Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s first-ever chief environmental officer, is leaving the software, cloud and gaming giant for a role at a new private equity firm called Haveli Investments.
Haveli was created by Brian Sheth, the billionaire co-founder of Austin-based Vista Equity Partners. The firm is focused on video gaming and has raised more than $500 million towards an initial $750 million fund, according to Axios.
Under Joppa’s leadership, Microsoft announced ambitious climate plans and established itself as a corporate leader in the space. In early 2020, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced that it would become carbon negative by 2030 and it created its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund to invest in climate technologies.
The question now is if Joppa can replicate that success elsewhere.
In a Bloomberg article today announcing his role at Haveli, Joppa said that by being an investor, it will provide him the opportunity to help shape sustainability initiatives at multiple companies at the same time.
With private equity, Joppa told Bloomberg, “it’s a longer duration of engagement, a deeper engagement model and an engagement model that allows you to think about corporate operations and governance and ownership at the same time.”
Haveli is expected to make investments in numerous, largely established gaming studios, “to help them retain talent and take creative risks,” Axios reported last month.
Joppa will be Haveli’s chief sustainability officer and a senior managing director. Taking this position will also allow him to help build a company from scratch, which Joppa said has been a long-standing ambition.
He joined Microsoft in 2010 as a computational ecologist, and was named chief environmental scientist in 2017 before taking his current role in 2018.
— Laura Shawver is now CEO and president of cell therapy company Capstan Therapeutics, which launched Wednesday with $165 million in financing.
Shawver was previously CEO of Seattle-based Silverback Therapeutics, which announced in July it was terminating R&D activities after its lead compound failed in a clinical trial. Prior to Silverback, Shawver was also CEO of Synthorx, Cleave Biosciences and Phenomix Corporation. Shawver left Silverback, which is merging with San Diego-based ARS Pharmaceuticals, in September.
Capstan, based in San Diego and Philadelphia, is focused on using mRNA to engineer therapeutic CAR T cells within the body. “Laura is an exceptional leader with a well-established track record in drug development and passion for addressing unmet needs in oncology and other serious diseases,” said Michael Baran, a partner at Pfizer Ventures in a statement. Pfizer Ventures led Capstan’s $102 million Series A round, which comes on the heels $63 million in seed financing.
Other key personnel moves across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- NetBase Quid, a Bay Area social media analytics company, promoted Seattle-based exec Lei Li to chief technology officer and executive vice president.
- Eve Riskin, a longtime engineering professor at the University of Washington and faculty director for the UW’s STARS program, was named dean of undergraduate education at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.
- Jud Heugel, a former director at 98point6, joined medical diagnostics startup Wavely Diagnostics as chief medical officer.
