In one of two recent Microsoft-to-Amazon moves, Brian Schultz, who has worked on-and-off at Microsoft since 1999, is now working on Amazon Web Services.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Schultz is now Amazon’s director of worldwide corporate development. His focus is AWS corporate development in partnerships, investments, and acquisitions.
Amazon has made a string of acquisitions in the past year. GeekWire reported that the tech company spent $15 billion in acquisitions since the beginning of 2017. The company made 11 buys in the year, including blockbuster acquisitions like Whole Foods ($13.7 billion) and Ring ($1 billion).
Schultz was most recently the managing director of the strategic investments team at Microsoft. His team has helped fund multiple Microsoft partners, including Adaptive Biotechnologies, DocuSign, Uber, and Flipkart.
-Another Microsoft veteran, Ryan Gavin, has left for Amazon after 20 years at the Redmond-based tech company.
According to Axios, Gavin is now the head of artificial intelligence and machine learning on Amazon’s web services team.
At Microsoft, Gavin worked on a variety of recognizable projects. He was most recently general manager on the Microsoft Surface team, but he also worked previously on Bing, Cortana, Edge, and Internet Explorer.
–Juno Therapeutics chief commercial officer Bob Azelby is now the CEO, president and board director of Alder BioPharmaceuticals, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
The hire comes after previous Alder CEO and co-founder Randy Schatzman’s sudden departure in March, which led to speculation about a potential sale.
Alder is in the last stages of clinical trials as it seeks FDA approval for its lead migraine treatment, eptinezumab.
“We are thrilled to have Bob join Alder at this key stage in the company’s history,” said Alder interim CEO Paul Cleveland in a statement. “He is a seasoned leader who brings significant operational experience and a strong track record in both large and small biopharmaceutical environments, and his skills will be of great value as we progress our CGRP inhibitor, eptinezumab, towards approval and commercialization for migraine prevention.”
Azelby’s departure from Juno follows longtime CEO Hans Bishop’s exit in April, after the immunotherapy company was acquired by New Jersey-based biotech giant Celgene.
-Portland-based NurseGrid, a healthcare scheduling tech company, expanded its team by six new members. It announced Thursday that it had hired a chief technology officer, a board member and two vice presidents as well as promoted two internal vice presidents.
In a press release, CEO Joe Novello said, “We are adding incredible new talent and expertise to our already stellar team as we prepare to onboard more hospitals and add features for our mobile user base of over half a million nurses.”
NurseGrid completed a $5.7 million Series B funding round in January to further develop its nurse scheduling and staffing technology.
New chief technology officer Lorenzo Ciacci was most recently the CTO of Vacasa, the Portland-based vacation rental company.
Healthcare IT vet Pam Pure, who worked extensively in different roles at McKesson Provider Technologies, was added to the board.
The two new vice president hires are Eric Hall, as vice president of professional services and customer success, and Ward Sparacio, as vice president of sales. Hall, who has 20 years of experience in healthcare customer success teams, was the director of international clinical services and operations at Santa Barbara, Calif.-based InTouch Health. Sparacio was previously the vice president of sales and marketing at Seattle-based Magonolia Medical Technologies.
The internal promotions include new vice president of product Andrea Grimshaw, who has been a product manager at NurseGrid since 2017, and new vice president of people Jen McLean, who has been the senior director of operations since 2016.
–Puppet, the Portland-based DevOps startup, hired Lynley Kees as its new vice president of human resources.
Kees was most recently a senior director at Nike and has previously worked as the VP of human resources at Hilton.
Puppet has been busy in the past few months. In April, it laid off 20 people as it made a push into a changing software management market. It announced Puppet Discovery, signaling a shift in product strategy to an expanded DevOps focus.
And in June, the company acquired Portland-based data visualization startup Reflect to improve data visualization in Puppet’s products.
