— Ash Carter, who served as secretary of defense from 2015 to 2017, has joined the board of Tanium, a Kirkland, Wash.-based cybersecurity startup.
Tanium customers such as AutoNation, GoDaddy, and Whirlpool use the company’s software to deal with an ever-increasing level of sophisticated cyber attacks. The startup, which moved its headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Seattle area last year, is coming off a fresh $150 million investment round and in 2019 posted revenue of more than $430 million.
Carter was the 25th U.S. secretary of defense and is a board member at Delta Air Lines, GE, and The MIT Corporation. He is currently the director of the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, and an Innovation Fellow at MIT.
“I believe in the power of platforms, like Tanium, to help organizations see and gain control of their IT environments, while also breaking down information silos — critical for enabling collaboration and collective action to stay ahead of future threats,” he said in a statement.
Carter joins former Ford CEO Mark Fields, Accenture executive chairman David Rowland, and former Adobe exec Matt Thompson as recently added Tanium board members.
— Portland, Ore.-based marketing verification startup SheerID named Anjanette Hill Mendoza as its first chief customer officer. Hill Mendoza previously was an exec at DroneDeploy and Glassdoor. SheerID helps consumer brands run special deals for students, teachers and the military. It raised $64 million in 2019.
— Boeing’s board of directors extended the company’s age-65 standard retirement to age 70 for its CEO and President David Calhoun, who is 64. Calhoun became CEO in January 2020. Boeing also announced that CFO Greg Smith will retire on July 9.
— Seattle-area IoT connectivity startup Teal Communications added Glenn Lurie to its board. Lurie is the former CEO and president of Synchronoss Technologies and former CEO of AT&T’s Mobility & Consumer Operations. Teal announced a $9.1 million investment round this week.
— Former Washington Technology Industry Association executive Julie Pham launched her own consultancy called CuriosityBased, which aims to help people build communication, collaboration, and inclusion skills by fostering curiosity. Pham spent six years at WTIA, most recently at a vice president of community engagement. She recently wrote about entrepreneurial lessons learned from her father, who passed away last month and helped Pham launch CuriosityBased.
— Global digital services firm PK announced former Cognizant Technology Solutions exec Anjan Sur as its CFO. He replaces Craig Stack, who spent 16 years at Portland, Ore.-based PK.
