Sanja Partalo
Sanja holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she serves as a Lecturer and Adjunct Professor of Marketing, Media & Technology. She holds a BA, magna cum laude, in international affairs and economics from the George Washington University, where she was a recipient of the Honors scholarship and graduated in three years.
Sanja was born in Bosnia and came to the US as a teenager through a refugee resettlement program, having spent 3 years living in a war zone and two years in a refugee camp. Her story was captured in President George W. Bush’s book “Out of Many, One” and in accompanying exhibit of portraits painted by the President to inspire understanding and highlight contributions by refugees and immigrants to the United States.
Sanja is passionate about human rights and serves on the board of Human Rights First.
Sanja is a Co-Founder and General Partner of S4S Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early stage (Series A onwards) companies exploiting opportunities presented by the next wave of technology transformation of the advertising & media sectors. A hands-on investor recognized for her deep domain expertise, Sanja has invested in a range of applied AI, marketing technology and advertising technology companies such as Runway, Captiv8 and 4screen.
Prior to founding S4S Ventures, Sanja was a long time WPP (NYSE: WPP) executive, working directly with WPP’s C-suite in a variety of roles focused on driving growth through development of strategic partnerships, venture investments and M&A. Most recently, in her role as Global Head of Strategic Development & Partnerships, she led WPP's channel strategy with technology platforms that are transforming the value chain of advertising, media and consumer experience orchestration – Google, Meta, Adobe, Salesforce, Microsoft, Snap, ByteDance and Amazon, among others – and oversaw a $$B+ strategic partnership portfolio. She spearheaded numerous market-leading partnerships at WPP, including the first global agency partnership with TikTok, Waze and Snap. Sanja started her investing career at WPP in CVC capacity, where she was fortunate to back a number of industry defining companies such as Gimlet (acquired by Spotify) and SuperAwesome (acquired by Epic Games).
Sanja has extensive experience serving on boards, both as an investor and in an independent capacity, and has had the pleasure of serving on the boards of Stitch, Tenovos, 4screen, Tracer, ID5, Provenance, Captiv8 (acquired by Publicis), Gimlet (acquired by Spotify), Fatherly (acquired by BDG) and YouEarnedIt (acquired by Vista), among others.