High-level appointments just keep coming at Accolade, as the health care company announced on Wednesday that it had appointed Harish Naidu, a longtime Microsoft general manager, as the new chief technology officer. The company also named Phong Nguyen as executive vice president of product management.
The two executives bring decades of experience to Accolade and join a team of data scientists, technologists and clinicians who are “re-engineering how consumers navigate and manage their healthcare,” the company said in a news release.
Just last week, Philadelphia-based Accolade added Dr. Ivor Horn as its chief medical officer, and in August the company closed a $70 million funding round. Naidu is based in Seattle, where Accolade says its new healthcare technology innovation center has contributed to nearly 100 percent growth in the company’s technology operations over the past year. Nguyen will be based in Philadelphia.
“We’ve integrated an incredible personal service with an open technology platform that is focused on delivering what consumers need to manage their unique set of health needs,” Mike Hilton, Accolade’s chief product officer, said in a statement. “Harish and Phong bring the expertise and successful track records of using technology in new ways to architect solutions that are practical, scalable and effective.”
Naidu has more than 20 years of software industry product development experience, including 22 years with Microsoft, where he served as general manager for several products and strategic initiatives.
“The demand for consumers to be more involved in their healthcare decisions and management continues to rise and Accolade is at the center of solving this need,” Naidu said in a statement. “Bringing technology and data science to augment the one-on-one human interaction to enhance the personalization of healthcare is what attracted me to Accolade. As the need for innovative digital health solutions grows in our country, so too does Accolade. I’m eager to help drive the technology strategy and roadmap of this expanding company with an eye toward improving the lives of our clients around the country by giving them the means to maximize healthcare benefits in a cost effective manner.”
Nguyen will be responsible for the overall strategy, roadmap and design of the company’s portfolio of products. Prior to Accolade, he served as SVP and GM of Concur’s Expense and Invoice products and also held leadership roles in the company’s Traveler Services, Mobile and Platform businesses.
— Smartsheet, the Bellevue-based project management software company, announced the addition of enterprise software veteran Mike Arntz as SVP of worldwide field operations. He will oversee all sales, support and services functions to drive adoption of Smartsheet’s enterprise-ready platform.
Arntz most recently served as SVP of sales, Americas at NetSuite where he helped drive adoption of the company’s cloud-based business management software. Prior to that, he was EVP of worldwide sales at cloud application provider Kenandy. He also spent 20 years in sales at Oracle Corp.
“Mike is an outstanding addition to the Smartsheet team,” CEO Mark Mader said in a news release. “As Smartsheet further extends its reach into the enterprise, we wanted someone with a deep understanding of the B2B technology space who can help us seize the market opportunity and drive more value for customers.”
Smartsheet says it has more than 10 million registered users at 85,000 organizations in 190 countries. Smartsheet says more than half of Fortune 500 companies use its tools.
“Smartsheet has a big and growing market opportunity to go after and, as a sales leader, you can’t ask for much more than that,” Arntz said. “The market is rapidly recognizing the need for what we do, and as more enterprises look to manage collaborative work and automate processes, it’s my goal that they see Smartsheet’s platform as the obvious answer.”
— Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center appointed Dr. Nancy Davidson, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, as executive director of the Fred Hutch / University of Washington Cancer Consortium.
Davidson will serve as “a bridge builder across the cancer treatment, clinical and translational research programs” of consortium members Fred Hutch, UW School of Medicine, Seattle Children’s and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, according to a news release. Her appointment is effective Dec. 1.
Fred Hutch calls Davidson “a world-renowned physician-scientist in cancer biology and treatment, especially in the field of breast cancer.” Prior to joining the Pitt faculty, she served as the breast cancer research professor of oncology and founding director of the breast cancer program at Johns Hopkins. She is a member of the scientific advisory boards for many foundations and cancer centers.
“Dr. Davidson brings a wealth of experience and insight not only as an internationally recognized expert in breast cancer, but also through her highly successful leadership roles as the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, past president of ASCO and current president of the AACR,” Dr. Gary Gilliland, president and director of Fred Hutch, said in a statement. “She is ideally suited to further enrich the already outstanding interactions between the SCCA, UW Medicine and Fred Hutch. I am eagerly looking forward to working with her.”
— Cyanogen, the Seattle-based makers of an Android operating system, announced some changes in the leadership ranks on Wednesday that included the naming of Lior Tal as CEO.
In a post on the company blog, Tal wrote that Cyanogen co-founder Kirt McMaster will be taking on the role of executive chairman of the board, and Steve Kondik, Cyanogen’s co-founder and CTO, will be taking on a new role as chief science officer. He’ll report to Stephen Lawler, the company’s SVP of engineering.
Cyanogen cut 20 percent of its workforce earlier this summer.
In his post, Tal also said that “change and evolution are a natural part of moving from an early stage startup to a market leader” as he announced that the company was shifting to a new Modular OS program.
“It is designed to achieve the original objective of an open and smarter Android without the limitations of requiring the full Cyanogen OS stack and individual device bring-ups,” Tal wrote. “The new partnership program offers smartphone manufacturers greater freedom and opportunity to introduce intelligent, customizable Android smartphones using different parts of the Cyanogen OS via dynamic modules and MODs, with the ROM of their choice, whether stock Android or their own variant.”
— Hintze Law of Seattle, a firm specializing in global data protection counseling for technology, e-commerce, advertising, media, and mobile companies and industry associations, has added Mike Hintze as a partner.
Hintze will join his wife, Susan Lyon-Hintze, partner and founder of Hintze Law, in leading the firm.
Hintze is making the move after serving as the chief privacy counsel at Microsoft for 18 years. He advised the tech giant on data protection compliance globally, and helped lead the company’s strategic initiatives on privacy differentiation and public policy, according to a news release.
Hintze also teaches privacy law at the University of Washington School of Law.
— Dan Primack, the Fortune columnist who has attracted a devoted following with his coverage of the intricacies of the venture capital beat, is leaving after six years with the magazine to join a new startup from the co-founders of Politico.
Recode called Primack’s “Term Sheet” blog a “must-read” over the years in Silicon Valley, as the writer/editor chronicled “how investments are made via a mix of breaking news, industry factoids and sharp insights.”
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, who founded Politico in 2007, announced earlier this year that they were starting a new online content site with a mix of business and political news. They have since raised $10 million.
— Cairncross & Hempelmann, the Seattle-based law firm specializing in business, real estate and litigation matters, has announced that attorney Thomas Francis is joining its Corporate Finance & Business Transactions group.
According to a news release, Francis’ practice “focuses on representing private companies and investors on complex business transactions, mergers and acquisitions, business/
Before joining Cairncross & Hempelmann, Francis was a transactional attorney at Foster Pepper, PLLC.
