— Jordan Arnold is the new director of the Washington State Broadband Office within the Department of Commerce, effective Jan. 2.

Under the Biden administration, Arnold served as a senior policy advisor on the Infrastructure Implementation Team within the Office of the Chief of Staff. Her work focused on helping lead the $65 billion broadband portfolio, which included implementation of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and other initiatives.

“Jordan has a deep understanding of what it takes to help communities succeed in a digital world,” said Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn in statement. “Her background working at the highest policy levels in the Biden White House will help power Washington forward in our efforts to connect everyone to the internet.”

— Rebecca Lovell has taken the role of interim president and CEO of Greater Seattle Partners (GSP), a regional public-private economic development organization. She has served as chief operating officer of the group for nearly three years.

Lovell’s past roles include CEO of Denali Founder Consulting, executive director of Madrona Venture Group’s Create33, and Seattle’s interim director of Economic Development.

“Rebecca has been a key leader in our organization’s success, and we are delighted to see her at the helm of GSP. She energizes the community, the GSP team and our investors,” said Shane Jones, chair of GSP’s board of directors and a senior vice president at Alaska Airlines, in a statement.

Lovell is succeeding Brian Surratt, who took the presidency in 2022 and was recently appointed deputy mayor of the City of Seattle by Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson.

“We deeply appreciate Brian’s service, commitment and transformational leadership and are excited to see him in this strategic role with the City of Seattle,” Jones said.

Prior to Greater Seattle Partners, Surratt led a community development group, was VP at Alexandria Real Estate and spent 13 years with Seattle’s Economic Development agency, including as director.

— Jason Barnwell, a former Microsoft legal executive, is now chief legal officer for Agiloft, a California company providing software that helps businesses manage their contracts and legal agreements.

“Jason knows how to unlock the potential of legal teams, harness AI and data, and make contracting a true driver of business value,” said Agiloft CEO Eric Laughlin in a statement.

Barnwell was with the tech giant for more 15 years in a variety of legal roles. He left the position of general manager and associate general counsel for Monetization and Business Planning. Barnwell will remain in the Seattle area. On LinkedIn, he thanked his Microsoft colleagues for their support and leadership opportunities, noting that he remains “a cheerleader for Microsoft and its people.”

— Elena Winters has joined Brazil’s Elea Data Centers as vice president of international business. Seattle-based Winters was previously at Meta for more than eight years in infrastructure organization roles focused on data center and site selection. She will remain in Washington, leading Elea’s U.S. and international expansion strategy.

“Now, I’m stepping into a new challenge — gaining experience on the other side of the business, partnering closely with hyperscalers (not working for them!) to help accelerate the growth of AI infrastructure in LATAM,” Winters said on LinkedIn.

— Seattle startup Aarden AI named Michael Gleason as its staff data scientist. The company recently came out of stealth and offers an AI platform that helps landowners research and navigate deals with developers eager to build data centers, clean energy installations, housing and other uses. Gleason most recently worked as a geospatial data scientist at a national laboratory.

Editor’s note: Story updated to include interim CEO for Rebecca Lovell’s new title.

— Smartsheet’s C-suite shuffle continues with the hiring of Scott Torrey as chief revenue officer.

Torrey previously led salary data company Payscale as CEO from 2019 to 2021. He spent the past three years as executive chairman at finance software startup Tesorio, and was at Concur for nearly two decades, including six years as chief revenue officer.

His new role marks a reunion of sorts as he teams up again with Concur co-founder Rajeev Singh, who recently became CEO at Smartsheet.

“Smartsheet is on a growth trajectory, and Scott’s leadership will drive our go-to-market success,” Singh said in a press release.

Smartsheet earlier this year hired Pratima Arora as its chief product officer and Ravi Soin as chief information security officer. It also named Cynthia Tee as chief technology officer.

Founded two decades ago, Smartsheet is one of the Seattle region’s iconic tech companies, with a large customer base of major businesses and more than $1 billion in annual revenue. It went private earlier this year in a $8.4 billion deal with Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone.

Speaking to the company’s annual Engage conference in Seattle last month, Singh said it’s time for Smartsheet to “step out of the shadows” and challenge old perceptions of Smartsheet as simply an online spreadsheet tool. The company recently announced new features as part of its “Intelligent Work Management” platform that combines AI agents, knowledge graphs, and automation. 

— Amar Subramanya, a top AI researcher who joined Microsoft in July as a corporate VP, is changing jobs again and joining Apple as vice president of AI.

Subramanya will report to Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software engineering, the tech giant announced Monday. He’ll lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation.

Apple also announced that John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down.

