—Joanna Lord, the Seattle startup veteran who has led marketing teams for Porch, Big Door and Moz, has moved on from the Emerald City. She’s now working for New York-based ClassPass as the fitness membership startup’s chief marketing officer.
“I’ll be leading all growth and brand building efforts for our company,” Lord said in an email to GeekWire. “In just three years our community of members have booked over 15 million reservations in over 35 cities worldwide. I’m joining at an exciting time as we look to expand our product offerings and help everyone, everywhere live their most fulfilled life.”
For Lord, heading to the east coast wasn’t an easy decision though, despite her expertise.
“I’ve been fortunate to have helped build three great startups there and I’ve been inspired by the network of builders and entrepreneurs I met in Seattle,” she said. “Moving to NYC was quite the adventure and I feel super fortunate to have landed at a startup that shares a lot of Seattle-esque tech values like hard work, customer empathy and transparency.”
Lord previously served as the vice president of marketing at Porch, but left that position last fall, along with a handful of other executives, amid strategy adjustments at the company. She also served in the CMO role at Big Door and was vice president of growth marketing as Moz, then called SEOmoz.
—Cray appointed former Coinstar chief financial officer Brian Turner to its board of directors. He will also serve as a member of the Seattle-based supercomputer maker’s audit and compensation committees.
“Brian has an amazing background in finance and strategy, and has played a leadership role in several technology companies that have a track record of impressive growth,” said Cray CEO and president Peter Ungaro. “Brian’s insight, knowledge and expertise will be valuable resources for Cray and our leadership team. He is a great addition to our Board, and we are excited to welcome him to Cray.”
In addition to his time at Coinstar, which is now known as Outerwall and owns brands including Redbox and Gazelle, Turner also held financial leadership roles at RealNetworks, BSquare and Radisys. He currently sits on the board of a number of companies, including MicroVision where he is chairman of the board.
—WE Communications expanded its analytics power by hiring Iris Laband as executive vice president of its insight and analytics team. Initially, Laband will enhance the communication and public relation firm’s analytic capabilities with a focus on training and help expand its offerings.
“With her experience in using data analytics to better understand customer sentiment and behavior — why they buy, where they buy and how they buy — Iris was an ideal fit for this role,” said WE co-founder Pam Edstrom. “She’ll be able to expand on our capabilities in translating the value of communications in building brands to create business impact.”
Laband comes to WE from CDK Global, where she established its first research and data science function the drive product innovation. She also led analytics efforts at the company. Previously, Laband has also worked at ZAAZ and Cobalt Group.
—Jama appointed Scott Roth as the company’s new CEO, while founder and former CEO Eric Winquist transitions to chief strategy officer and chairman of the software development company.
“We are extremely pleased to have Scott join as CEO,” said Jama director Karan Mehandru. “Scott’s experience leading and scaling high-growth SaaS companies will be a perfect complement to Eric and the rest of the management team as Jama accelerates into its next phase.”
Roth previously served as executive vice president and general manager of the email optimization division at Return Path, where he also served as chief marketing officer. He also was the vice president of global marketing for the marketing cloud at Salesforce.
—PicMonkey hired SurveyMonkey’s Brent Chudoba as the photo-editing startup’s chief operating officer. Chudoba was part of the first round of hires at SurveyMonkey and helped the company grow from a 15-person team to the surveying giant it is today. But he told GeekWire last week that he wanted to put that experience into a new business.
“It just kind of felt like it was time to step back and figure out how I could leverage these seven great years of seeing a Silicon Valley-based company go from a very good business to a great global business,” Chudoba said.
You can read more about Chudoba’s move to Seattle-based PicMonkey over in our full story from last week.
Editor’s note: GeekWire Chairman Jonathan Sposato is CEO of PicMonkey.
—Craig Cincotta has moved from Porch to SAP. The former vice president of communications at the home services platform is now SAP’s senior director of marketing communications for the business network and applications group. Jessica Piha has taken on the director of communications role.
Cincotta is supporting Concur CEO Steve Singh, who joined SAP when Concur was purchased by the company in 2014 for $8.3 billion. He’ll lead marketing efforts for the group at their Bellevue, Wash. offices.
