— Former Intellectual Ventures EVP Maurizio Vecchione has been appointed president and CEO of Seattle-based Washington Global Health Alliance, a non-profit whose mission is to connect and inform Washington’s global health community. Washington Global Health Alliance also announced Henry Ford Health System Vice President K.R. Prabha as its new chair of the board.
At Intellectual Ventures since 2013, Vecchione led Global Good, a humanitarian-focused collaboration between the Bellevue, Wash.-based patent holding and technology company and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He also currently serves as chief innovation officer for the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation based in Los Angeles, Calif.
— Seattle cloud compliance software startup Shujinko expanded its leadership team with three new executives:
• Jason Kelleghan as VP of sales. Kelleghan was most recently director of sales at Reciprocity, maker of audit and tracking software.
• Rick Harwood as VP of engineering. Hardwood spent eight years at Starbucks, most recently as director of engineering of digital platforms.
• Brett Goodwin as VP of marketing. Goodwin joined Shujinko last year as head of product marketing. He previously led marketing at MessageYes, Qumulo, and Skytap.
Shujinko raised $7.5 million last year and spun out of Pioneer Square Labs in 2018.
— Clay Magouyrk has been named the new executive vice president in charge of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, signaling the Redwood Shores, Calif.-company’s broader ambitions to challenge Amazon. Magouyrk, a former Amazon engineer, is based in Seattle, where Oracle has an engineering center. Read the story.
— Dr. Ekin Yasin was named director of the University of Washington’s Communication Leadership graduate program. Yasin joined the UW faculty in 2013 and served as co-director of the “Comm Lead” program during the 2019-20 school year.
“I truly believe that Comm Lead is the degree of the future,” Ekin said. “Ever since I joined the program 2016, I have been in awe of the truly diverse and purpose-driven community. In the coming years, my goal will be to build upon our strong foundation by ensuring we remain current in a globalizing and diversifying career environment. Above all else, Comm Lead will serve as a laboratory for cutting-edge and socially responsible communication and leadership practices of our world.”
The leadership transition was planned for the past two years. Hanson Hosein, who led the program for the past 13 years, will transition to a co-founder role this academic year. He’ll continue supporting the program’s outreach, fundraising, and curriculum.
Hosein, president of HRH Media Group and an award-winning journalist, will also stay on as host of the university’s “Co-Existing with COVID-19” livestream series and in his role as public convening partner for the UW’s Center for an Informed Public.
“Hanson is not an academic by trade,” Dr. David Domke, former chair of the communication department, said in a statement. “He’s an inventor, an entrepreneur, a creator. He took a young professional Master’s program with potential and led it to greatness. He hired well and then collaborated in ways that elevated everyone. He has done something that few have done: lived and thrived at the intersection of a research university and a professional world that requires deliverables yesterday. He has embodied Comm Lead, and we are all fortunate.”
— John Connors, operating partner at Fuse Venture Partners and a former Microsoft CFO, has joined Symend’s board of directors. Based in Calgary, Alberta, Symend is a platform using behavioral science and AI to engage financially at-risk customers.
“This is the fastest-growing company I’ve ever been a part of, with hyper growth over the last 18 months,” said Connors.
He also currently serves on the boards of Seattle startups Icertis, Tempered and KenSci as well as multinational companies Nike and Splunk. Connors was previously a longtime partner at Ignition and this summer joined Fuse, a new Seattle firm spun out by former Ignition investors.
— Seattle cloud startup Pulumi hired Jay Wampold as chief marketing officer. Wampold was most recently CMO at CommerceIQ and previously a marketing executive at Cloudability, Qumulo, Amazon Web Services and Chef.
— University of Washington Allen School professor emeritus Richard Ladner is the 2020 recipient of the National Science Board’s Public Service Award for an individual. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the public’s understanding of science and engineering.
A trained mathematician and founding member of the Allen School Theory of Computation research group, Ladner spent the latter part of his career researching accessible technology and advocating for expanding access to computer science for students with disabilities. At the Allen School, UW’s computer science and engineering program named after the late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, Ladner mentored many students who have also focused their careers on accessibility research.
He retired in 2017 and remains engaged with the Allen School community.
— Canadian commercial fusion energy company General Fusion appointed Klaas de Boer as chairman of its board. He is currently a managing partner at Entrepreneurs Fund and participated in the first venture capital financing round for the Vancouver, B.C.-based company.
Boer has served on the General Fusion board since 2009 and replaces outgoing chairman Fred Buckman, who will continue to serve as a director. General Fusion counts Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as a backer.
