Latest news with #hires
Geek Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
Tech Moves: Smartsheet adds to C-suite; Gradial and Zeno Power name senior leadership
Tech Moves covers notable hires, promotions and personnel changes in the Pacific NW tech community. Submissions: tips@ Stephanie Berner. (LinkedIn Photo) — Smartsheet's leadership shakeup continues with the appointment of Stephanie Berner as its new chief customer officer. Berner comes to the Bellevue, Wash.-based enterprise software giant from Atlassian, where she served as senior vice president. Berner has also held leadership roles in customer success at LinkedIn, Box and elsewhere. Last week Smartsheet disclosed that long-time CEO Mark Mader is leaving his post while Sunny Gupta steps in as acting CEO. The company also recently named named Tony Giannino as director of security and compliance. '[Berner's] experience in the work management market, proven track record and deep understanding of the B2B SaaS customer journey will be key as we enter a new era of AI-driven innovation,' Gupta said in a statement. — Gradial, a Seattle startup using AI agents to help marketing operations teams increase productivity, has added three new members to its senior leadership: Vikas Kamran joins as president. Kamran was founder and CEO of Revel for nearly 14 years. Infogain acquired Revel in 2020 and Kamran transitioned to chief digital officer for the company. joins as president. Kamran was founder and CEO of Revel for nearly 14 years. Infogain acquired Revel in 2020 and Kamran transitioned to chief digital officer for the company. Richard Rocca is vice president of sales and comes to the role from Adobe, where he worked for more than a decade. is vice president of sales and comes to the role from Adobe, where he worked for more than a decade. Chelsea Halliday is now head of marketing. Halliday has held marketing leadership roles for companies including Zillow Group, Vercel and MongoDB. A.C. Charania. (LinkedIn Photo) — Zeno Power, a Seattle startup developing nuclear-powered batteries, hired A.C. Charania as senior vice president of space business development. The company, which is co-located in Washington, D.C., announced $50 million of new funding in May. Charania was most recently chief technologist at NASA and has 25 years of experience in aerospace innovation in the public and private sectors. At Zeno Power, Charania will lead the company's pursuit of deals with NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense and commercial companies. Charania was also with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, leaving the role of lunar campaign director. — Longtime Seattle-area investor Brianna McDonald has joined the board of directors at the Angel Capital Association. This spring, McDonald became CEO of a new organization called Ecosystem Venture Group, which blends startup investment funds with services for entrepreneurs and investors. Phil Levin. (UW Photo) — Phil Levin is stepping in as interim director of the University of Washington's EarthLab, an institute that spans multiple colleges and departments. Levin is a conservation scientist, professor in the UW's College of the Environment, and lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy of Washington. '[T]he challenges we face are enormous. Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental injustice — none of these have quick fixes. But I've never believed our job is to be optimistic. Our job is to be honest, brave, and imaginative,' Levin said in announcing his new role. Levin succeeds Ben Packard, who served as the inaugural Harriet Bullitt Endowed executive director of EarthLab beginning in 2017. Packard had previous leadership roles at The Nature Conservancy and Starbucks. — Lauren Olson, former director of fund management at the Seattle-based investment firm Breakwater Ventures, is now the fund operations manager at betaworks in New York. Betaworks this summer announced the close of a $66 million fund to invest in pre-seed and seed state startups. Olson previously worked for the SeaChange Fund and Madrona Venture Group. — Will Daughterty, president and CEO of Seattle's Pacific Science Center, joined the board of trustees for PCC Community Markets (PCC). The long-time retail grocery cooperative has also hired Amy Chow as the co-op's new chief financial officer. Chow was previously with the high-end kitchen and cookware store Sur La Table.
