MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/30/13 -- Elance, the world's leading platform for online work, today announced the appointment of Betsey Nelson to its Board of Directors. With a deep public capital market and corporate governance background, Nelson joins at a time of significant expansion for the company, with the number of businesses hiring on the Elance platform growing by more than 50% in 2012.

"We are excited to have Betsey join the board," said Ray Lane, Chairman of Elance. "Betsey's excellent track record with highly successful companies will be of great value as Elance continues to scale and expand."

"The market opportunity in front of Elance is enormous -- Elance is pioneering a new way to work as well as a new way to build and grow companies," said Betsey Nelson. "I'm thrilled to join such a talented team as they build out this exciting platform."

Nelson's board appointment follows the company's recent moves to expand its executive team with the hiring of eBay veterans Servaes Tholen as Chief Financial Officer and Elizabeth Tse as Vice President of Operations and Rich Pearson joining the team as Chief Marketing Officer.

Nelson's Board experience includes the Boards of Ancestry.com, Autodesk, CNET Networks, DAI, Nokia and Success Factors. Nelson served as EVP and CFO at Macromedia for ten years, and held various finance roles at Hewlett-Packard Co before that. Nelson holds a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. in finance with distinction from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Joining as Chair of the Audit Committee, Nelson will serve with current board members Paul Hsaio (partner at NEA), Ray Lane (Managing Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers), Dan Marriott (Managing Partner of Stripes Group), Fabio Rosati (CEO) and Beerud Sheth (Founder).

About Elance
Elance is where people work differently. The pioneer in today's freelance revolution, Elance is the world's leading platform for online work.

Today over 500,000 businesses and 2 million freelancers use Elance in 170+ countries. Innovative global enterprises, small businesses and start-ups tap into the Elance talent pool, building teams from software engineers, application developers and web and graphic designers to copywriters, market researchers, data scientists, social media markets, customer service agents and other business professionals. More than 1 million freelance jobs are completed through Elance annually.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California and Oslo, Norway, Elance is a privately-held company.

For more information, visit www.elance.com.