Before joining Microsoft, Subramanya was at Google for more than 16 years, where he helped lead work on Gemini. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2009 and was a visiting researcher at Microsoft for a year in the mid-2000s.

“AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release.

Apple has struggled to catch up with competitors in the AI race and recently delayed a new version of its Siri voice assistant.

— Torben Severson left Amazon after 17 years to take a new role as vice president and head of global business development at OpenAI. Severson held multiple business development leadership roles, most recently as chief of staff to Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores.

“Joining OpenAI at such a defining moment in technology is an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” Severson said in a LinkedIn post. “I’m drawn to moments of transformation — and it’s rare to be part of something so squarely at the frontier of what’s possible.”

Severson said he was the first person to join “what became Corporate Business Development” at Amazon in 2008. “I’m deeply grateful for the people I’ve learned from and worked alongside,” he wrote. “Amazon shaped how I think, taught me how to navigate complex problems, and gave me the opportunity to build and lead exceptional teams. Through those experiences I learned the value of high judgment, clarity in ambiguity, and building trust through curiosity and rigor.”

OpenAI, based in San Francisco, said last year that it opened an office in Bellevue, Wash. The company recently acquired Bellevue-based startup Statsig.  

— Expedia Group appointed Xavier Amatriain as its first chief artificial intelligence officer and data officer. He joins the Seattle-based travel giant from Google where he served as vice president of product in AI and Compute Enablement. Other past employers include Quora, LinkedIn and Netflix.

“[Amatriain’s] deep expertise in building large-scale AI platforms will help redefine how people experience travel,” Expedia CTO Ramana Thumu said in a statement. “Expedia Group operates at a scale few can match, and we invest deeply in our talent, giving technologists the space to learn, experiment, and push the boundaries of what AI can do.”

Amatriain, based in San Jose, Calif., has mapped a diverse career path — he’s been a university professor in Spain, a healthcare startup co-founder, a researcher, and an engineering leader.

— Textio co-founder and former CEO Kieran Snyder returned to Microsoft as vice president of AI transformation.

“My goal in this new role is to help Microsoft be the best living case study of effective, human AI transformation in the world,” Snyder said on LinkedIn.

Snyder began her tech career at Microsoft in 2004, working on the Bing search engine and Windows. In 2014, she launched Textio, which claims to be the first-to-market venture using AI for HR functions. The company’s software helps organizations recruit, hire and retain inclusive teams.

Over the past two years, Snyder ran a business called “nerd processor,” which offered research and leadership coaching, and served as chief scientist emeritus at Textio, where she is now on the board of directors.

— Ross Tennenbaum is leaving his role as president of Avalara for a new role with an unnamed public company, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Tennenbaum joined the tax software giant in 2019 and was previously CFO. He worked at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse before joining Avalara, which relocated its headquarters from Seattle to North Carolina following its acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2022. It filed to go public, again, earlier this year.

— After more than 12 years at T-Mobile, Janice Kapner is leaving the telecommunications giant. Kapner was chief communications and corporate responsibility officer and executive VP at the Bellevue, Wash., company where she led a team of more than 160 employees.

“From Magenta sneakers and confetti cannons to competitive stunts, big bets, and a front-line team that made the brand burst off the page and into the world — these are moments I’ll never forget,” Kapner said on LinkedIn. “They shaped me as much as I helped shape them.”

Prior to T-Mobile, Kapner was at Microsoft for more than a decade.

— Former Microsoft and Amazon leader Vinita Ananth is now senior director of product for the cloud company Nebius. Ananth, based in the Seattle area, has been working since July on stealth-mode startups HelpViber and FulcrumAX. Ananth called the decision to leave these ventures “difficult and emotional.”

“I’m thrilled that my co-founder will continue driving both HelpViber and FulcrumAX forward, with a strategic focus on customer traction, platform maturity, and meaningful funding milestones over the coming year,” she said on LinkedIn, adding that she’ll continue in advisor and co-founder roles.

— PayPal appointed Bo English-Wiczling as VP of global developer relations. English-Wiczling, based in Seattle, joins from Oracle, where she worked for nearly nine years in leadership roles in database product management and developer relations. Previous employers include Amazon and Best Buy.

“After an incredible journey working alongside talented engineers, community leaders, and innovation-minded partners, this new role feels like the perfect next step,” English-Wiczling said on LinkedIn. “I’ll be working at the intersection of PayPal’s global payments platform and developer ecosystems — helping build, grow, and energize the communities and relationships that power our future.”

