Avalara, Seattle-based makers of tax automation software, announced Monday that it has added another big name to its leadership team: Amazon and Walmart vet Sujoy Paul, who joins the company as its VP of product.
Paul was formerly a senior program director at Walmart, leading global tax data requirements across the company’s many sales channels and product vision on tax-related sales products. He previously spent four years at Amazon leading tax technology teams in both Amazon Marketplace and corporate tax.
“My career started in Wall Street trading desks of DB and Lehman writing low latency software, starting way back during the first dot com boom. I was always attracted to areas where technology helped make financial processes faster and more transparent,” Paul told GeekWire via email.
“During my tenure at PwC, Amazon and now Walmart I have really homed in on the ‘tax’ aspect of everyday transactions we make. Big brick and mortar, as well as ecommerce retailers, all have the same issue – how to make the tax collection process smooth and transparent,” he said.
“I looked at the opportunity at Avalara as an amazing platform for me to be able to do this in a very large scale affecting almost every small to mid-size business across the globe by utilizing the power of cloud computing, blockchain technologies, Bayesian pattern matching and pretty much every cutting-edge platform there is. This is truly a super exciting role for me.”
Paul said he’s excited to take on new challenges as Avalara works to integrate its international offerings and also take on technology and changes in the tax world.
“One particular area of interest is the rise of digital compliance. Similar to trends in digital commerce, compliance in all its forms is using technology as a central tool for reporting, enforcement, and maintenance. This is something of personal interest and certainly an area where Avalara is focused,” he said.
— Global health nonprofit PATH announced Monday that Dr. Praveen Raja has joined the organization as its first VP of technology development and introduction. Raja will split his time between PATH’s Seattle headquarters and its San Francisco office.
Raja has a long history in digital health, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, most recently working on innovation in medical technologies at international biopharmaceutical company Amgen. He previously served as the VP in charge of global medical science and solutions at Proteus Digital Health and has formerly held positions at Johnson & Johnson and Kaiser Permanente.
At PATH, he will lead the medical devices and tools, diagnostics, and global innovation hub teams, which leverage technology to improve health for underserved communities around the globe.
“Throughout my career I’ve looked for ways that emerging technologies can be put to use in practice and truly benefit patients, providers, and health systems,” Raja said in a press release. “When developed and deployed in a thoughtful way, innovations like digital health can have a profound transformational impact on health care in communities that face a wide variety of challenges. PATH has been tackling these challenges for decades, and I couldn’t be more excited to join the team and help take this vital work forward.”
— Entrepreneur and longtime tech executive Kevin Nakao has joined money transfer startup Remitly as the company’s VP of marketing, GeekWire has learned.
Nakao joins the company after two years as the head of marketing at Seattle startup TINYpulse. He formerly held executive positions at WhitePages and RealNetworks and served as CEO of employee recognition software company MeritShare.
“Kevin’s marketing instincts, extensive startup experience, and awesome culture fit make us incredibly honored to welcome him to Team Remitly,” Remitly CEO and Co-Founder Matt Oppenheimer told GeekWire via email.
“I was looking for a high-growth company with an exceptional team, product, and mission. I found that and more at Remitly. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to help grow a global brand in a multi-cultural market where our technology and data science is driving greater access, affordability & security,” Nakao said in an email.
— Nick Kypreos — formerly the principal machine learning scientist at AI-fueled marketing tools company Conversica — has left the company, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Kyperos joined Conversica in March, shortly before the San Francisco-based company opened its Seattle engineering office. He left in June, according to his LinkedIn, and formerly held senior software engineering positions at Apple, OfferUp and Socrata.
Conversica did not respond to a request for comment on his departure, and Kypreos couldn’t be reached for comment.
Kypreos is active in Seattle’s tech world as an advisor and as the co-organizer of the Seattle Scalability and Distributed Systems Meetup group. His LinkedIn does not list a new full-time position.
— LiveStories, a Seattle-based startup that just raised $10 million for its data management platform, announced the addition of two new executives: former Turi and F5 employee Jennifer Bolton will serve as the company’s head of marketing, and former Qumulo exec Jeff Cobb will serve as VP of product.
Bolton most recently served as the senior director of digital marketing at machine learning startup Turi, which was acquired by Apple for $200 million last year. She formerly held positions in marketing leadership at Smartsheet and F5 Networks and will now lead LiveStories’ marketing efforts.
