Isabel Maxwell

Isabel Sylvia Margaret Maxwell (born 16 August 1950) is a French-born entrepreneur and the co-founder of Magellan, an early search engine that was acquired by Excite. Maxwell has been listed as a Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum. She served as the President of Commtouch, an Israeli internet company that became CYREN. She was a Director of Israel Venture Network and built up their Social Entrepreneur program in Israel from 2004–2010.

Early life and education Maxwell was born in Maisons Laffitte, France on 16 August 1950 along with her fraternal twin sister Christine Maxwell, to parents Elisabeth and Robert Maxwell. Her father, a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor, was Jewish and her mother, a French-born Holocaust scholar, was of Huguenot descent. One of nine children, her siblings include brothers Kevin Maxwell and Ian Maxwell, and younger sister Ghislaine Maxwell. From 1960, her family lived at Headington Hill Hall where the offices to Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press were located. Her mother stated that while all of her children were brought up Anglican, Isabel was "very taken by the Jewish faith and the politics in Israel."

Maxwell was a pupil at Milham Ford School, Oxford, going on to study at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, graduating with an MA in Law, History, and French in 1972. She earned a master's degree in Education (French) from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, narrated by Ludovic Kennedy.

Maxwell worked with Djerassi Films Inc. The company changed names to McKinley Group (named after North America’s highest mountain) and became a search engine with ratings. Maxwell served as a senior vice president, her second husband, David Hayden, was CEO and her sister Christine was publisher. In early 1996, the company was poised to IPO, but investment bank Robertson Stephens decided to put Excite on the market first. A few months later, IPOs became difficult and the startup company was running out of money. Magellan wanted to go public with Lehman doing the offering but was unsuccessful. Michael Wolff's book Burn Rate also describes a failed deal to combine with Wolff New Media, which shortly later went broke itself. With intensifying financial constraints, Maxwell’s husband was pushed out of the company by investors and her sister left. Isabel assumed the responsibility to dispose of the company. After a layoff, the firm was sold for $18 million (of stock) to competitor Excite. In 2014, the company changed its name to CYREN.

From 2003 to 2004, Maxwell was invited by Blumberg capital to become CEO of iCognito, renamed Puresight, an Israeli web content filtering software company. She turned the company around, and it was sold in 2005 to Boston Communications.

Other interests

Maxwell was a member of Israel Venture Network (IVN), an organization founded in 2001 by Éric Benhamou. She was the chairperson of the IVN Social Entrepreneur Fellowship Program,

Maxwell married dot-com entrepreneur David Hayden in 1990. The marriage deteriorated in 1996 and later ended in divorce.

In 2007, Maxwell married Al Seckel. from Malibu, California, around 2010, to care for Maxwell's ailing mother. They lived in Chateau de la Malartrie in La Roque-Gageac. In November 2015, after Seckel's death, Maxwell was declared bankrupt by a British court.