— Jaimin Gandhi joined Seattle-based AI roleplay startup Yoodli as a product leader. Gandhi’s past roles include leadership positions at Nerdy, Binance, Uber, DocuSign, Microsoft and others.

Over the past year, Gandhi built FourPoint.AI, a tool that helps job seekers improve their communications. While he won’t be adding new features to FourPoint, “I am opening it up for free,” Gandhi said on LinkedIn. “If it helps someone land their next opportunity the way it helped me find mine, that is a meaningful way to pay it forward.”

— Kapil Hetamsaria is now chief business officer of Neo4j, a data analysis, graph intelligence platform. Hetamsaria joins from C3 AI, where he served as a vice president, and was previously co-founder and CEO of Viddl App, a Bellevue-based short-video platform.

— Dave Rosenbaum is leaving his role as senior publications manager at Seattle-based pet sitting company Rover to join Airbnb.

“I have always been a firm believer in the transformative power of travel — discovering new places, trying new foods, and having new experiences,” Rosenbaum wrote on LinkedIn. “Airbnb’s mission is central to this belief that the world offers limitless possibilities.”

Rosenbaum is also a deputy mayor and city council member for Mercer Island, a city east of Seattle, and previously served in legislative roles for members of Congress.

— Ambika Singh, founder and CEO of online clothing rental company Armoire, joined the board of trustees for the Seattle Metro Chamber.

— Pete Fewing, associate athletic director at Seattle University and longtime Sounders FC broadcaster, joined the board of directors for Starfire Sports. The organization provides coding classes, drone summer camps, and other free, after-school sports programming for underprivileged kids in South Seattle.

— Andrea Chartock is now the head of Washington’s Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness, a division of the state Department of Commerce.

Chartock spent more than 21 years with international development company DAI, working on United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiatives in countries including Liberia and Moldova. Her most recent efforts focused on economic growth in Ukraine before USAID was defunded this year.

Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn said that Chartock “has the experience and dedication needed to elevate our existing business community and foster growth in innovative ways.”

The department earlier this year scaled back a key economic development program amid the state budget crunch. The department currently manages more than $8 billion across 485 programs, Nguyễn said in April.

— Julie Brill, Microsoft’s former chief privacy officer, has joined the board of directors of the enterprise software company Ethyca.

“Ethyca’s approach puts privacy, security, and policy at the heart of enterprise data infrastructure. I’m excited to help guide the company as it works with global organizations to scale AI responsibly,” Brill said in a statement.

Brill left Microsoft in July after more than eight years. Her title included corporate vice president for Global Privacy, Safety, and Regulatory Affairs. Brill is also serving as an expert in residence at Harvard University. She previously shared plans to open a consultancy this fall.

— Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella named Rolf Harms, a corporate vice president at the tech giant, as an advisor on AI economics to work with the company’s top leaders. Business Insider obtained a November memo from Nadella to Microsoft executives announcing Harms’ expanded role.

Harms has been with Microsoft for nearly two decades and penned a foundational whitepaper in 2010 addressing the economics of cloud computing.

“We need to rapidly rethink the new economics of AI across the company — just as we once did with the cloud,” Nadella wrote, according to BI. “This platform shift is all about building a new AI factory and family of Copilots and agents that drive diffusion and usage across the full stack.”

— Seattle Reign FC and Seattle Sounders FC announced Sean Coury as chief financial officer. Coury joins the soccer clubs from Bezos Academy, where he served as CFO of the educational nonprofit launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He previously worked in financial roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Apptio, where he helped the Bellevue, Wash., company go public.

The Reign and the Sounders last month hired Ro Vega as chief marketing officer.

— Francois Ajenstat is leaving his position as chief product officer at the software company Amplitude. Ajenstat was previously CPO at Seattle’s Tableau Software, where he spent 13 years, followed by a brief run at Salesforce that ended in 2023. Earlier in his career, Ajenstat was with Microsoft for a decade, holding titles including technical evangelist, product manager and senor director of environmental sustainability.

— The University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD) has multiple leadership changes.

UW biochemistry professor Neil King is now IPD’s deputy director as Lance Stewart, former interim executive director, retires from the organization. King was previously an associate professor at IPD, and Nobel Laureate David Baker will stay in his role as director.

“When I joined the IPD in 2013, it was clear that helping to build the IPD would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to contribute and observe firsthand the development of a whole new industry based on computationally designed proteins,” Stewart said on LinkedIn.

