Perry Mulligan. (MicroVision Photo)

MicroVision, the Redmond, Wash.,-based maker of laser projection technology, is under new leadership.

The company announced that longtime technology executive Perry Mulligan is taking over the CEO role, replacing former CEO Alexander Tokman.

Tokman said in a press release that he is stepping down to spend more time with his family. He will remain the company’s president until the end of the year to assist with the transition.

Mulligan has been a director at Microvision since 2010. He formerly served as SVP of operations at network infrastructure companies Emulex and QLogic and spent three years as the chief product officer at electronics manufacturer Solectron.

In a statement, Mulligan said he is looking forward to finding new applications for MicroVision’s laser scanning technology, which has applications including projection. It was licensed by Sony in 2014 for a miniature, auto-focusing projector.

“One of the things that made a big impression on me as I talked to employees last week is the enthusiasm and optimism for the opportunities to apply our PicoP scanning technology to the mobility, IoT, and LiDAR markets and the pride in the developments this team is making to the platform to align to those opportunities,” Mulligan said.

Brett Thompson. (Convoy Photo)

— On-demand trucking startup Convoy announced that former Tableau VP Brett Thompson has joined the company as its chief human resources officer.

Thompson was Tableau’s VP of human resources for six years and formerly served the same role at United Online and Classmates.com.

He will now serve as Convoy’s first human relations chief since it was founded in 2015. The company has been growing quickly and has raised a total of $80 million from the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and many more.

“The Convoy team, and their mission to improve the lives of their customers had an immediate impact on me from the moment I first met [Convoy co-founders] Dan and Grant,” Thompson told GeekWire in an emailed statement. “I saw an amazing opportunity to be part of a very special Seattle company as it grows into something that can help evolve a huge market to the benefit of literally everyone.”

Ken Cheney. (Chef Photo)

— Former Chef executive Ken Cheney is joining Seattle cloud data startup Qumulo, GeekWire has confirmed.

GeekWire first reported Cheney’s departure from Chef and likely move to Qumulo in early November. Qumulo will announce next week that Cheney will be its new VP of business development, leading and organizing the company’s business development strategy as it grows.

Cheney held several executive roles at Chef during his four years at the company, most recently its chief revenue officer.

David Pearlman. (Cyrus Biotechnology Photo)

Cyrus Biotechnology, a startup developing protein modeling technology for drug discovery, announced the addition of David Pearlman as a senior fellow and director of customer experience.

Pearlman has a strong history in the field: He has served as an executive and lead researcher in computational chemistry for more than 30 years. He most recently led the development of a biologics software platform for scientific tech company Schrödinger.

At Cyrus, he will head a customer experience team that works with the company’s clients on the scientific application of its technology.

“The ability of computational chemistry to make significant contributions to molecular discovery has grown tremendously over my career,” Pearlman said in a press release. “We’re now at a point where understanding, methods and computational resources are having real, measurable impact on new drug discovery.”

Patrick Ross. (PitchBook Photo)

PitchBook announced the addition of Patrick Ross as the company’s new director of finance and accounting.

Ross joins the company from telematics software provider Zonar Systems, where he was the senior director of finance. He previously spent eight years in finance and merger and acquisitions at global professional services firm Ernst & Young.

At PitchBook, Ross will oversee the company’s financial policies, procedures, controls and reporting systems. PitchBook is a Seattle-based venture capital, private equity and merger and acquisition database that was acquired by Morningstar in 2016.

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