— Zhenbin Xu, who spent nearly two decades at Microsoft in various leadership roles, joined e-commerce startup Pacvue as chief product officer.
Xu joined Microsoft in 1998 and was most recently a senior director of AI and research. He joined China-based Sunshine Insurance Group in 2018, then moved to Seedland Group for two years.
Last month Pacvue hired another Microsoft vet, Sunava Dutta, as senior vice president of product.
Pacvue launched out of Seattle and quietly bootstrapped its way to a large acquisition in 2021 to Assembly, a Los Angeles-based company that also sells e-commerce software. Pacvue still maintains an office in Seattle.
— LeoStella, a Seattle-area company building satellites, hired Daniel Adams as director of technical programs. Adams was previously a director at Sierra Space and also worked at Lockheed Martin. LeoStella is a joint venture co-owned by European satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space and a geospatial data analysis company called BlackSky.
— Seattle-area endpoint management startup Adaptiva brought back Anne Baker as its new chief marketing officer. Baker was most recently an exec at Teradata and also worked at Icertis and Microsoft. Her first stint with Adaptiva was from 2016-2019, when she was VP of product management and marketing.
— Seattle venture capital firm WestRiver Group added Liat Ben-Zur to its advisory board. The former Microsoft, Philips, and Qualcomm product exec is a board member at Talkspace and Splashtop. She’s also an advisory board member at Seattle startup Syndio.
— Former Microsoft exec Gavriella Schuster joined the board of advisors at Spectio, a new Seattle startup led by Diene Lee Mann.
— Alima Vanderholm, an investor with Trilogy Equity Partners, is stepping down to focus on her debut novel. She joined the Bellevue, Wash.-based firm in 2018.
— Seattle entrepreneur Arry Yu joined the Web3 board of advisors at Washington D.C. think tank AI2030.
— Josh Davis was promoted to chief economic development officer and senior vice president at Greater Seattle Partners, the public-private sector initiative that seeks to attract investment, companies and quality jobs to the Seattle area. Davis joined GSP in 2021 and was previously VP of global trade and investment.
— Former Comcast exec Diem Ly joined the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development as division director and internal deputy director. Ly previously was executive director at the International Examiner and led community impact for Comcast in Seattle.
