– Kushagra Vaid, former Microsoft vp and distinguished Azure engineer, is now a accomplice at Silicon Valley enterprise capital agency Eclipse Ventures. He’s additionally at present a strategic advisor for Seattle-area cybersecurity startup Cyemptive Applied sciences.

At Eclipse Ventures, Vaid will spend money on startups in areas equivalent to enterprise IT, retail, healthcare, automotive, and manufacturing.

Vaid spent 13 years within the Azure workforce. Earlier than Microsoft, he was a senior engineer at Intel.

– Athira Pharma, primarily based in Bothell, Wash., Has appointed Barbara Kosacz to its board of administrators. Kosacz is a lawyer specializing in life sciences and at present COO and normal counsel at Kronos Bio.

The Seattle-area biotech firm led by CEO Leen Kawas went public final yr and received a $ 15 million grant from the Nationwide Institute on Ageing for a trial of its Alzheimer’s drug in December.

– Seattle-based gross sales tech startup Outreach employed Mary Shea as its very first evangelist. Shea, most lately a senior analyst at Forrester, has been appointed vp, international innovation evangelist.

As an analyst, Shea targeted on the way forward for B2B gross sales and rising gross sales applied sciences. In her new position, she’s going to proceed her analysis specializing in the dynamics between B2B consumers and sellers, in addition to how one can construct a extra numerous gross sales workforce.

“I’ve at all times loved working with the Outreach workforce as an analyst, and now I’ve the chance to work extra carefully with product and gross sales colleagues to assist create the subsequent technology of engagement know-how. of gross sales, ”Shea stated.

Corporations like Adobe, Splunk, SAP, and others use Outreach to automate and streamline communication with prospects. Outreach is without doubt one of the few “unicorn” companies within the Seattle space and employs 700 individuals.

– Edoardo De Martin, managing director of Microsoft’s growth heart in Vancouver, British Columbia, has left to hitch Canadian agricultural know-how firm CubicFarm Methods Corp. as technical director.

De Martin joined Microsoft in 2011 to work on its HoloLens know-how in Victoria, British Columbia. He spent almost a decade with the Redmond, Wash., Based mostly firm, together with serving to to open the Vancouver Growth Middle.

“Whereas the job shouldn’t be executed, it by no means will probably be. There isn’t any proper time to make a change, ”De Martin stated in a put up on LinkedIn. “We’ve got constructed a stable base in Vancouver and I do know there are huge plans for the long run.”

–Anthony Mendonca, longtime vp of engineering at Seattle-based startup RealSelf, has joined caller ID startup Hiya. He joined RealSelf in 2011 and was beforehand a senior software program engineer at Intuit.

Mendonca will probably be Hiya’s senior vp of engineering and lead the corporate’s engineering, high quality assurance, IT and know-how operations. Hiya additionally lately promoted Kush Parikh to President and added Jonah-Kai Hancock to steer the digital demand technology.

– Former Tableau Senior Director of Product Administration Ken Wong is now Co-Founder and Director of Product for startup DataJoy, which lately got here out of stealth mode and introduced a $ 6 million funding spherical.

Previous to Tableau, Wong, who relies in Vancouver, British Columbia, held positions at Microsoft and SAP. The brand new startup is at present solely distant with DataJoy co-founder and CEO Jon Lee primarily based within the Bay Space.

– Former Amazon senior engineering supervisor Shama Keskar is now co-founder and CTO of Nickelytics, the outside promoting startup primarily based in Tampa, Florida.

Based mostly in Mercer Island, Washington, Keskar has expertise with established startups and tech giants together with LinkedIn and Google.

“My background and expertise with giant, complicated Google advert programs positions me to innovate within the OOH house and take it to the subsequent degree,” Keskar stated.

– Professor Jeffrey Heer of the Allen College on the College of Washington was elected to the CHI Academy, a Lifetime Analysis Award offered by the Affiliation for Computing Equipment Particular Curiosity Group on Pc Interplay -man.

Heer, head of the UW Interactive Information Lab, focuses on computer-human interplay, social computing, and knowledge visualization. He joined the college of Allen College in 2013.

Congratulation to #UWAllen professor @jeffrey_heer on his election to the @sigchi Academy for contributions to #HCI, together with new visible evaluation and communication programs to help strong interactive web-based knowledge visualizations. https://t.co/CpEYYXoMSY #UWInnovates pic.twitter.com/wTYL8IU6I6

– Allen College (@uwcse) March 5, 2021

–Former Microsoft and GitHub engineering chief Erica Pleasure Baker has been named the first-ever chief know-how officer for the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee.

– Cloud service supplier BitTitan has promoted Manoj Kalyanaraman to vp of merchandise and engineering. Kalyanaraman joined BitTitan in 2019 as Director of Engineering and relies within the Singapore workplace of the Bellevue, Washington-based firm.

Previous to BitTitan, Kalyanaraman was CTO of resort firm Subsequent Story Group and was an engineering chief at Intuit.

– Bay Space drone startup Volansi has named Mike Guerchon as senior vp of personnel, primarily based on the firm’s Bend, Oregon workplace, which it opened final yr .

Guerchon was beforehand head of human assets at RealWear and Puppet. He’s an investor with Oregon Enterprise Fund.

Volansi raised $ 50 million in September and moved a few of its growth, manufacturing and testing work to central Oregon quickly after. The corporate is growing drones from lengthy distance deliveries.

– Nonprofit entrepreneurship group TiE Seattle has appointed three new board members:

• Dinesh Chahlia, lead engineer at Google and advisor at Google for startups.
• Kishor Panpaliya, North American Enterprise Growth Supervisor for international telecommunications and cybersecurity software program supplier Enea AB.
• Malay Verma, former Wipro and Zensar Applied sciences government.

A part of the worldwide non-profit group The Indus Entrepreneurs, the TiE Seattle part was launched in 2000. Along with occasions and programming, TiE Seattle is main the Z5 Catalyst initiative to spend money on premier B2B startups within the area.