— Dr. Gabriela Chavarria has joined Seattle’s Burke Museum as the new executive director.
Chavarria brings more than 20 years of experience to the role, and was most recently vice president and chief curator of the Science Division at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. She oversaw scientific collections and research and led a team of 44 full-time staff members as well as additional staff, interns, and 400 volunteers.
Prior to Denver, Chavarria was senior science advisor and forensic science branch chief at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Ore.
Chavarria’s appointment follows the retirement of previous executive director Dr. Julie Stein.
Other personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
— Melissa Blume, who served eight years at the senior director of product at Redfin, has joined the executive team at Boundless Immigration as vice president of product.
— Lior Ron, the head of Uber Freight, and Karl Alomar, previously chief operating officer at Digital Ocean, have joined the board of directors at real estate property management startup Doorstead.
— Wilma Wallace, chief legal officer and chief social impact and diversity officer for REI, is joining Premera’s board of directors. Wallace replaces Connie Collingsworth, chief operating officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose term expires later this year.
— Venkatesh Baglodi, a onetime engineering leader at Alexa AI and AWS AI at Amazon, has joined PropTech startup Zavvie as chief technology officer.