The IPD made three additional hires:

• Jenny Cronin is now director of translational research, joining IPD from AI2 Incubator, a Seattle-based startup organization. Cronin is also a venture partner with Pack Ventures, a fund that backs startups with UW connections.
• Roseanne Hampton Reich is assistant director of administration. Her past roles include positions at lululemon, UW’s Division of Nephrology, Seattle Children’s and others.
• Justin English is director of strategic development, previously working as an assistant professor at the University of Utah. English holds a PhD in pharmacology. 

— Alex Pettit is returning to Oregon to serve as the state’s digital transformation projects director. Pettit has previously held top technology roles for Oregon, Texas and Oklahoma, and was most recently Colorado’s chief technology officer for nearly six years.

“This next chapter allows me to bring hard-won experience from the field and apply it to familiar soil. I’m honored to once again contribute to Oregon’s technology future — helping modernize legacy platforms, evolve our enterprise architecture, and prepare for the demands ahead,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

— Brian Bishop is CEO of Portland, Ore.-based Skip Technology, a startup building long-duration, grid-scale batteries. Bishop takes over for Brennan Gantner, who co-founded the hydrogen bromine battery company seven years ago.

Bishop has more than 30 years of engineering, manufacturing and management experience in a variety of electronics-focused businesses. He was previously with Salt Creek Capital, which acquires and recapitalizes small companies.

— Kelly Goetsch has taken a new title at e-commerce logistics startup Pipe17, moving from chief operating officer to president. The Seattle startup announced a $17.5 million Series A round earlier this year.

Goetsch has also helped lead the creation of the first open standard to unify how commerce systems communicate, including AI-powered selling channels and payments, logistics and fulfillment. The effort was overseen by the nonprofit Commerce Operations Foundation, which released the initial standard this week.

— Tom Mara, executive director of SIFF, has left the nonprofit following the decision not to renew his contract, the Seattle Times reported. Mara previously ran the popular Seattle radio station KEXP, then joined SIFF in 2022.

The following year Mara announced the organization’s purchase of the historic Cinerama, a movie theater previously owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen that ceased operations during the pandemic. The acquisition was celebrated by many, but the venue has struggled financially.

Auger, a startup building logistics and supply chain software, announced Yuqing Sun as its chief data and AI enablement officer. Sun joins the Bellevue, Wash.-based company from Johnson & Johnson where she has worked for nearly 20 years in a variety of supply chain, analytics and data science roles.

“Yuqing brings the rare combo of deep technical chops, operational scar tissue, and the calm that only comes from having seen every kind of supply-chain fire drill,” said Dave Clark, Auger’s founder and CEO and a former Amazon executive.

Clark noted on LinkedIn that while at Johnson & Johnson, Sun worked to modernize “one of the most complex supply chains on the planet through data and AI innovations. She built and scaled more than 30 AI-driven products across optimization, simulation, IoT, machine learning, computer vision — you name it.”

Last month Auger appointed Justine Hastings as chief AI economist. The company, ranked No. 48 on the GeekWire 200 list of top Pacific Northwest startups, raised a $100 million Series A round last December.

— Amy Harris is the new public policy and government relations director for the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA).

For the past nine years, Harris has been a principal for Red Strategies, which bills itself as providing “fundraising consulting and event planning for right of center candidates and organizations.” She has also worked as an executive assistant for two members of Congress.

Randa Minkarah, CEO of the WTIA consortium, praised Harris’ “deep experience in bipartisan coalition-building, strategic advocacy, and navigating complex political landscapes,” noting the skills will be instrumental in working in Washington state and the nation’s capitol.

— Marc Brown, a former corporate vice president at Microsoft who helped lead the acquisition of companies including LinkedIn, GitHub and Minecraft, has joined the board of directors for Syncro, a software platform for IT professionals.

Seattle-based Brown was with Microsoft for more than two decades, managing more than 185 acquisitions and 80 equity investments.

— Pyramid Communications, a longtime Seattle-area public relations firm, named Emily Ryan as its first CEO. Ryan was with Pyramid for nearly 14 years before taking a year-long role as chief communications officer for Our Children’s Trust in 2024.

“During a tumultuous period in the world, Pyramid is doubling down on our commitment to support changemakers leading bold action for a better world,” the company posted on LinkedIn. “Emily’s trusted, creative leadership will sustain our team and our clients as we continue to work alongside all of you…”

— Carbon Direct, a carbon management firm based in New York and Seattle, announced two leadership hires as a result of its recent acquisition of climate tech startup Pachama.

• Greg FitzGerald, based in Vancouver, B.C., is now vice president of supply and will help source and commercialize carbon credits that organizations purchase to offset their emissions.
• Diego Saez Gil, co-founder and former CEO of Pachama, has taken the role of senior vice president of strategic engagement and is based in the Bay Area.