Cobb joins LiveStories after serving more than four years as Qumulo’s VP of product management. He was previously the Chief Scientist at Wily Technology and transitioned with the company when it was acquired by IT company CA Technologies.
LiveStories lets users manage, analyze and present data in one place. Many of its customers are government agencies and organizations looking to make public data easier to use and access.
— Winshuttle, the fast-growing Bothell, Wash.-based SAP data management company, announced two changes to its leadership team: former director of global marketing Mary Lee was promoted to VP of Marketing, and former Kymeta and Intel employee Beth Turtle joins the company as its new director of product management for foundation and application data management.
Lee joined Winshuttle in 2013. Before that, she spent two years as the senior manager of eHealth and consumer web experience at Providence Health and Services. Before Providence, she spent a decade as the senior e-marketing manager of electronics test tools company Fluke Networks.
“Mary has been an integral part of our leadership team for the past several years as Director of Global Marketing,” Winshuttle CEO John Pierson said in a press release. “Her consistency in exceptional leadership, contributions across departments, and willingness to do whatever it takes have led to this promotion, and we’re excited for the vision, energy and experience she brings to lead our global marketing efforts.”
Turtle joins the company from Kymeta, a startup spun out of Bellevue, Wash.,-based Intellectual Ventures that’s developing antenna systems for automated vehicles. She served as the startup’s director of product management and previously worked as a senior product manager at Intel.
“Beth is an exceptional leader in product strategy,” Winshuttle VP of product management Kevin Goulet said in the release. “Her diverse background and extensive experience will help us accelerate our goals, and deliver an ADM platform our customers can use to empower business teams to get data right.”
— Biotech company Adaptive Biotechnologies announced two new leadership additions. Gene DeFelice joins Adaptive’s executive board as its general counsel and Dr. Alexandra Snyder was appointed the translational medicine lead for Adaptive Research.
DeFelice comes to Adaptive with over 30 years of legal experience, 20 in the medical field. He has served as the general counsel at several public health and technology companies, including international diagnostics developer Roche Diagnostics.
He joins the company as it approaches its first submission to the FDA, a long regulatory process.
“Gene has an extensive background across healthcare and other industries in legal and strategic operations that will raise Adaptive’s capabilities to the next level,” Adaptive Co-Founder and CEO Chad Robins said in a press release. “As we near our first FDA submission and evaluate critical partnering opportunities for Adaptive Therapeutics, the depth of Gene’s expertise will be immediately applicable to these key inflection points for the company.”
Snyder joins Adaptive from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Center, where she researched the immunotherapy techniques that use the body’s immune system to fight cancer.
Immunotherapy is one of the fields that uses Adaptive’s immunosequencing platform, which identifies immune cells in samples.
“Alex has been a pleasure to work with over the years and it comes as no surprise that the feedback we have received at Adaptive upon her arrival has been fantastic,” Adaptive Co-Founder and Head of Innovation Dr. Harlan Robins said in the release. “Alex’s commitment to translating immune profiling data into clinical practice is aligned with Adaptive’s goal of developing a measure of a patient’s immune agility to guide clinical decision-making.”
— IT services provider StrataCore announced two new faces to its leadership: Ed Kimm joins the company as its VP of cloud solutions and Jeremy Jones will serve as the company’s director of strategic alliances.
Kimm joins the company from cloud service provider Wowrack, where he spent ten years as a partner and chief revenue officer. He previously served as the director of sales for Compass Communications and joined FiberCloud Inc. as a sales expert when it acquired the company in 2004.
At StrataCore, Kimm’s responsibilities include consulting on solution development for cloud and security services and building relationships with referral partners and resellers.
Jones joins the company from business communications provider MegaPath, where he was the SVP of sales. He previously led sales at startups Broadvox and Frontier Communications and at StrataCore will lead indirect channel sales.
“Demand for IT brokers is growing quickly as companies seek experts like StrataCore to help them quickly and competitively source providers of complex infrastructure services,” StrataCore CEO Aaron Loehr said in a press release. “We are thrilled to have Ed and Jeremy on board. Their wealth of industry knowledge and talent will help our network of sub-agents, referral partners, and providers meet this market demand and grow their business with StrataCore.”
