Seattle venture capital investor and business leader Adriane Brown last week joined the board of directors for Axon, a company that develops body cameras, tasers, and other law enforcement technologies.
Brown is a venture partner for the Seattle VC upstart Flying Fish Partners and sits on the board of directors for eBay and the Washington Research Foundation. She also serves at the board chair for Seattle’s Pacific Science Center.
“I am drawn to companies with bold ideas and that is why I’m excited to sit on Axon’s board,” Brown said in a statement. “I’m passionate about contributing leadership and business guidance particularly to companies that are focused on the betterment of society. Axon’s mission to protect life and [make] obsolete the bullet is a bold one and I am thrilled to be a part of it.”
Brown previously served as president and COO of Intellectual Ventures, and president of Honeywell Transportation Systems.
Axon offered Brown the position after a six-month search and her appointment became effective May 30. She will join Axon as its eighth board director and hold a minimum of 8,000 shares in the company. Brown will join Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, another fixture in the Seattle tech community, on the board.
Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., Axon maintains a significant engineering presence in Seattle. The company says its mission is to help de-escalate police use of force by providing transparency, technologies and tools that can replace deadly weapons.
Brown joins the board at a moment when the role of technology in law enforcement and police use of force is the subject of fierce debate. Over the past week, protesters fighting police aggression have held demonstrations across the country in the wake of the death of a Minneapolis man, George Floyd, at the hands of white police officers.
In addition to the board of directors, Axon consults an independent artificial intelligence ethics committee. The Axon AI and Policing Technology Ethics Board advised against the use of facial recognition technology in the company’s products in 2019. Axon adopted the policy, at least until the technology is better regulated.