Redmond, Wash.-based Kymeta, a mobile satellite communications company, announced Manny Mora as its new president and CEO, effective immediately.

The company, founded in 2012 with backing from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is ramping up efforts to provide services across the U.S. Department of Defense and allied militaries.

Mora spent nearly 40 years with General Dynamics Mission Systems, leading the Virginia-based company’s Space and Intelligence Systems. In this role he supported the company’s partnerships with DOD, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and others.

“As the defense community modernizes its command-and-control infrastructure, Kymeta is uniquely positioned to deliver mobile SATCOM solutions that perform in the most demanding environments,” said Nicole Piasecki, the executive chair of Kymeta’s board of directors, in a statement.

“Manny Mora brings the operational depth and strategic clarity to scale our impact and strengthen our role as a trusted partner to national security customers,” she added.

Kymeta is riding tailwinds from an aerospace and defense sector being reshaped by advances in software systems, autonomous platforms, satellite communications, and AI.

Kymeta was recently chosen by the U.S. Army as the multi-orbit satellite communications provider for its Next Generation Command and Control pilot. The initiative will use the company’s Osprey u8 terminal technology to provide connectivity for military operators.

“Our breakthrough technology is already transforming how defense and government customers communicate across domains,” Mora said in a statement.

In taking the role, Mora replaces Rick Bergman, a former executive vice president at semiconductor giant AMD, who took the helm in April 2024.

Kymeta makes use of an innovative type of technology called metamaterials to build antennas that can be steered by software, without moving parts. Its hybrid cellular-satellite terminals enable communications in hard-to-reach areas — an application that’s been of particular interest to defense customers.

The company also provides technology for emergency services, maritime operations, wildfire-fighting and other applications.

Kymeta raised $84 million in 2022. Total funding to date is nearly $400 million.

— Drew Garner is now senior vice president of engineering for Smartsheet.

Garner joins the Bellevue, Wash., work productivity software giant as Rajeev “Raj” Singh recently took the helm as CEO. The two have significant overlaps in their resumes, with Garner rising to the role of chief technology officer at Accolade during Singh’s tenure as leader of the healthcare platform. And Garner was a senior director at Concur, the Bellevue-based travel expense giant that Singh co-founded.

Garner shared his excitement about the new role on LinkedIn.

“From my first conversation, I could feel the drive — the hunger to innovate, the pride in craft, and the focus on building things that genuinely make a difference,” he said. “Smartsheet is redefining how AI and automation power real work, helping teams move faster, think smarter, and stay more connected than ever.”

— Baskar Sridharan, a former Amazon Web Services’ vice president of AI/machine learning services and infrastructure, is now president of Trase, an agentic AI startup that publicly launched this week.

“AI adoption is faltering within sectors that need it most: complex, highly regulated enterprises overburdened with administrative tasks that are ripe for automation,” Sridharan said on LinkedIn. “The issue isn’t innovation, it’s implementation.”

Trase has $10.5 million in pre-seed funding, and states that its “initial focus is on complex, highly regulated industries, enabling enterprises in healthcare, national security, and energy to create and deploy autonomous turn-key agents into existing infrastructure…”

Sridharan began his tech career with a nearly 16-year run at Microsoft. He was a principal engineer and architect for an Azure data storage repository that served large analytic workloads. He then moved to Google’s Kirkland, Wash., office where he was vice president of engineering for the Google Cloud platform.

Trase is based in Virginia, but Sridharan will remain in Seattle.

— Qualtrics named two new leaders. The company, co-located in Seattle and Provo, Utah, offers technology that helps businesses gather data and improve the interactions that customers, employees and others have with their products and services.

• Provo-based Mark Hammond joined the company as SVP of core AI, previously working for Microsoft in autonomous systems and technology bridging physical and virtual assets.
• Seattle-based Jeff Gelfuso was promoted to SVP and chief product experience officer. Gelfuso joined Qualtrics in January. He previously worked at Workday, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft.

Qualtrics last month announced a $6.75 billion deal to buy Press Ganey Forsta, a company focused on managing experiences for healthcare companies.

— Seattle cybersecurity company WatchGuard Technologies named Joe Smolarski as CEO. Smolarski joined the company from security management company Kaseya, where he held the roles of president and chief operating officer. He is credited with helping lead a 10-fold revenue increase and multi-billion-dollar valuation growth for the Florida company.

Vats Srivatsan had been serving as WatchGuard’s interim CEO since May 2025, following the departure of Prakash Panjwani. Srivatsan will remain on the board of directors.

