Lakes lands at RWI

Alexis Lakes has been named chief financial officer of RWI Ventures, a Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm that specializes in information technology and life sciences companies.

Lakes is well known to the venture capital CFO community, having spent nearly two decades in the industry. She was most recently the CFO of CMEA Ventures, based in San Francisco.

She is also heavily involved with several CFO associations, including the National Venture Capital Association CFO Taskforce, the PricewaterhouseCoopers VC Taskforce, and the Private Equity CFO Association. Lakes was also co-founder and is an emeritus board member of the Venture Capital Bean Counters, or VCBC, which has more than 350 members representing more than 225 venture capital firms across the US.

Prior to joining CMEA, Lakes was CFO of Gabriel Venture Partners, based in Redwood Shores, California. Her career began at ONSET Ventures. She holds an MBA from the Anderson School at the University of California at Los Angeles and has an undergraduate degree from the University of San Francisco.

RWI was founded in 2000 by William Baumel and Donald Lucas. The firm has a focus on networking, fabless semiconductors, software and medical devices. Prior to forming RWI, Lucas spent more than a decade investing in startups alongside his father, Donald Lucas. Baumel was a general partner at Coral Ventures.

In a statement, Lucas said: ?Alexis brings to RWI a rich experiential base in venture capital finance and back-office operations as well as acumen with respect to management and infrastructure issues facing our portfolio companies. She is a welcome addition to our investment team as we move towards the next phase of the firm's growth.?

Replacing Lakes at CMEA is John Haag, who has become CFO and chief operating officer. He was previously with Burrill & Company, a San Francisco-based life sciences merchant bank.