— Axon, a law enforcement technology company, adds a former HTC Vive executive Christian As the Vice President of Immersion Technology. In his new role, Chin will be responsible for Axon’s virtual reality and augmented reality training platform.
At HTC Vive, Chin is the vice president and general manager of Vive Studios, which publishes VR content. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Axon is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and has important engineering operations in Seattle. The company said its mission is to help reduce the use of force by police by providing transparency, technology and tools that can replace lethal weapons.
— Former NASA System Engineer Nitin Arora Is leaving Blue Origin to join SpaceX, according to a post LinkedIn.
Arora has worked for Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for more than two years, most recently as a member of the team building a manned landing system for a space enterprise.
The move was made after Blue Origin’s unsuccessful appeal and NASA’s decision to award Elon Musk’s SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to return astronauts to the moon.
— Porch Group, a Seattle-based home service technology company, adds two new board members: Co-founder and managing partner of Imagination Capital Rachel Lin, And former CEO of Aviva plc group Maurice Turlock. Read the story.
— Former M12 Managing Director Lisa Nelson Appointed as a member of the board of directors of Astra Space. California-based Astra Space is a five-year-old aerospace company that went public last month through a merger with the SPAC led by telecommunications pioneer Craig McCaw.
“Space technology will make the next trillion-dollar economy possible,” Nelson said in a statement. “I am very happy to work with Astra’s world-class board of directors and management team to pioneer the next frontier of innovation and economic growth.”
Nelson currently serves on the boards of Kuelap and DNA Seattle. She is an advisor to Brooks, Movac, Flying Fish Partners and early stage technology startups.
— Former Chief Financial Officer of Kanghang Brian Kleiner Recently joined Handshake, a university recruitment platform, as the chief financial officer.
President and Chief Operating Officer of Convoy Mark Oxstrom Currently acting as the acting chief financial officer. The former Expedia CEO joined the freight startup Convoy a year ago and previously served as the chief financial officer of the Seattle travel giant.
Before joining Convoy in 2018, Kreiner was the CEO of Cal Net Technology Group and the managing partner of Olympic Valley Capital.
— Athira Pharma was recently appointed Rachel Lenington As CTO and head of product development strategy, Mark Worthington As the general counsel. The Bothell, Washington-based biotechnology company also reported that it is advancing clinical trials following allegations of image tampering in a paper written by its CEO. Read the story.
— The startup company Lessen in Scottsdale, Arizona is named Chris Bee, Used to serve as senior director of product development at Zillow, and served as CTO. Bee previously worked as an engineering and product manager at Uber, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Founded in 2020, Lessen currently has 20 employees in Seattle, and plans to double the number of employees in the area by the end of 2021. The company’s platform connects owners with renovation, maintenance and cleaning professionals.
— Freelance platform Upwork hired a former Amazon general manager Satie Bahadur As CTO. Bahadur previously worked at Microsoft for ten years and most recently served as Director of Engineering.
At Amazon, Bahadur manages fraud and abuse worldwide, and previously led the Alexa artificial intelligence team.
Upwork is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and was formed by the merger of Elance and oDesk.
— Served as Chief Financial Officer of Washington Research Foundation for a long time Jeff Abby Retired after 19 years of working in a private foundation. Former WRF CEO Ron Howell also retired in April 29 years later.
Abby has succeeded Morgan Hella He originally joined WRF in 2004 as the licensing administrator of the organization’s patent portfolio. Before her promotion, she was the controller of WRF.
— Shaab Chaudri Join an AI startup Panda As the person in charge of the customer. He most recently served as the Director of Customer Success, Service and Support for Algorithmia, which was acquired by DataRobot last month.
The Seattle startup Panda uses natural language processing for its account management software.
Panda, spun off from the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI2), went out of stealth mode last year and was co-founded by Aaron Goldfield and Yue Ning. Panda previously raised $3.3 million in financing led by PSL Ventures.
— San Francisco Life Insurance Startup Spirit Hire three Zillow Group veterans, two of whom are in Seattle:
- Nick Fitzer As the vice president of sales. Fitzer has worked at Zillow for more than a decade and most recently led mortgage sales and strategy.
- Kelly McGee As the person in charge of cooperative marketing. McGhee most recently served as Vice President of Marketing for Tom Ferry, a real estate coaching company, and was previously Senior Director of Supplier Marketing and Events at Zillow.
- Rob Brosler Jr Served as vice president and general manager of partners. Broesler Jr. is based in San Francisco and has worked at Zillow for eight years, most recently as senior director of mortgage analysis and business operations.
Last month, Ethos Raised $100 million Vision Fund from SoftBank 2.
— Seattle-based Rebellyous Foods announces Beyond Meat veteran Pichai Will join the start-up company as the director of equipment research and development.
Pichair has a PhD. In the field of chemical engineering, he previously led the R&D team at Beyond Meat and Novus International. Rebellyous Foods was established in 2017 and launched three new plant-based products earlier this year.
— Appointment of Portland-based Sparrow Pharmaceuticals Frank Cerwitz As the chief medical officer and Jamie McPherson Served as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality.
Czerwiec most recently served as Chief Medical Officer of Goldfinch Bio and has worked at Otsuka Pharmaceutical for two decades. MacPherson joined Sparrow from Akcea Therapeutics and previously served as the Director of Global Regulatory Affairs for Alexion Pharmaceuticals.
— Seattle-based Marchex was appointed Ryan Polly As chief operating officerPolley was previously the chief product and strategy officer of this publicly traded company selling “conversational intelligence” software. Before joining Marchex in 2020, he worked at Kargo Global and Rubicon Project.