— Krish Srinivasan will become the new CFO for Remitly, the Seattle-based digital money transfer service, taking over for Andy Larson who will continue in another leadership position at the company. Over the last 20 years, Srinivasan has worked as a VP of Lyft, the CFO of Amazon India and Amazon Japan, and as a General Manager at Microsoft.
Remitly has been growing rapidly, reporting a 400 percent growth year-over-year in 2015. Last month, Remitly announced that its customers now transfer more than $1 billion annually through its mobile service. Since its founding five years ago, the company has raised $22.5 million from firms like Founders’ Co-op, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, Trilogy Equity Partners, and DFJ. It also raised a $12 million credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank in September 2015 that it will use to scale its service and expand into new markets in this coming year.
“Remitly is at the forefront of changing how money is transferred internationally, and the company’s mission to dramatically improve the cost, transparency and ease with which customers are able to do this is very near and dear to me,” Srinivasan said in a news release. “The team’s execution, in driving adoption and scale, has been impeccable, and I’m excited to help drive even more growth in the coming months and years.”
— Puppet Labs, a rapidly-growing Portland startup specializing in IT automation software, has hired two new executives, Simon Hayes and Jamie Hull. Hayes will join the company as the senior vice president of business and corporate development. Previously, Hayes worked at Citrix, creating partnerships with global technology companies like Cisco, Microsoft, SAP, IBM and Fujitsu.
“Puppet Labs’ leadership in IT automation has been enabled by the most robust partner ecosystem in the industry,” said Hayes in a statement. “I look forward to helping Puppet build its next phase of growth through strategic partnerships and by building a world-class ecosystem.”
Hull will join Puppet Labs as the vice president of product. In her previous role as vice president of mobile apps at Evernote, Hull led the development of two core mobile platforms. She has also worked at Comcast, UpMo, Blurb, and AOL. At Puppet Labs, Hull will lead the building, development, and shipping of the company’s software.
In the decade since its launch, Puppet Labs has attracted big clients like Twitter, Salesforce, and Disney, and has raised $86 million in total funding from investors that include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, True Ventures, Google Ventures, VMware and Cisco Systems. In May of last year, Puppet Labs announced plans to go public as soon as spring of this year, potentially making it the first company in Portland to IPO in 12 years.
—Jay Wampold is leaving Seattle-based Chef Software, where he worked as the VP of marketing, to take on an executive role at Amazon Web Services. Wampold previously was a partner at SS+K Agency and a senior marketing director at Isilon, and before that served as director of communications at RealNetworks.
—Alain Gentilhomme was named the CTO for Nintex, the Bellevue-based business automation company. Prior to joining Nintex, Gentilhomme was the Sr. VP of Engineering and Product Management at Parallels, a company focused on application visualization and technology management solutions. Gentilhomme has also worked in technology at Acronis and Microsoft.
“Alain Gentilhomme is a highly collaborative leader with exceptional technical credentials that align perfectly with the industries and line of business that Nintex serves,” said Nintex CEO John Burton in a statement. “Alain brings a wealth of experience from his decade at Microsoft and more recent senior roles at Software-as-a-Service companies (SaaS). His skills will ensure that Nintex is delivering the right technology — at the right time and place — to companies in all phases of digital transformation.”
— Greg Cooper has been appointed SVP of North American Sales for Pyramid Analytics, an enterprise business intelligence and data analytics company with U.S. operations in Bellevue. Prior to coming on board at Pyramid, Cooper worked for Microsoft in sales and marketing on accounts across North America.
In October 2015, Pyramid raised an additional $30 million in funding from Viola Private Equity and Sequoia Capital, which it has been using to expand its workforce, create stronger ties to partners, and to broaden its market in key areas. Pyramid also holds a strategic alliance with Microsoft that involves integration with Microsoft’s Power BI software, helping Pyramid to compete in the Seattle data analytics marketplace.
— Dr. David G. Armstrong will lead the newly-established Scientific Advisory Board for Sensoria Fitness, a Redmond-based company that designs wearable body sensing devices including smart clothes. Sensoria’s smart clothes have been used to track professional athletes, from soccer players to racecar drivers, to track their performance and competitive tactics.
A successful podiatric surgeon, Armstrong is also the youngest-ever recipient of the American Diabetes Associations’ (ADA) Roger E. Pecoraro Award—the highest award given in his field—and is the youngest-ever member to be elected into the Podiatric Medicine Hall of Fame. In his new leadership role for Sensoria’s Scientific Advisory Board, Armstrong will be in charge of the scientific validation of clinical applications of Sensoria’s technology.
“Textile sensing infused smart garments have the potential to be a game-changer in managing and measuring how we move through the world,” Armstrong said in a news release. “I’m excited and honored to be working alongside the Sensoria team, who are leaders in the field, as we head into this new frontier together.”
— The Allen Institute for Cell Science, the Seattle-based independent, non-profit medical research organization, announced the appointment of four new scientific directors who will lead teams of researchers in the study of the cell as an integrated system. They will begin their collaboration on a project called Animated Cell, a “multi-scale, spatiotemporal, animated model of how the cell executes its functions and what goes wrong in disease.”
Ruwanthi (Ru) Gunawardane will direct the stem cells and gene editing team. Gunawardane comes from Amgen, where she worked on assay development.
Graham Johnson will lead the animated cell project to compile experimental and imaging data into interactive models of the cell. Johnson was previously at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at UCSF, where he worked on molecular models of cells.
Susanne Rafelski will be the director of assay development, working to develop and refine the methods to examine and image cells. She comes from UC Irvine’s Department of Developmental and Cell Biology, where she studied cell organization and mitochondrial networks.
Winfried Wiegrabe will lead microscopy and image analysis, using microsopic techniques to capture stills and movies of living cells. Prior to the Allen Institute, Wiegrabe was the Head of the Microscopy Center at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.
— Kurt Armbruster has been named COO of Planetary Power, a Redmond-based company producing hybrid generators for off-grid telecom in the developing world. Armbruster will remain President of Alta Solution Group, a management consulting company.
Previously, Armbruster worked at as the Vice President at Crane Aerospace and as COO in several other Seattle-based companies focusing on aerospace, consumer electronics and global health.
Planetary Power is best known for its HyGen hybrid generator that combines diesel with lithium ion batteries and solar energy, which the company claims will reduce diesel use by 60-80 percent. HyGen was a nominee for the GeekWire’s 2014 Innovation of the Year. Planetary Power is the sister company of Planetary Resources, the Bellevue-based asteroid mining startup and shares its co-founder, aerospace engineer and commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson.
“With Kurt’s operational expertise, Planetary Power has the leadership in place to deliver a superior product to market that will securely deliver power and provide unmatched fuel efficiency, reduced cost, increased reliability and a positive environmental impact,” President and CEO Joe Landon said in a statement. “Kurt’s addition to our executive team positions us for rapid growth and a successful product launch.