Geek Wire
07-08-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Tech Moves: Icertis names new CEO as Samir Bodas steps down; Smartsheet adds security leader
Tech Moves covers notable hires, promotions and personnel changes in the Pacific NW tech community. Submissions: tips@ Anand Subbaraman, left, is the new Icertis CEO, succeeding Samir Bodas, who co-founded the company. (Icertis Photos) Icertis has named Anand Subbaraman as CEO, succeeding Samir Bodas, who will become executive chairman of the Bellevue, Wash.-based contract management software company. Subbaraman is based in Bangalore, India, and has served as chief operating officer for Icertis for more than a year. He previously held leadership roles at BrowserStack and Finastra, and was with Oracle for more than 17 years. Bodas co-founded Icertis in 2009 and has been its only CEO. Icertis has raised $500 million, with a $50 million round confirmed in March. It was valued at $5 billion four years ago. Bodas said he is going 'focus on my health' but will partner closely with Subbaraman in the launch of new innovations. Tony Giannino. (LinkedIn Photo) — Smartsheet named Tony Giannino as director of security and compliance for the Bellevue-based enterprise software giant. Giannino is a long-time software engineers and joins Smartsheet from Goldman Sachs, where he was head of technology for risk issue management. He previously worked at Allstate, State Farm and other tech companies. Earlier this week, Smartsheet announced that CEO Mark Mader was stepping down in September after nearly two decades at the helm. Sunny Gupta, co-founder of Apptio and a longtime Seattle tech leader, is stepping in as executive chair and acting CEO. — Airplane manufacturing company Outbound Aerospace announced that David Anderson, a longtime Boeing product development leader, has joined its technical advisory board. Anderson was with the aerospace giant for more than 40 years, leaving the company in 2008 after working on aircraft including the 787 Dreamliner, 747-8, several 777 variants, and enhancements to the 737 family. More recently, he has worked as a consultant in the sector. Seattle-based Outbound Aerospace is building lightweight passenger aircraft from carbon-fiber and did a flight test with a small-scale prototype in March. Carter Rabasa. (LinkedIn Photo) — Carter Rabasa, an entrepreneur, investor and former employee of multiple Seattle-area tech companies, has taken a role at IBM as the head of developer relations and go-to-market for Langflow, an AI development tool. Rabasa is also a founder at 200 OK Ventures, an angel investing group, and owner of Event Loop, an event management business. He left a role at DataStax to join IBM and was with Twilio for more than five years. Graham O'Brien. (LinkedIn Photo) — Graham O'Brien has transitioned from an interim role to become the permanent chief financial officer at ZoomInfo Technologies, as disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Vancouver, Wash.-based ZoomInfo provides a subscription service offering data on businesses to sales, marketing and recruiting professionals. O'Brien has been with the company for close to eight years and is based in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area, according to LinkedIn. York Baur. (LinkedIn Photo) — York Baur has joined Dallas-based real estate tech company Lone Wolf Technologies as its chief industry relations officer. Baur was founder and CEO of the Bellevue real estate tech platform MoxiWorks. He stepped down from MoxiWorks' top leadership role in 2024, and resigned from its board last month. Baur previously launched and ran Peninsula Heritage Productions, a company that promoted Washington's Olympic Peninsula. 'York [Baur] embodies the same core belief that drives Lone Wolf, that technology should enhance and amplify an agent's strategy, not compete with it,' said Lone Wolf CEO Jimmy Kelly, on LinkedIn. Besmira Nushi. (LinkedIn Photo) — Besmira Nushi is departing Microsoft Research after eight years to become a senior manager at Nvidia in Zurich, Switzerland. She will be working to understand and compare AI and large language model capabilities with a focus on 'evaluation, gap analysis, and regression discovery for a broad range of capabilities for both language and vision modalities,' Nushi said on LinkedIn. 'I am stoked to be able to contribute to the larger mission of measuring and explaining progress in AI, and look forward to this engagement,' Nushi added. Jeanette Jackson. (LinkedIn Photo) — Jeanette Jackson is now the clean tech national director for RBC, a Canadian investment and banking services firm. Jackson joins RBC from Foresight Canada, a Vancouver-based clean tech accelerator, where she served as CEO for more than seven years. 'Over the years, I've had the privilege of working alongside brilliant entrepreneurs, investors, industry and ecosystem leaders who are driving Canada's transition to a net-zero economy,' Jackson said on LinkedIn. 'This next chapter is about amplifying that impact with a new network and set of tools.' — Infoblox, a network management and security services company, appointed Phil Venables to its board of directors. The company is based in the Bay Area, with offices in Tacoma, Wash., and across North America and Asia. Venables previously worked for Google Cloud and Goldman Sachs, and has provided security advice to major companies, government agencies and startups.
