— LegUp co-founder and CEO Jessica Eggert has joined the Female Founders Alliance’s board of advisors. Her startup, inspired by the challenges she faced as a working mom, is creating a marketplace to help other working parents find and enroll in childcare. Eggert previously was head of culture and innovation at The Riveter.
“I’m so excited to have Jessica on board,” said Leslie Feinzaig, founder and CEO of FFA. “With her expertise in people ops and community building, and as a founder and FFA member herself, she will be instrumental in helping us grow the FFA community while simultaneously building a culture where all founders can feel seen, supported, successful and safe.”
— RealNetworks announced Tim Wan, CFO at Asana, and longtime technology executive Erik Prusch have joined the company’s board of directors.
For Wan, this is a return to RealNetworks, where he spent 15 years, including three as chief financial officer. Prusch has served as CEO for companies including Clearwire, NetMotion Wireless and most recently Outerwall.
Founded in 1994, RealNetworks was an early pioneer of streaming media. The publicly-traded company has launched a new generation of products including SAFR, a facial recognition technology for live video.
— Logixboard announced Eric Dillon as the new chief technology officer for the Techstars grad, which is building a customer engagement platform for the freight forwarding industry. The startup relocated to Seattle from Florida for the Techstars program and has raised $4.5 million to date.
“Eric brings a combination of building scalable systems and teams that leverage data and deep integrations at top companies like Boeing and Cisco and startups like LiveStories,” said Julian Alvarez, Logixboard’s CEO.
— Avi Zimak, publisher of New York magazine, was named the chief revenue and strategy officer at Seattle-based media company Maven, where he will lead the efforts to turn traditional publications on Maven’s platform into digital-focused businesses. Zimak will be based in New York.
“Maven has created a single technology, dual-revenue and distribution platform for consumers, advertisers and premium publishers to come together during the most competitive media landscape our industry has ever faced,” Zimak said in a statement.
Former Maven CRO Andrew Kraft will remain with the company, focusing on integrating two recent additions: Sports Illustrated and TheStreet. Since purchasing the rights to publish Sports Illustrated, Maven has faced controversy after layoffs and leadership changes.
— SightLife, a nonprofit global health organization dedicated to eliminating corneal blindness, hired Paul LaBarre as senior vice president of access and innovation and Amy Pearson-Wales as vice president of marketing and communications.
As part of the SightLife executive team, LaBarre will lead a new business unit focused on cornea health technology in low- and middle-income countries. LaBarre previously held roles with UNICEF, PATH and was a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy.
Pearson-Wales comes to SightLift from Artefact and previously held communication roles at Weber Shandwick and PATH.
— Christine Borrmann has been promoted to vice president of creative and professional services at Seattle startup Tagboard, currently #120 on the GeekWire 200.
“Three years ago Christine left her local television career at KIRO7, in a risky move to join our tech startup, Tagboard, as a client success manager,” said Nathan Peterson, chief revenue officer. “Her expertise has helped shape our product innovation and driven tangible results for many of the best global brands in media and entertainment.”
— Veteran business leader Ken Myer was named the new faculty director for the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship program at the University of Washington Foster School of Business. Myer, who will continue to specialize in interim executive leadership, has been a lecturer at the UW since 2015. In this part-time role, Myer will guide aspects of the three-year-old program including curriculum, new offerings and faculty recruitment.
“Teaching at Foster has been one of the most personally fulfilling experiences of my professional life,” Myer said on the UW Foster blog. “The students in the MS in Entrepreneurship program are bright, hungry for business knowledge, and passionate about bringing their ideas to life.”
Myer is also a trustee for the Health Alliance for Technology, also known as ALLtech, the health benefits partner for GeekWire’s membership program. He was previously head of the Washington Technology Industry Association.
