— Elise Hebb left Seattle-based venture capital firm Maveron, where she was COO and partner, and is planning to launch a consulting firm next year. Hebb, who joined Maveron in 2017 after nearly a decade at fellow Seattle venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group, helped raise over $1 billion for the two firms.
“My time with Maveron has been some of the most rewarding of my career and the firm is doing all the right things to continue its journey as one of the top venture firms in the world, including the successful close of its seventh fund earlier this year,” Hebb told GeekWire. “I’m excited to help more firms (many here in the Northwest) with their investor relations and operations going forward.”
— Boeing named retired Admiral John M. Richardson to its board of directors. A 37-year Navy veteran, Richardson recently stepped down from his post as chief of naval operations.
Richardson will join Boeing’s Aerospace Safety Committee, which was formed following the fatal 737 Max crashes. When the committee was created last month, Boeing said it would seek out directors with safety-related experience going forward.
“I have been impressed by the board and management’s commitment to strengthening the safety culture at Boeing,” Richardson said in a statement. “Boeing is an outstanding company, and I have no doubt that it will take all the steps necessary to address recent challenges and continue making flying even safer.”
— Saykara, a Seattle startup that sells a virtual assistant for physicians, hired Dr. Graham Hughes as president. Hughes was most recently CEO of Sutherland Healthcare Solutions and previously served as chief medical information officer at GE Healthcare.
“Saykara is poised to revolutionize physician interactions with electronic health records using voice and artificial intelligence,” said Hughes. “It has seen tremendous customer success so far and is ready to scale and become the undisputed leader in this space. I’m looking forward to helping take the company to that next level.”
Harjinder Sandhu, the CEO and founder of Saykara, launched the company in 2015. Sakara raised a $5 million round in 2018.
— Chris Harder announced that he would resign from his role as director of Business Oregon, the state’s economic development organization.
— Microsoft’s Xbox corporate vice president, Mike Ybarra, left to join Blizzard Entertainment as executive vice president and general manager.
“We will work with all our energy to serve gamers with incredible content and experiences. I can’t wait to be part of this team,” Ybarra wrote on Twitter.
— Cryptocurrency ATM startup Coinme hired former Coinbase executive Antonio Alvarez as chief compliance officer. Alvarez was vice president of compliance for Coinbase and has held compliance-related roles at Western Union, Visa and American Express.
“Coinme is revolutionizing the future of digital payments and remittances through its massive lead in consumer adoption and geographical reach and its innovative approach to regulatory compliance,” Alvarez said in a statement. “I am very excited to have such an incredible opportunity to join this stellar team and to help bring easy access to cryptocurrencies to the global marketplace.”
Coinme recently raised $1.5 million to grow its ATM network, which lets users purchase cryptocurrencies with cash. It also has an ongoing partnership with Coinstar.
— Ray Carroll took a job as vice president of sales at Skilljar, which runs a platform that helps companies educate customers about their products. Carroll previously held sales leadership roles at Engagio and Marketo, marketing technology startups that were both co-founded by Engagio CEO Jon Miller.
“I was a customer [of Skilljar] at my previous company and witnessed the power and impact that customer training can have on product adoption and retention rates, firsthand. The market and demand for Skilljar is there and it’s time for business leaders to start paying as much attention to how they onboard, train, and make their customers successful, as they do acquiring new customers in the first place,” Carroll said in a statement.
Amazon veterans Sandi Lin and Jason Stewart launched Seattle-based Skilljar in 2013. The company has raised more than $20 million.
— Seattle biotech Aptevo Therapeutics’ chief medical officer, Scott Stromatt, is resigning from his role. The company said the move was a response to a “reduction in clinical trial activity” and that Stromatt would stay on as a consultant to oversee clinical trials for its drug APVO436.
— Doug Kennedy signed on as chief growth officer at Adaptiva, a Kirkland, Wash.-based provider of endpoint management and security solutions. Kennedy is a former Microsoft and NetSuite executive who most recently worked as vice president of business development and partner strategy at Oracle.
“Adaptiva has created this incredible, award-winning peer-to-peer technology that is being applied to some of the enterprise’s most pressing and difficult to solve issues,” Kennedy said in a statement. “I look forward to helping Adaptiva gain even broader mindshare and develop strategic relationships with the world’s most selective technology companies.”
