Chad Cohen
Chad Cohen

— Pet insurance company Trupanion announced changes to its board of directors on Friday, as Adaptive Biotechnologies CFO Chad Cohen was appointed to the board. He takes over for Peter Beaumont, a longtime veterinary industry expert who stepped down after five years on the board.

Cohen is well known in the Seattle tech scene, having served as the CFO of Zillow for nine of the company’s most formative years, including its 2011 IPO. He left that company earlier this year for the same position at Adaptive, a heavily funded startup working on technologies in the sequencing of T-cell and B-cell receptors in the immune system.

He joins Trupanion after what has been a rough year in the public spotlight. The company went public in 2014, but stumbled almost immediately as its stock dropped 53 percent by the end of the year. Things have bounced back a little since then, but the stock is still priced well below its IPO at $8.20.

“There is a massive opportunity that exists in providing medical insurance for cats and dogs,” Cohen said in a press release, “and I look forward to helping (Trupanion CEO Darryl Rawlings) and his team take advantage of that opportunity while contributing my learnings as a growth company CFO at the Board level.”

McGill
McGill

— Legal advice startup Avvo has named HR bigwig Kelly McGill its new Chief People Officer.

McGill has been in the talent-war trenches for more than a decade, serving as the director of human resources at T-Mobile, director of talent acquisition at Microsoft, vice president of talent at Expedia and most recently the vice president of talent management at Lynda.com, which is owned by LinkedIn.

In her new role, McGill will report directly to Avvo CEO Mark Britton and will be responsible for developing and executing on Avvo’s “people strategy” as the company keeps growing.

“Great talent is the heart of great companies,” Britton said in a press release announcing McGill’s appointment. “Kelly’s world-class background in talent management will help us build upon our culture of fearlessness and collaboration as we continue to grow.”

Purrier
Purrier

— IT automation company Automic has named cloud visionary John Purrier its new chief technology officer.

Purrier is best known for his work founding OpenStack, the widely adopted open source cloud computing platform. Most recently, Purrier served as the CTO of CenturyLink’s cloud technology R&D group. Previously, he was vice president of cloud development at CenturyLink, vice president of cloud infrastructure at HP and director of product development at Rackspace.

Automic maintains a U.S. headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. and a European headquarters in Austria. The company says it has over 2,600 customers, including Bosch, Netflix, eBay, AMC Theatres, ExxonMobil and General Electric.

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