— Hubble Network, a Seattle-based space-tech startup, named two leadership hires. The news follows its September announcement of $70 million in new funding to accelerate the growth of its satellite-powered Bluetooth network.

• Damien Michau, an engineer with two decades of experience, is Hubble’s VP of engineering, joining from the software company Endor Labs.
• John Marbach, a past marketing manager, is head of growth. Marbach previously led growth marketing at the cloud company Grafana Labs.

— Mike McGee is CEO of For Effect, a new company that he’s helping launch that provides tech support for nonprofits and small businesses. “Our goal is to help organizations get the most out of their technology, implement automation, and utilize AI agents where appropriate,” McGee said on LinkedIn.

McGee was previously at Vacasa, Accolade, Concur and other Seattle-area tech companies.

— Caleb John is now a principal engineer at Pioneer Square Labs, a Seattle venture firm and startup studio. John was co-founder and CEO of Pongo, a search startup that was acquired last year by Moondream, and previously founded Cedar Robotics, a startup that built indoor delivery robots for restaurants.

— Seattle-based coaching firm Close Cohen Career Consulting announced that former Zillow VP Nancy Poznoff has joined as an executive coach. The firm, which advises senior professionals nationwide who are navigating career transitions, also shared that it has expanded into the Raleigh-Durham area.

Poznoff will remain as CEO and co-founder of Mother Bear Agency, an independent marketing and communications firm. Her past roles include marketing leadership at Starbucks and T-Mobile.

— Angelina DiPreta is a principal at Maveron, a venture capital firm started in 1998 by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Seattle-based tech investor Dan Levitan. San Francisco-based DiPreta was formerly the consumer practice lead at the firm Premji Invest for nearly six years.

— Aaron Ward is co-founder and CEO of Huckleberry, a startup co-located in Portland, Ore., and New Zealand that’s developing a voice-enabled platform that allows managers, HR and teammates to share workplace performance feedback. Ward is a serial entrepreneur, previously launching AskNicely, a customer experience tech company.

— Longtime Seattle-area investor Brianna McDonald has joined the board of the Angel Capital Association Board. Earlier this year, McDonald became CEO of Ecosystem Venture Group, a new organization that blends startup investment funds with services for entrepreneurs and investors.

— Julie Van Ullen is now president and chief revenue officer for iSpot, a Bellevue, Wash., company that measures the impact of advertising campaigns on TV and video streaming. Van Ullen serves on the board of directors for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a trade group. She joins iSpot from Rakuten Rewards, a leading e-commerce loyalty company.

“Julie is a dynamic leader with a proven track record of building high-growth teams and fostering trusted relationships with customers across the media and advertising ecosystem,” iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller said in a statement.

iSpot ranks No. 6 on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top privately held startups in the Pacific Northwest.

— MoxiWorks named Ashley Fidler as chief product officer of the Seattle-based real estate platform. Fidler joins the company from Pure Property Management and was a Microsoft program manager earlier in her career.

“Ashley brings an incredible depth of experience in building category-defining platforms that marry cutting-edge AI with real-world business impact,” said Michael Messig, MoxiWorks’ CTO, in a statement.

MoxiWorks last month appointed a new chief marketer, and in May sold its back-office accounting product in order to focus on sales and marketing.

— Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC hired Ro Vega as chief marketing officer for the two soccer clubs. Vega has worked in brand management for nearly two decades, including positions with Beats by Dr. Dre and Nike, where he focused on soccer products in North America. He joins the Seattle teams from The Trade Desk, a digital advertising company.

— F5 CEO and President François Locoh-Donou is taking the additional role of chair of the board of directors in March 2026. The company shared the news in an SEC filing. Locoh-Donou is succeeding Alan Higginson, who disclosed in August that he is retiring after nearly 30 years as an F5 board member and 20 years as board chair.

— Trupanion, the longtime Seattle-based pet insurance provider, named Bradley Powell as a member of its board of directors. Powell was previously chief financial officer of the global logistics company Expeditors International of Washington. He was also CFO of Eden Bioscience, a publicly traded biotech company.

— Gurobi Optimization, a Beaverton, Ore.-based company offering mathematical problem solving technology, named Oliver Bastert as chief technology officer. Bastert, who will work remotely from Munich, Germany, joins the company from the analytics and credit-scoring company FICO where he was vice president of product management.

— Bill Platt, former leader of Amazon Web Services’ agentic AI division, joined San Francisco-based Alchemy as chief operating officer. Platt’s mandate is “to weave AI agents deeply into blockchain infrastructure,” according to the company. Platt was with AWS for nearly 12 years over two stints, most recently based in the Boston area.

