— Gavriella Schuster, a former Microsoft vice president, joined Nerdio’s board of directors.
Schuster spent more than 25 years at Microsoft, where she most recently led the One Commercial Partner team. Schuster is also an ATHENA Global Leadership award winner and the co-founder of Women in Cloud and the Women in Technology Network.
Nerdio is virtual desktop manager for Microsoft Azure and Windows 365 services. The company raised an $8 million Series A round in February 2020.
Former Microsoft executive Andy Lees joined the Nerdio board in July 2020.
— Natalia Williams, former chief product officer at Mailchimp, joined Hootsuite as its new CPO.
Williams spent four years at Mailchimp. She will be based in Hootsuite’s Atlanta, Ga., office.
Vancouver, B.C.-based Hootsuite sells social media management software. The company has raised nearly $300 million and is rumored to go public this year. Hootsuite is currently ranked No. 1 in the GeekWire 200, our index of top Pacific Northwest startups.
— Sophi Kim, a former Amazon product leader, is joining Seattle startup Shelf Engine as head of product management.
Kim was a principal technical product manager at Amazon, where she helped lead the international expansion program for Amazon Physical Stores products, including its Just Walk Out tech.
Kim started her career as an officer in the U.S. Navy. She later joined UnitedHealth Group as a director of operations and then landed at Amazon in 2017.
Shelf Engine raised $41 million last year to support growth of its tech platform used by grocers such as Kroger and Walmart to manage food orders for deli, bakery, cut produce, meat, and other categories. The idea is to help streamline the ordering process and get the right amount of product on the shelf at the right time, trimming costs and reducing waste for grocers.
— Nautilus Biotechnology added Sheri Wilcox as vice president of affinity reagent development, and Gwen Weld as chief people officer.
Wilcox was previously an exec at SomaLogic, where she spent more than two decades. Weld was previously interim chief people officer at Amperity, and held human resources leadership roles at Isilon Systems and Microsoft before that.
Nautilus, started in 2016 by Isilon Systems co-founder Sujal Patel and Institute for Systems Biology alum Parag Mallick, is seeking to accelerate biomedical research and transform drug development by developing a new way to analyze the proteome, the set of proteins in a biological sample. The company went public via a SPAC deal in June.
— Olivier Legrand, a former LinkedIn managing director, joined Sendinblue as its chief operating officer.
Legrand worked with LinkedIn for more than nine years, serving as managing director for its Asia Pacific and China operations. Before LinkedIn, Legrand spent more than six years at Dow Jones in Hong Kong.
Sendinblue sells marketing and sales solutions for businesses. The company is based in Paris and its U.S. headquarters is in Seattle, where Sendinblue employs 35 people. The company plans to double its overall team to 1,100 people within the next 12 months. It raised $160 million in a Series B round in October 2020.
Other personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Vic Davis, former head of enterprise customer service for Marketo (acquired by Adobe), joined Inflection.io as senior vice president of customer experience.
- Robb Monkman, founder of React Mobile, joined Teal Communications as vice president of marketing.
- Drew Meyers, founder of Geek Estate, joined Second Century Ventures, a venture capital company that focuses on early to mid-stage technologies, as an entrepreneur in residence.
- Anthony Bontrager, managing director at WestRiver Group, joined the board of Tagboard.
- Keith Dorsey, president of Dorsey Management Consulting, joined the board of Vimly Benefit Solutions.
