— Expedia Group appointed Equifax President of Global Consumer Solutions Beverly Anderson as its newest board member.
Prior to Equifax, Anderson was executive vice president of cards and retails services at Wells Fargo. She also held executive roles at American Express and Fleet Credit Card Services.
— Maria Karaivanova departed Madrona Venture Group, where she was a principal, to join Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence spinout WhyLabs as a co-founder and COO.
The Seattle startup came out of stealth mode last week and announced a $4 million investment round, which included participation from Madrona. Karaivanova helped lead Madrona’s investment.
— Seattle biotech startup Silverback Therapeutics promoted Valerie Odegard to president and Naomi Hunder to chief medical officer.
Odegard joined the company in 2016 as chief scientific officer. She was previously vice president of research at Juno Therapeutics, which was acquired by Celgene in 2018.
Hunder joined Silverback Therapeutics at the beginning of 2019 and was most recently senior vice president of clinical research and development. She previously led clinical development at Acerta Pharma B.V. and Seattle Genetics.
The company announced the promotions last week along with a $85 million Series C round.
— F5 Networks appointed Elizabeth Buse to its board of directors. Buse previously served as co-CEO and CEO of Monitise, a global mobile banking and payments company, from 2014 to 2015.
Prior to that, she was a longtime leader at Visa, retiring from the company in 2014 as EVP of global services. Buse’s appointment expands F5’s board to 12 members and comes after the company boosted revenue in its most recent fiscal quarter.
— Former Rover and Cheezburger CTO Scott Porad is now vice president of engineering at Seattle virtual healthcare startup 98point6. Porad spent seven years leading engineering at Rover, joining the pet care startup two years after its founding. He was also a senior director of IT operations at Bellevue, Wash.-based drugstore.com, which was acquired by Walgreens in 2011 for $429 million.
— Nick Hughes, CEO of Founders Live, a social network that started as a weekly Seattle startup gathering and turned into a global entrepreneurial community, is stepping down as the local leader in Seattle. Founders Live launched as Feature Friday in 2014. In an email to the Seattle Founders Live community, Hughes said the change comes as he focuses on “growing the Founders Live brand globally.”
— Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Seattle startup Syndio and co-founder of Smartsheet, has been selected as a 2020-21 fellow for the Emerson Collective’s Dial Fellowship.
Emerson Collective is a social change organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Launched in 2019, the Dial Fellowship is an invitation-only application and provides participants with communication tools, resources and a network to expand the reach of their work.
Founded in 2016, Syndio creates HR technology that helps companies maintain equal pay and eliminate disparities. The company in May announced a $7.5 million funding round, which included Emerson Collective as an investor.
— Cambia Health Solutions, the parent company of Seattle-based Regence BlueShield, appointed Marion Couch as senior vice president and chief medical officer. She was most recently a senior medical advisor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Based in Washington D.C., Couch is a head and neck surgeon and has an MBA from Duke University.
— E-commerce executive Kerry Cooper joined the board of Los Angeles-based furniture rental startup Fernish. Cooper is the former president and COO of sustainable shoe company Rothy’s and previously served as CMO of ModCloth and Walmart.com.
Led by veterans of Amazon, Fernish raised $15 million earlier this year and counts Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke and Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff among its investors.
— T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced the mobile carrier’s new 14-member external diversity and inclusion council. The council follows up on a memorandum of understanding T-Mobile signed with civil rights group in October to expand its national diversity initiatives.
— Seattle-area cloud governance startup CoreStack announced Abidali Neemuchwala as strategic advisor. Neemuchwala is former CEO of Wipro, a global IT services company. He’s currently a venture partner at Dallas Venture Partners. Prior to Wipro, he was an executive at Tata Consulting Services, a branch of the India-based multinational business group.
CoreStack raised $8.5 million earlier this year and counts Dallas Venture Partners among its investors.
— Lockstep, a Seattle accounting software startup founded 2019, named Ashley Raiteri as its vice president of engineering. Lockstep offers a technology platform for accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) teams.
Raiteri was most recently CTO of Polish IT services company makeitright. He was previously a principal engineer at Nordstrom, vice president of engineering for product development at Avvo and led engineering at Berlin-based startup AirHelp.
— Snohomish, Wash.-based cybersecurity startup Cyemptive Technologies named Lynn McLean as senior vice president of sales. McLean was most recently vice president at 3D Systems Corporation and previously held executive sales roles at Hitachi and Hewlett Packard.
Founded by a former NSA and Microsoft executives, last year Cyemptive raised $3.5 million and has acquired IT consulting service companies Adaptive Technology Group and Interpreting Technology.
— Female Founders Alliance CEO Leslie Feinzaig joined the board of the Girls Scouts of Western Washington. She also currently serves on the board of the Washington Technology Industry Association and is a Techstars mentor.
In a post on LinkedIn, Feinzaig said, “this is an organization whose mission I deeply believe in, whose work is more important than ever, and whose programs bring me and thousands of our girls (of all ages!) so much joy.”
— Scientist Brian O’Neill has been named the director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a partnership between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. O’Neill is currently a professor and director of research at the University of Denver. His appointment begins in October.