— Seattle Metro Chamber named Mara Samudrala as director of communications and marketing for the region’s leading business association. Samudrala comes to the role from the Greater Phoenix Chamber.

— Halley Knigge has done a Seattle co-op swap. The former communications and inclusion lead for REI Co-op is now VP of communications at BECU, a financial cooperative. Her past experience includes a media leadership role at Alaska Airlines.

— Casium, a Seattle-based immigration tech startup, named Kaustubh (Kaust) Yadav as product designer. Yadav has experience in creative direction, copywriting and product design, working on campaigns for companies and brands including Amazon, AmEx, BMW, Citi and Pepsi.

— Deb Hall Lefevre, the longtime tech exec who was most recently CTO at Starbucks, announced her retirement on Sunday in a LinkedIn post.

Hall Lefevre resigned from Starbucks last month, according to a Sept. 26 report from Reuters, which cited a memo sent to staff about her departure.

The move came amid layoffs and various tech-related changes at the Seattle coffee giant.

“After an incredible journey leading technology and digital transformation across some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Starbucks, Circle K/Couche Tard and McDonald’s, it’s time to step into retirement,” Hall Lefevre said in her LinkedIn post.

“As I turn the page, I look forward to more time with family, continuing my tech and board work, and cheering on the next generation of leaders shaping the future,” she added.

Hall Lefevre, who was also an executive vice president, joined Starbucks in 2022. She previously spent more than 16 years at McDonald’s, where she was a corporate vice president and CIO, leading the fast food giant’s technology and digital commerce strategy. She was also EVP and CTO at Circle K Stores.

Ningyu Chen, who was senior vice president of global experience technology, is now interim chief technology officer at Starbucks.

Starbucks last month announced plans to lay off around 900 non-retail employees and close underperforming stores mainly in the U.S. and Canada. Starbucks previously cut 1,100 corporate workers in February.

Under the leadership of CEO Brian Niccol, the former Chipotle CEO who joined the company last year, Starbucks is making a bevy of technology tweaks as it tries to curb slumping sales.

— Lindo St. Angel, vice president of hardware for Amazon’s Lab126 devices group, is departing at the end of the month. Reuters first reported the news.

St. Angel joined Lab126 in 2010. The business unit, based in Silicon Valley, launched in 2004 and helped develop Amazon devices such as the Kindle Fire, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and other hardware.

— Mark Jewett joined New York City health data company Komodo Health as chief marketing officer. Jewett was previously a senior vice president at Informatica and CMO at SmartRecruiters. He also was a SVP and co-interim CMO at Tableau, and spent 15 years at Microsoft in various leadership roles.

Founded in 2014, Komodo Health reached a $3.3 billion valuation in 2021. The company helps healthcare stakeholders integrate data and generate insights related to treatment, research, and more.

— Nancy Mounir joined Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a vice president leading security programs and platforms.

Mounir previously spent more than 12 years at Microsoft, most recently as a senior director and chief of staff overseeing the company’s Secure Future Initiative.

In a LinkedIn post, Mounir said she is “looking forward to a great journey of learning, innovation and growth with the Security Platform team!”

She added: “Extremely grateful for my time at Microsoft and could not be more proud of what we accomplished together over the years!”

Mounir initially worked at Microsoft from 2012 to 2015 in supply chain, and left to spend a year at Amazon working on advertising and accounting teams. She returned to Microsoft in 2016.

— Priya Vaidyanathan took a new role at Microsoft as director of product and design for Microsoft’s AI skilling platform. Vaidyanathan returned to Microsoft in 2020 after two previous stints and was most recently a group product manager. She previously founded a mealkit startup called SnapCurry and was a senior technical product manager at Amazon.

“This next chapter is about helping people everywhere gain the skills and confidence to grow with AI, creating opportunity, resilience, and impact at every level,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

— Jim Chi was named executive director of Oregon Startup Center, which is going through a relaunch, according to Portland Business Journal. Chi is also president of Oregon Sports Angels and is a longtime product management leader.

Award-winning immunologist ​​Susan Kaech is the new executive vice president of the Allen Institute’s Immunology Moonshot, an initiative that aims to understand the immune system’s role in human health and disease.

Kaech currently leads the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and will join the Allen Institute in January.

“The appointment comes at a critical time in bioscience when the immune system is regarded as the cornerstone of all diseases and understanding its foundational principles is vital to unlocking new treatments and therapies,” the institute said in a statement.

Kaech’s research includes the investigation of how the immune system remembers infections to develop immunity, T-cell communications, and the role of metabolism in the immune system’s fight against cancer.

