Lisa Conquergood has taken quite a journey in the startup world. She was the chief marketing officer of photo-editing service Picnik when the startup was bought by Google. She then joined Google, watched the company shut the service down and left to co-found a new-and-improved photo editing service, PicMonkey.
Conquergood left PicMonkey in 2016, and now she’s on to the next adventure: Leading marketing as the CMO of video creation startup Ripl.
Ripl’s app lets small business owners create visual content, both images and short videos, for social media marketing. The company has raised $7.5 million since it was founded in 2012.
“I find Ripl’s vision to empower small businesses incredibly inspiring,” Conquergood said in a statement. “Having co-founded a company, I know firsthand how much work goes into marketing and I’m excited to be a part of making it easier for other companies spread the word about what they have to offer. I’m honored that Paul and his team have asked me to come on board.”
— Rachel Gonzalez, a longtime technology and legal executive, is taking on a new role at coffee retail giant Starbucks. The company hired Gonzalez as an executive vice president, general counsel and secretary.
Gonzalez was most recently the chief administrative officer at airline technology company Sabre Technologies. She previously held executive positions at food and beverage giant Dean Foods and IT company Affiliated Computer Services.
“Starbucks is a world-renowned brand that has had a tremendous positive impact on the lives of many. It’s an honor to join the team,” Gonzalez said in a press release. “I’m excited to support the company’s continued growth and evolution for partners, customers and shareholders around the world.”
— Seattle Genetics, one of Seattle’s largest biotechnology companies, added biotech veteran Alpna Seth to its board of directors. Seth is currently the chief operating officer of infectious disease therapeutics company Vir Biotechnologies and formerly spent more than six years as an executive at multinational biotech company Biogen.
“Seattle Genetics is on the cusp of a significant inflection point in its transition into a global, multi-product oncology company,” Seth said. The company’s lead drug, Adcetris, uses antibody technology to treat a variety of blood cancers and it has a pipeline of other cancer treatments in the works that take aim at blood cancers as well as solid tumors.
The company also recently completed its acquisition of Seattle biotech Cascadian Therapeutics for $614 million.
— Cambia Grove, a healthcare startup hub in Seattle, added Dr. Bob Crittenden as its first executive in residence. Crittenden was most recently the senior health policy advisor to Washington Governor Jay Inslee.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Crittenden to the Cambia Grove,” Executive Director Maura Little said in a press release. “The breadth of his expertise—in both provider and payor systems, in both local and national initiatives—will be an incredible asset to our community members as they work to create innovative health care solutions.”
Crittenden has been a family physician for more than 28 years in addition to teaching medicine at the Universit of Washington and serving several advisory roles to state leaders. At Cambia Grove, he will help the organization develop parnterships and programming as well as offer his expertise to the community.
— Game infrastructure company FlowPlay promoted two executives into its C-suite: Former VP of mobile games Craig Robinson will now serve as chief revenue officer and former senior architect Scott Pultz will serve as chief architect.
Robinson, a former entrepreneur and RealNetworks executive, will now lead the company’s new revenue stream creation. Pultz will head its front-end stack.
“Both Craig and Scott have been invaluable members of the leadership team as the company has grown steadily over the past ten years, especially in their individual and collective contributions to our most recent corporate initiative to overhaul our entire platform,” FlowPlay CEO Derrick Morton said in a press release.
— Seattle startup Neu, which provides room cleaning for rental units, tapped Microsoft engineer Claudius Mbemba as the company’s first CTO.
Mbemba spent two years working in enterprise software at Microsoft, with a focus on bots, blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He also spent a stint as the CEO of Columbus, Ohio, app development studio app.kitchen. Mdemba majored in computer science at The Ohio State University, where he received a full ride academic scholarship and also played football as a defensive lineman after walking on to the prestigious program.
Neu was founded in 2016 and offers cleaning services for home sharing platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.
— The Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) Fund appointed Laura Flores Cantrell as its inaugural executive director. Cantrell is currently the health equity lead strategist for the Arcora Foundation, formerly the Washington Dental Service Foundation, and will take up the new position in April.
The CARE Fund was established by the Washington State legislature in 2015 with the goal of accelerating Washington’s research and treatment in cancer. It matches existing private and nonprofit funds with up to $10 million in state funds each year.
— Online jewelry retailer Blue Nile announced the addition of Katie Zimmerman as its new chief merchandising officer. Zimmerman’s addition is the fifth addition to the company’s C-suite since October. The company also welcomed a new CEO, former Target e-commerce chief Jason Goldberger, in July of last year.
