategies finds a new chief operating officer.

Kim Girard

Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.

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Kim Girard

Jan. 2, 2002 4:43 p.m. PT

Viant today said it has hired a new chief operating officer.

Ben Levitan, the former head of global services firm james martin, brings 17 years of senior management experience to Viant, according to the company.

Levitan was previously a senior vice president at Cambridge Technology Partners before joining james martin, and has held consulting and management positions at Andersen Consulting and Nolan, Norton & Company.

Viant, which helps large corporations and dot coms plan and build Web sites and e-commerce strategies, competes with Scient, iXL and a host of others. Headquartered in Boston, the company has offices in Chicago, Dallas, London, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco

Viant's stock shot up 5 to close at 90 a share.