—Microsoft tapped Jeff Teper to lead the company’s corporate strategy group. The promotion occurred last month, with Teper previously serving as a vice president in the Office group. Teper — who will report to CFO Amy Hood in the new role — was responsible for helping to bring current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to the company in the early 1990s.
Teper is a former GeekWire “Geek of the Week,” having previously been on the team that helped create SharePoint. He said at the time that the coolest thing about his job was “working with smart people at Microsoft on software that helps a billion people.”
—WhitePages named Kevin Flaherty to the position of chief marketing officer, a tech veteran who previously served as vice president of marketing at Ritani and general manager of Clearwire’s CLEAR.com business. Flaherty also worked in marketing roles at Wetpaint, Precor and Amazon.com.
“WhitePages has grown rapidly over the past year, and bringing in a seasoned marketing executive with a solid skill set like Kevin’s is a great asset to us,” said WhitePages CEO Alex Algard in a release. “Kevin’s expertise will drive continued growth of WhitePages’ consumer products, and for our emerging B2B division, WhitePages PRO, which is quickly expanding its presence in areas such as identity verification, payments authorization, and CRM.”
—Brad Lovering, the former chief development architect at Splunk, has left the company to serve as vice president of engineering at Seattle enterprise security startup SignalSense. Xconomy reports on the move, noting that Lovering was so coveted by Splunk that his hiring by the company in 2011 led to a creation of a branch office in Seattle.
Prior to Splunk, Lovering served as a Microsoft Technical Fellow, working at the company since the late 1980s. Lovering also is a former GeekWire “Geek of the Week,” telling us in 2013 that he loves writing programs.
“I love working with teams of people to make programs. I love building things that people love to use and I love building things that I can be proud of. I am fortunate to have a supportive and rewarding family life. Those are the things that are important to me,” he said.
—Portland mobile startup Urban Airship has named Mike Temple as chief financial officer, responsible for accounting, operations and finance at the fast-growing company. Temple is the former president of Plus Point, a CFO consulting company, and before that served as CEO of Sonivate Medical.
“Urban Airship leads the worldwide market for mobile engagement, which industry analysts peg as a $32.4B market by 2018, and I’m thrilled to take a seat at the helm of this tidal wave of mobile innovation,” said Temple. Urban Airship raised $25 million in venture funding in early 2013.
—Lighthouse eDiscovery has named Jason Velasco as director of consulting, helping to expand the company’s consulting business. Velasco is a former principal analyst for eDJ Group.
—Tango Card of Seattle has named Chek Lim as CTO, joining the cloud-based rewards company from Globys where he served as senior vice president of engineering. Before that, he led Motricity’s R&D team, and worked at InfoSpace and Go2Net. Tango Card, which describes its technology as rewards-as-a-service, closed a $3.3 million funding round earlier this year.
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