Asha Sharma is headed back to Seattle full-time for a new role leading product for Microsoft’s AI platform.
Sharma was most recently at Instacart, where she was chief operating officer since 2021.
Sharma was previously a vice president of product at Meta and COO at Seattle-based home services company Porch Group.
In a LinkedIn post, Sharma said AI-powered advances will be “exponential, sparking the most important product making era yet, with significant gains in how billions of people program, work and live.”
“I’m ecstatic to be joining Microsoft, the leader in this transformation, to help define and build this future,” she added.
Sharma, who worked at Microsoft from 2011 to 2013, said she’s looking forward to getting back to Seattle and “contributing to the region in such an important time of growth.”
Her typical week and daily habits were recently profiled in The Wall Street Journal. Sharma already lived in Seattle with her family but traveled each week for work. Fun facts: she has a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, and has two dogs named Raspberry Pi and Huckleberry.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest:
- Judson Althoff, chief commercial officer at Microsoft, joined the board of Ecolab, a Minnesota-based sustainability giant.
- Prasadh Cadambi, chief accounting officer at ZoomInfo since 2021, resigned on Feb. 26. Cadambi, a former longtime KPMG leader, will stay onboard as senior vice president of finance through April 1 to provide transition services. ZoomInfo CFO Cameron Hyzer will take over Cadambi’s responsilbities, according to a SEC filing.
- Seattle biotech company Athira Pharma named Rachel Lennington as chief development officer and Samantha Willing as chief people officer. Lennington joined Athira in 2021 and Willing joined last year.
- Seattle-area satellite startup LeoStella named Paula Tomlinson as director of software engineering. Tomlinson was previously a senior manager of software avionics at Blue Origin and also spent time at Impinj and Microsoft.
- Kieran Snyder, the co-founder and former CEO of Seattle-based Textio, launched a new research website called Nerd Processor, less than two months after stepping back from the augmented writing startup.
- Brian Fioca is now a principal AI engineer at Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs. Fioca previously helped launch RescueTime, Madrona Venture Labs, and backerbird, and is a former engineering exec at startups including Blueprint AI, Crowd Cow, and Glowforge.
- Seattle-based revenue operations startup Stack Moxie hired Steven Dunston as co-founder and chief revenue officer. Dunston was previously an advisor to the company and was a vice president of marketing at Avoma.
- Marina Resto Black, a former marketing leader at Deako, was named head of marketing at Seattle EV charging technology startup Electric Era.
- Wes Muschara joined Seattle-area employee development software platform Chronus as vice president of product. He most recently held the same role at IRIS Software Group.
- Binaytara Foundation, a Seattle-area health equity nonprofit, named Justin Marquart as chief development officer. Marquart previously worked at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, SightLife, and Fred Hutch.
