—Jez Humble has joined Chef as the company’s Engineering Vice President. Prior to joining Chef, Humble was a principal at ThoughtWorks, where he led product and consulting efforts focused on team collaboration and software development efficiency. In addition, Humble is the co-author of “Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation,” a book about quickly and continuously delivering updates to software.
“Jez is the man,” Chef CEO Barry Crist said in a news release. “Continuous delivery is so critical to both Chef and our customers. Having Jez’s depth and expertise will be enormously helpful over the coming years.”
—Lyft COO Travis VanderZanden has left the company following tensions with founders Logan Green and John Zimmer, according to a report from Re/code. VanderZanden joined Lyft to help scale the company’s operations when it acquired Cherry, a company that he co-founded.
Prior to his work at Cherry, VanderZanden served as the Chief Revenue Officer for Yammer.
The news comes at a time when Lyft is locked in fierce competition with its rival, Uber. The two companies have been engaged in a war of words over each other’s practices, in addition to their usual competition for users and lower prices.
—SwopBoard announced today that the company has created a new advisory board charged with helping to guide the company as it continues to grow its marketplace that allows users to sell items and donate a cut of the proceeds to their local school.
The board is staffed by Tamara Adlin, a former Amazon UX designer who has consulted with a number of organizations including Pro.com and the World Intellectual Property Organization; Valerie Wasserman, who previously served as the Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Brand Development for Rodale; Coinstar co-founder Jens Molbak; and Nicholas Ferroni, a nationally recognized educator and blogger for the Huffington Post.
“The combined knowledge and experience of this Board is astounding, and as we embark on the release of our mobile app and exciting partnership announcements, we are ever-grateful to have them in our corner,” SwopBoard CEO Natalie Angelilo said in a press release.
—Talentwise announced that company President and Chief Operating Officer Todd Owens has been promoted to the role of CEO. He will be replacing current CEO William Kerr, who has been appointed Executive Chairman of the company.
Owens joined the company in 2007 as Vice President and General Manager, and was promoted to his previous role in 2011. Prior to that, he worked in senior product management and business development roles at Wind River Systems and Siebel Systems.
“My years with TalentWise have been incredibly rewarding, largely because of the opportunity to work with Bill and the great professionals here,” Owens said in a press release. “Bill is handing over a TalentWise that is stronger than ever before and well on its way to creating and leading a critical new category within HCM – Hiring Process Management.”
—Bill Bryant, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture, has returned to Seattle following a sabbatical in London. He returned to lead a $14.5 million Series B investment round in Bright Computing, a San Jose-based provider of cluster management software. As a part of the deal, Bryant will be joining Bright’s board of directors, alongside Alexander Ribbink from Prime Ventures and Richard Marsh from DFJ Esprit.
“Bright is defining infrastructure automation to be simplify the management of clusters, and take full advantage of cloud computingtechnologies,” Bryant said in a press release. “Bright software manages some of the world’s most complex clustering environments, supporting infrastructure services for the next era of data.”
Bryant has invested in a number of other high-profile companies, including Swype (which has since been acquired by Nuance), Vizify and Chef.
—Intellicheck Mobilisa named William H. Roof its Chief Operating Officer. Prior to his appointment as COO, Roof served as Intellicheck’s Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist from May 2009 to April 2011. In the intervening period since he last worked at the company, Roof also served as the Chief Technology Officer for TechFlow.
Roof will report directly to Intellicheck President and CEO Nelson Ludlow, and will be charged with leading the Port Townsend-based company’s sales, customer service, information technology and enterprise wireless departments.
“We are fortunate to have William Roof return to Intellicheck Mobilisa, particularly in the role of Chief Operating Officer,” Ludlow said in a press release. “He has proven himself to be an outstanding leader and an insightful specialist on a variety of technical and leadership endeavors.”
—Chris Ulum has been appointed the President of Portland-based cleantech startup Building Energy, following his stint as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Oregon Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center. He was first introduced to the company in his role as an EIR, and Building Energy asked Ulum to come onboard as its President while he was advising it on
Ulum worked as the CEO of Agilyx Corporation, which he co-founded in 2006. Prior to that, he served in a number of roles at companies including Sun Microsystems, IBM and Frito-Lay.
“This transition from entrepreneur-in-residence to startup executive at an Oregon cleantech company is a good example of how Oregon BEST’s entrepreneur-in-residence program is designed to work,” Ken Vaughn, Portland BEST’s Director of Commercialization Programs, said in a press release. “We’re delighted to see Chris go from providing mentoring support to joining the company.”
—The Seattle Times named David Pelter its Vice President of Product Management and Development. Pelter comes to the newspaper as a veteran of the technology industry, having held leadership positions with T-Mobile, Outerwall, and Alaska Airlines. Immediately prior to his hiring at the Times, Pelter worked as the Head of Global Product Management for Amazon Student at the Seattle-based retail giant.
