Tableau, the Seattle maker of data visualization software, has quietly hired away a senior Microsoft marketing executive to lead product marketing at the company.
Mark Jewett joined Tableau as its VP of product marketing in January, according to his LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. Jewett spent the past sixteen years in marketing and strategy roles at Microsoft, most recently spending five years as the senior director of Azure Hybrid Cloud Marketing.
“We’re very excited to have Mark join the Tableau team,” Tableau Chief Marketing Officer Elissa Fink said in a statement to GeekWire. “He’s helping us continue to broaden our platform’s appeal to a broader set of audiences, including enterprises, IT and business analysts everywhere. Mark brings a wealth of experience in enterprise and cloud and didn’t wait a week before he was already demoing our products.”
His addition comes as Tableau repositions its strategy to focus on selling its data visualization software as a subscription service. Jewett’s extensive product marketing experience will certainly be a boon to that effort.
In May, Tableau scored another hire when former Concur CTO Mark Nelson joined the company as the EVP of product development.
— RealNetworks announced an expansion of its management team with four new executives.
Ben Rotholtz, who was most recently the chief marketing officer at Syntonic, will now serve as RealNetworks VP of marketing. Rotholtz previously held executive positions at music company Rhapsody, PopCap Games and — in the early 2000s — served as RealNetworks GM of business affairs.
John McQueen joins the company as VP of business development. He is also a former RealNetworks exec, having spent two years as the VP of business development and cloud services. More recently, he held leadership positions at Neustar and Microsoft.
RealNetworks is new ground for Louis Grosskopf, who will serve as VP and general manager of messaging and joins the company from SunGuard, where he was the general manager of software.
Elaine Eng, who was formerly the general manager of global tax at RealNetworks, was promoted to VP of finance.
The Seattle-based digital media software company launched a new product called Kontxt, focused on messaging, in November as the company continues to expand on its divisions of consumer media, mobile services and games.
“With the rapid evolution in A2P messaging the mobile industry is increasingly challenged by complex business opportunities, and this is an incredibly exciting time to join the company,” Grosskopf said in a press release. “Kontxt, RealNetworks’ new messaging platform has incorporated AI and machine learning to streamline the messaging experience for subscribers and help the mobile industry capture greenfield opportunities.”
— Uber‘s chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, has left the company to become the CMO of entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, according to a report by Recode.
Saint John had been with the company for just over a year and her departure leaves yet another hole in its high-level leadership. Uber was already searching for a chief financial officer, a chief marketing officer and a head of product.
The company’s current CEO and COO, Dara Khosrowshahi and Barney Harford, both have strong ties to Seattle and travel company Expedia. Khosrowshahi served as Expedia’s CEO for twelve years before joining the ride-hailing company and hiring Diller as his right-hand man, leading to speculation that Seattle executives and even Expedia executives would be prime recruits for new positions at Uber.
[Editor’s Note: Reference to Harford corrected since publication]
GeekWire recently learned that Nikki Krishnamurthy, Expedia’s chief people officer, is leaving the company.
— The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center named David Browdy as its new chief financial officer. Browdy is currently the CFO at University of Utah Health and an associate VP for finance at the University of Utah.
Randy Main, the current CFO of Fred Hutch, announced that he would be retiring after 30 years in May. Main’s last day is June 30, and Browdy’s first day is August 1.
Browdy led a $500 million campus transformation project at the University of Utah, alongside managing a budget of $3.6 billion in the past year.
“We are on the cusp of phenomenal advances in science and medicine precisely at a time when demographic and technological changes are creating profound economic pressures in the biomedical research and overall health care environment,” Browdy said in a press release. “I’m looking forward to thinking creatively about how we can realize the promise of the work here at Fred Hutch and drive toward our bold goals in ways that can shape — and not just respond to — changes in our operating environment.”
— Moovel North America, a Portland-based transportation tech company owned by the same parent as car2go, added tech executive Reno Marioni as its new chief product officer.
“I have been working in mobility for close to a decade, developing solutions for a variety of modes, including walking, biking, public transportation, mapping, driving, and autonomous vehicles,” Marioni said in a press release. “With the transportation industry and smart cities undergoing such a major evolution, I knew that I wanted to have an integral role in creating products to make the transition as easy as possible for consumers. I was immediately drawn to moovel’s mission and look forward to continuing to develop innovative apps, services and technologies to help consumers travel around cities easily, affordably and efficiently.”
Marioni was most recently the senior director of BMW’s connected car digital products and services and has previously founded and led two companies. He also spent several years directing products for Nokia.
— Cryptogogue, the Seattle-based startup that’s developing the blockchain-powered collectible card game Volition, added three games industry veterans to its advisory board: Gen Con president David Hoppe, Lingvist CFO Scott Dodson and former product planner at Microsoft Game Studios Jon Kimmich.
The additions to the board are in preparation for a late 2018 launch, according to a press release.
“We’re looking to create a brand-new publishing model,” said Patrick Meehan, co-founder and CEO of Cryptogogue. “Our advisors have decades of experience in the trenches of this very specialized industry.”
Hoppe brings to the company more than 20 years of experience in the Industry. He has previously worked at GameHouse and Microsoft, notably as the director of strategic partnerships on the Xbox Live. Dodson is the current CFO of Lingvist, and has been a mentor at TechStars since 2010. He has also worked at multiple game companies from Tenacious Games to Gamesys and lectured on game design at DigiPen Institute of Technology. Kimmich, who is the current CEO of Software Illuminati, has advised game developers like Fat Rascal Games and Zipline Games in addition to his past work at Microsoft.
