— Mark Simms, a former longtime Microsoft engineering leader, has joined Twilio as chief technology officer.
Simms spent 14 years at Microsoft, most recently as director of architecture in the Azure CTO office. His career at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant started in 2008 as a senior program manager for Microsoft’s BizTalk and SQL Customer Advisory team.
Simms will replace Jeremiah Brazeau, Twilio’s former CTO who is now a distinguished engineer at Shopify.
Twilio, a cloud communications giant, went public in 2016 and reported $2.84 billion in revenue last year. Its stock is down nearly 80% in the past year as part of the larger downturn.
— Nimrod Vered is now chief technology officer of Uplevel, which makes software tools to measure productivity and happiness of developers. Vered was previously the chief engineering officer at Zipwhip, a business-texting startup and Uplevel customer acquired by Twilio last year for about $850 million.
Vered also held roles at Microsoft, most recently as a group engineering manager after the tech giant’s acquisition of VoloMetrix, an employee analytics startup where Vered was vice president of engineering. Vered helped build the tech that became Microsoft’s MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics, and also worked at Cisco and cybersecurity company Check Point.
Uplevel announced $20 million in new funding on Wednesday, and doubled its customer base in the last year. The Madrona Venture Labs spinout implemented a four-hour workweek as an experiment last winter, with the aim of boosting employee happiness and productivity.
— Devon Pritchard was named executive vice president of sales, marketing and communications at Nintendo. Pritchard has served as an acting executive in that role since last November, where she oversaw Nintendo Switch game launches including Nintendo Switch Sports. Prior to that, Pritchard was executive vice president of business affairs and publisher relations at the company. She has been with Nintendo for 16 years.
Other personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Seattle-based PR firm Zebra Partners hired Casey Pelkey as chief operating officer. Pelkey moved from Tetris, where he worked for more than ten years as a vice president. He was previously also business director at Nintendo.
- Orlando Ashford joined the board of directors at Seattle pay equity startup Syndio. Ashford was previously president of Holland America Line and served in human resources roles at Mercer, Coca Cola and other companies.
- Spaceflight, a Seattle-area aerospace company that provides launch services, hired Tom Boyer as vice president of business development and former Momentus exec Phillip Hover-Smoot as general counsel.
- Kathy Chou, senior vice president of SaaS engineering at enterprise cloud platform company Nutanix, was appointed to the board of directors of IonQ, a quantum computing company.
- Isaac Roybal joined Silicon Valley-based data security startup Seclore as chief marketing officer; he will be based in Seattle. Roybal previously held positions at Microsoft and Seattle area startups including Qumulo, aboutGOLF and ExtraHop.
- Environmental scientist Lisa Gonzales-Kramer joined reforestation company DroneSeed as director of program management for reforestation. She previously was project manager for a large-scale reforestation effort in California.
