— Microsoft named former GE executive Tom McGuinness corporate vice president of healthcare. At GE, McGuinness was president and CEO of GE Healthcare Imaging which offers imaging technologies, analytics and software.
Today I’m honored to share the news that Tom McGuinness will be joining the Worldwide Industry team as our new Corporate Vice President of Global Healthcare. We’re eager to see the impact he makes as he comes into the role. Welcome to @Microsoft, Tom! https://t.co/l0qeFIfnFG pic.twitter.com/bpgIjVgjUm
— Deb Cupp (@Deb_Cupp) April 21, 2020
He was previously CEO of PatientPoint, a patient engagement solution, general manager at healthcare solutions company Medtronic and a partner at McKinsey and Company. He will be based in Chicago.
“Microsoft is strongly positioned to enable so much of what the healthcare industry needs – now more than ever,” said McGuiness in a LinkedIn article announcing his addition. He added that “Microsoft is taking on many of healthcare’s greatest challenges – including the current COVID-19 crisis – and helping to improve healthcare outcomes for people around the globe.”
— Former Cloud Foundry Foundation Executive Director Abby Kearns joined Portland, Ore.-based Puppet as chief technology officer.
Deepak Giridharagopal, Puppet’s CTO since 2016, will remain part of the leadership team and focus on research and development. Kearns will be responsible for expanding Puppet’s current product portfolio.
Prior to the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Kearns was a product manager at Pivotal Software, lead product marketing at cybersecurity company OPSWAT and spent eight years at Verizon.
“Puppet is a pioneer of the DevOps movement, ushered in the concept of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and drives efficiency through infrastructure automation for 80 percent of the Fortune 5000,” said Kearns, who reportedly started talking to Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar earlier this year. Wassenaar joined Puppet in January 2019, and the company raised $42 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins, True Ventures, VMware, Cisco and others in 2018.
— Seattle-based networking and security technology company F5 Networks appointed PayPal CTO Sri Shivananda to its board. Prior to PayPal, Shivananda was a vice president at eBay for more than 13 years.
F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou said that Shivananda’s background “will be a major asset to F5 as we further expand the ways we connect with our customers through SaaS, cloud, and digital go-to-market efforts.”
F5 Networks beat analysts’ expectations for its fiscal second quarter and during the earnings conference call Locoh-Donou announced the company won’t make layoffs during its current fiscal year, ending in September.
—Seattle’s Adaptive Biotechnologies hired Mark Adams as chief technical officer, Jyoti Palaniappan as senior vice president of clinical diagnostics and welcomed back Thomas Snyder as vice president of research. Palaniappan and Snyder will both have responsibilities related to Adaptive Biotechnologies partnership with Microsoft to build a universal blood test.
Adams succeeds former Chief Technical Officer Sean Nolan who is now a distinguished engineer at the company, focusing on programming and bioinformatics. Adams was most recently a managing director at SVB Leerink, an investment bank specializing in healthcare and life sciences. He previously served as chief information officer at biotech companies Celmatix and Good Start Genetics.
Palaniappan was most recently chief commercial officer at Bigfoot Biomedical and held leadership roles at Abbott, a global healthcare company. Snyder, who was previously director of scientific product management at Adaptive Biotechnologies, spent the past five years as head of computational biology at Verily Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Alphabet.
—Technical interview platform Karat named Bill Kramer as the Seattle startup’s first vice president of marketing. Kramer was most recently director of product marketing at Microsoft. He has held other product marketing and product management roles at software companies including Seattle-based Pike13, Linedata and HCL Technologies.
“Karat’s mission to make every interview predictive, fair, and enjoyable really resonated with me. We can deliver significant value to clients by solving one of the biggest pain points of building engineering teams: the technical interview,” said Kramer.
Karat raised a $28 million Series B round led by Tiger Global Management last year.
— Root3 Technologies co-founder Archie Gupta joined Seattle-based “startup studio” Madrona Venture Labs as a founder-in-residence. Root3 Technologies offers software for energy operations, management and strategic planning. He previously worked as an engineer and manager for utility company ITC.
— Arry Yu joined e-commerce marketing agency ProMark as general manager. Bellevue, Wash.-based ProMark offers marketing, advertising and sales management services for clients in the Amazon marketplace.
Yu is also currently the chair of the Cascadia Blockchain Council and Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) board member. She was previously COO and president of cryptocurrency startup StormX. Yu also co-founded GiftStarter, which closed in 2018.
“I am very excited to join this very talented team of marketers and strategists to help take some of the world’s top brands to the next level in sales on Amazon,” said Yu.
— The CleanTech Alliance appointed Mel Clark president and CEO, succeeding Tom Ranken who is retiring after ten years. Ranken announced his retirement last year and will remain on as a consultant.
Clark most recently served as executive director of DiscNW, an ultimate frisbee non-profit. She was previously general manager at the Eastside Audubon Society and spent sixteen years as a program director at the YMCA.
Founded in 2007, the Seattle-based organization represents more than 400 member organizations across ten U.S. states and three Canadian provinces.
“We are well poised to be a key factor in a new acceleration of the cleantech sector,” said Clark. “We have a fantastic membership, board, and staff. I am thrilled to take on this leadership role and help make a huge impact on the growth of jobs, companies, and a cleaner environment.”
— PR professional Brandie Gonzales joined Rad Power Bikes as senior PR and communications manager. The Seattle electric bike maker raised $25 million from Vulcan Capital and others in February, a rare VC bet on the e-bike industry. Gonzales previously external communications programs at Expedia Group, Rover and Blue Nile. She was also a PR account manager at Waggener Edstrom.
— Boeing CFO Greg Smith will lead a newly formed group called Enterprise Operations, Finance & Strategy, part of reorganization to prepare for the “post-pandemic” aviation industry. Read the full story.