Piha previously worked as head of media relations at Porch before accepting her new role. She has also served as a mentor at Techstars and as an instructor at the University of Washington.
—Nintex has expanded its leadership team with two new hires. The workflow automation provider hired Baran Erkel as vice president of corporate development and Robyn Singh as vice president of human resources.
Erkel will work on expanding the company’s strategic partnerships and acquisitions in addition to growing existing industry ties and markets. He previously worked at Citrix as director of corporate and business development where he helped grow the document cloud business. He also served as vice president of business development at ARDIC and spent seven years as a manager at Accenture.
Singh will work on strengthening the company’s internal structure, retaining workforce and growing the worldwide headcount for the company. Singh also comes to Nintex from Citrix, where she served as an HR leader for the mobility apps business unit. She has worked in HR leadership at Microsoft’s Xbox and Windows divisions.
—Apptentive made two big management announcement this week. Marisa Nolan was hired as vice president of sales, while Vageesh Kumar is the new director of product management at the Seattle-based customer engagement software maker.
Nolan, a 13-year industry veteran, will lead sales strategy at the company. She comes to Apptentive from CMO Software, where she served as director of global sales and marketing. She has also worked at London-based Navita Systems as sales director, growing sales teams throughout Europe and Asia.
Kumar will focus on platform strategy and development. He’s a veteran of VMware and Amazon Web Services, and has also worked with Bayer and Booz & Co. Kumar also has experience with startups, serving as co-founder and head of product for both ResolutionTube and Jova.
—Novinium hired Wenzel Wu as the company’s senior design engineer. The Kent, Wash.-based underground cable rehabilitation company will use Wu’s skills to develop new products to extend the life of various utility cables.
“We are excited to welcome Wenzel to the growing engineering team,” said Novinium vice president of engineering Mark Newton. “Wenzel brings with him 12 years of experience in electromechanical design, modeling and schematic analysis. His expertise is a great resource as Novinium continues to expand our technology portfolio and dedication to innovative product development.”
Wu most recently served as a mechanical engineer designing motion control products for manufacturing including electromechanical actuators at Creative Motion Control. He also worked for Microsoft on camera modules.
—Marchex promoted Ziad Ismail to chief product officer. Ismail previously served as the senior vice president of product and engineering for the Seattle-based call advertising company.
“Under Ziad’s leadership, Marchex has recruited world-class product and engineering talent and shipped industry-first enterprise analytics products that have transformed the media performance of the world’s largest brands,” Marchex CEO Pete Christothoulou said. “I’m amazed by his passion to build high-quality products and his empathy for the challenges our customers face in today’s marketing ecosystem.”
In addition to his time at Marchex, Ismail has also served as a director of product management for Internet Explorer and director of product planning for Windows Phone and Mobile Services at Microsoft. He has been with Marchex since 2011.
—SCI Solutions appointed Maryanne Pace as senior vice president of client delivery. The company also hired Tammy Wood as a solution consultant for the company, which aims to connect health systems and community partners with specialized software.
“Maryanne and Tammy are exceptional new hires who will help power our revenue cycle and patient access management strategies,” said SCI Solutions CEO Joel French. “As former clients of ours, they not only understand the service and value SCI delivers to the market, but also the unique and respective needs of our clients; this will help to propel meaningful industry leadership and improve interactions our clients have with their patients.”
Pace previously worked in sales, marketing and executive-level positions in the healthcare industry. She also has consulting experience, founding and selling two revenue cycle consulting businesses. Wood has been working in patient access management for 20 years. She is a certified healthcare access manager and has expertise in process workflow enhancement, training, project management and system implementation at a range of health systems.
—Navigating Cancer appointed Bill Hughes as chief operating officer. Hughes will oversee development and execution of the company’s strategic programs. The Seattle-based patient engagement and care management software provider raised $20 million last year to help expand operations and add employees.
Hughes previously served as president at CapitalStream and continued to run the division once it was acquired by HCL in 2008. He has also served as the COO of game technology maker responDESIGN and executive vice president at Corillian.
