— T-Mobile appointed former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Director Letitia Long to its board.
Long served as the director of the NGA from 2010 until her retirement in 2014. She was previously deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a deputy undersecretary to the Secretary of Defense.
She will serve on the nominating and corporate governance committee and as the company’s national security director, a role required through the wireless carrier’s merger with Sprint.
— Amazon Web Services’ VP of Solution Architecture and Training & Certification Rudy Valdez has departed, according to a report by The Information. A longtime veteran of Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Valdez joined the company as a senior manager of business development in 2005.
— Another longtime Amazon exec, Dorothy Li, took a job at Seattle startup Convoy as its new CTO. Read the story.
— Gopuff, a Philadelphia on-demand delivery service for convenience store items, hired two new executives in the Seattle region:
- Tim Collins as SVP of operations. Collins is 20-year Amazon veteran who was most recently vice president of global logistics. In 2015, he briefly left the e-commerce giant for a stint at Uber where he was VP of global community operations.
- Sharad Sundaresan as SVP of product and growth. Sundaresan is an Amazon and Microsoft alum and was most recently head of growth and traffic at Airbnb. He previously was SVP of product at Roku and led mobile apps at Yahoo.
Gopuff currently offers its delivery service in more than 650 cities including Seattle and Portland. The eight-year-old company operates micro-fulfillment centers in each market.
The company has rapidly expanded its infrastructure through the acquisition of physical retail brands, including Liquor Barn in Kentucky and BevMo! on the West Coast. In March, Gopuff closed a $1.15 billion funding round at a valuation of $8.9 billion.
— The former head of engineering and science at Amazon Web Services Health Jean-Olivier Racine joined Outset Medical as its chief technology officer. Based in San Jose, Calif., Outset Medical develops technology for dialysis, a temporary or long term treatment when kidneys stop functioning normally.
While at Amazon, Racine worked on the Halo health band, Kindle Fire tablets and the Fire TV. In his most recent role, he led development of AWS’ health services using natural language processing and advanced analytics for health data.
— Seattle cloud services provider Skytap announced Chris Min as its new CFO. Min has held executive finance roles at CAKE Corporation and WePay, among other companies.
— Digital fundraising platform Snap! Raise hired Mike Cartwright as vice president of e-commerce. Cartwright was most recently VP of technology at AMMEX Corporation, a PPE manufacturer. He previously was CTO at blockchain startup DigitalTown and also led Expedia Group’s affiliate partner network.
Seattle-based Snap! Raise develops software to help schools, clubs and activity teams fundraise securely online. Last year, the startup sold off its fundraising product for universities and nonprofits.
— Former DocuSign VP Marie Huwe is now SVP of Dolby.io, a media and communications platform launched by Dolby Laboratories last year. An 18-year veteran of Microsoft, Huwe most recently led technical evangelism and information at DocuSign.
— Candour Founder and CEO Ruchika Tulshyan joined the advisory board of Reverb, a Seattle HR consultancy firm. Tulshyan founded Candor, a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and communications consultancy, in 2015. She is a former business journalist and the author of The Diversity Advantage.
— Vertical drone maker Aerovel named Ben Motazed vice president of business development and technology.
Based in the Washington D.C. area, Motazed was most recently director of business development at aviation technology company AeroVironment. He previously worked with Intel’s drone group and on Project Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery project.
A finalist for Hardware of the Year at this year’s GeekWire Awards, Aerovel’s drone called the Flexrotor can fly both vertically and horizontally.