—  Seattle RFID company Impinj named Arthur Valdez Jr. to its board of directors.

Valdez recently left the role of executive VP of global supply chain and customer solutions at Starbucks and his career includes leadership roles at Amazon, Target and elsewhere.

“Arthur’s expertise transforming and optimizing strategic supply chain and logistics networks for large consumer-facing companies will be invaluable as we continue to advance our vision of connecting every thing,” said Impinj CEO Chris Diorio in a statement.

— Jason Bennett has taken a new role at Amazon Web Services, shifting from VP of U.S. enterprise to VP of worldwide startups and venture capital. Bennett has been with the company for more than 17 years.

On LinkedIn Bennett shared his fondness for working with startups and said he was eager to return to a position serving that community.

“I’m energized by the opportunity to work alongside our teams to support a thriving startup ecosystem — from founders and VCs, to accelerators, and the broader innovation community,” he said, adding that the work “has a lasting impact on the direction of industries and the future of AI.”

— NuScale Power named James Canafax as chief legal officer and corporate secretary. The Tigard, Ore.-based nuclear energy company is developing small modular reactors.

Canafax has decades of legal experience and joins NuScale from Maritime Partners. Past positions include executive leadership at BWX Technologies, which supplies nuclear components and services.

“[Canafax’s] extensive experience in the nuclear industry, deep familiarity with the regulatory environment and track record of guiding organizations through key growth periods make him uniquely suited to support NuScale at this important moment for our company,” CEO John Hopkins said in statement.

— Seattle entrepreneur Elvis Dieguez is now VP of data science, analytics and platforms for the healthcare startup hims & hers. Diegeuz joins the company from symphonie, a Seattle e-commerce marketing platform where he was CEO and co-founder. He was previously at Amazon for more than four years working in business analytics and as a senior manager.

Hims & hers offers a telehealth platform for conditions including sexual health, hair loss, mental health, skincare and weight loss.

“I look forward to leading and working with a ~70 person team who’ve been working hard to make the #healthcare system work for all Americans,” Dieguez said on LinkedIn.

— Biotech startup Synthesize Bio named Ariel Brumbaugh as senior director of business development. In the role, Brumbaugh will help the company partner with biopharma companies interested in using Synthesize’s AI-based research platform to accelerate and de-risk drug development.

Seattle’s Synthesize Bio was founded by leaders from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Last month it announced $10 million in funding from Madrona.

Brumbaugh joined the startup from the San Francisco biotech company Gladstone Institutes.

— Sophie Brougham is director of philanthropic operations for the recently launched Clean Economy Project. Nicknamed CleanEcon, the effort includes past employees of the Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy and is a policy and advocacy platform promoting clean power.

Prior to Breakthrough, Brougham was with the Paul Allen holding company Vulcan (now known as Vale Group) for more than a decade, where she was a senior manager and led programs including philanthropic and grants management.

— Seattle’s Jake Laes is now executive director of AI Tinkerers, a global network of AI engineers and builders. Laes joined the group from Deel, where he helped facilitate partnerships between investors and accelerator programs. Laes is the founder of YoungTech Seattle, and his background includes mentoring and leadership roles at the University of Washington’s CoMotion and Techstars.

— Pranam Kolari, VP of search and recommendations at Coupang, is resigning from his role next month. Coupang is South Korea’s largest e-commerce platform and is headquartered in Seattle. Kolari, based in San Jose, Calif., was previously at Walmart Labs for nearly a decade where his roles included vice president of engineering for search.

— Datavault AI appointed Pete Scobell as VP of global security. The Beaverton, Ore.-based company helps businesses monetize their data and create digital twins of physical objects. Scobell is a decorated U.S. Navy SEAL veteran and will oversee Datavault AI’s security operations, risk management and asset logistics.

— Erin McHugh Saif, a former Massachusetts-based Microsoft executive, is CEO of an as-yet unnamed data and AI venture to serve “place-based partnerships,” which are networks of nonprofits, government agencies, and educational entities that aim to address education, jobs and housing needs.

“With better access to data, these organizations will leap ahead in this moment of AI transformation, gaining faster insight into which programs deliver the greatest improvement to significantly scale their impact,” Saif said on LinkedIn.

The effort has the support of the Ballmer Group, a philanthropic organization co-founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie, and the nonprofit TechSoup.

— Karen Ng was promoted to executive VP of product at HubSpot. Ng has been with the company since 2022, joining as senior VP of product and partnerships. Past employers include Common Room, Google and Microsoft, where she was chief of staff across the company’s developer tools business. Ng is based in the Seattle area.