Dec 10, 2021

Urbanova

Urbanova announced that Mason Burley has been appointed CEO of the organization. He will succeed current CEO and co-founder Kim Zentz on December 16, 2021. Zentz transitions to principal consultant to continue Urbanova work in progress. Burley most recently served as director of research at Innovia Foundation, where he led efforts to evaluate the impact of foundation investments in large-scale community initiatives. He also currently serves as an adjunct professor in Eastern Washington University's College of Professional Programs and is the 2021 chairperson for Priority Spokane. Burley spent over 20 years as a senior research associate at the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan legislative research organization. Headquartered in Spokane and incorporated in 2016, Urbanova is an urban innovation partnership focused on driving equitable solutions for midsize cities.

Perkins Coie

Perkins Coie announced that James (Jim) Go has joined the firm's Intellectual Property practice as a partner in its Seattle office. Go focuses his practice on patent preparation and prosecution of U.S. and foreign patents in the related fields of electrical and computer engineering. He provides counsel on patent reexaminations, preparation and prosecution, opinion of patent infringement and validity, strategic intellectual property planning, patent portfolio management, due diligence, litigation support and general intellectual property matters. He counsels clients across range of technology industry sectors, including computer software and hardware, Internet and electronic commerce technology, digital and analog circuits, photonics, semiconductor processes, networking, communications and related technologies. Go joins Perkins Coie from Christenson O'Connor Johnson Kindness, where he was an intellectual property member. Previously, he was the managing partner of the Seattle office of Blakely Sokoloff Taylor and Zafman, where he also served on the firmwide management committee.

City of Tacoma

The Tacoma City Council voted to adopt Ordinance 28793 approving Phase 1 of the Home in Tacoma Project during its December 7 meeting. The council action changes Tacoma's housing growth strategy from an emphasis on detached single-family houses to instead support a range of missing middle housing types in most Tacoma neighborhoods. The new policies call for strong design standards, limitations on the size and height of new buildings, steps to ensure that infrastructure needs are met, affordability and anti-displacement programs, and other actions to ensure that housing development meets multiple goals. In addition, the action on Home in Tacoma Phase 1 adopts several changes to current housing rules to promote affordability and infill, as well as a Housing Action Plan to guide implementation efforts. The action also initiates the second phase of policy work and community engagement to develop zoning and standards to implement Tacoma's new housing growth strategy. The city is now preparing a schedule an engagement strategy for Home in Tacoma Phase 2, which will begin in early 2022.

Dec 09, 2021

ecoSpears

Florida-based ecoSpears has selected Tacoma as its West Coast headquarters. Serial tech entrepreneurs Ian Doromal and Sergie “Serg” Albino co-founded ecoSpears to remove harmful PCBs from waterways forever using a technology developed by NASA and licensed to Doromal and Albino in 2017, which acts like a “sponge” in contaminated sediment, drawing out PCBs and other toxins, then neutralizing them. The ecoSpears team partners with industry and government entities to lead environmental remediation projects across the U.S. and as far as Guam and Sweden. Now, the Florida-based company is focused on cleaning up Washington's waterways. As newcomers to the Pacific Northwest startup scene, the ecoSpears team leveraged collaborations with local incubators and the city of Tacoma to grow their Washington network and secure key contracts with companies like Kaiser Aluminum.

Vido Vodka

Vido Vodka, wine grape-based vodka handcrafted in Washington, announced a new partnership with Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken as the team and arena's official premium vodka. To celebrate its status, Vido Vodka is introducing a limited-edition label featuring the signature Seattle Kraken “S” and blue colorways. The Vido Vodka Seattle Kraken label will be available early next year. Behind Vido Vodka is The Monson family, a multi-generational Washington farming family. Vido Vodka was founded as a tribute to their family patriarch Arvid “Vido” Monson. Vido Vodka is premium handcrafted vodka from wine grapes grown at Goose Ridge Estate Vineyard in the Columbia Valley. Climate Pledge Arena, located at Seattle Center is the complete redevelopment of a historic landmark, originally built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Home to the NHL's Seattle Kraken, WNBA's Seattle Storm, and performers of live music and events, Climate Pledge Arena opened in October 2021.

Magnify

Magnify, a startup that transforms the customer experience through post-sales orchestration, announced that Sajo Jacob has joined Magnify as CTO and co-founder. This announcement comes on the heels of a recent announcement of a $6 million Seed Series raise led by Madrona Venture Group, Decibel Partners and other PNW SaaS executives. Most recently, Jacob was at Amazon where he was a GM and head of engineering, leading large global engineering and product teams that worked on digital commerce platforms and new products in Devices & Services. Before Amazon, Jacob spent his professional career in the enterprise world, which included being one of the early members on the Microsoft Azure team. Magnify is actively hiring across product and engineering teams, including product managers, senior developers, engineers, and technical leaders. Magnify has a remote-first culture, with a physical presence for engineering in Seattle, along with their Bend, Oregon, offices.

Dec 08, 2021

PotlatchDeltic

PotlatchDeltic announced the election of Anne L. Alonzo to its board of directors. Alonzo most recently served as senior vice president, external affairs and chief sustainability officer for Corteva Agriscience, a publicly traded global agricultural chemical and seed company, where she was responsible for leading the external affairs function, which included corporate communications, global corporate responsibility, government and industry affairs, and product advocacy. From January 2016 to April 2020, Alonzo was president and chief executive officer of the American Egg Board, where she also served on the Executive Committee. Previously, Alonzo served in various leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kraft Foods and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Alonzo holds an Executive M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, a J.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Spokane-based PotlatchDeltic is a Real Estate Investment Trust that owns approximately 1.8 million acres of timberlands in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota and Mississippi. Through its taxable REIT subsidiary, the company also operates six sawmills, an industrial-grade plywood mill, a residential and commercial real estate development business and a rural timberland sales program.

Lyceus Group

Seattle-based Lyceus Group announced its inclusion on Fund Intelligence's Operations and Services Awards 2021 shortlist for the ‘Best Communications and PR Firm'. Founded in 2016, Lyceus Group is a financial communications agency and represents a variety of clients in the financial services and technology space, including mutual funds, ETF's, private equity firms, hedge funds, startups, cryptocurrency funds, private credit funds and fund service providers. The Fund Intelligence Operations and Services Awards will celebrate the top-performing operators and service providers of 2021. The awards recognize and reward excellence and outstanding contributions made by businesses, operations & technology leaders at asset management and service provider firms on the past year.

Cyrus Biotechnology

Cyrus Biotechnology, a Seattle-based biotechnology firm with a proprietary software platform for biologics discovery, announced the closing of a $18M Series B financing and acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics, a deep mutational scanning protein engineering spin-out from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The financing includes investments from OrbiMed Advisors, Trinity Ventures, Agent Capital, Yard Ventures, Washington Research Foundation, iSelect Fund, a leading Asian private equity firm, W Fund, family offices, and individual investors. Selecta Bioscience joined the financing as a strategic investor. Cyrus is focusing the combined software-and-screening platform on the re-design of natural proteins to produce biologics of unique efficacy and safety, meeting unmet medical needs for a range of indications. The firm has initiated a variety of in-house and partnered programs during the past 12 months, and the Orthogonal acquisition now adds a broad-spectrum protein-based COVID-19 therapeutic and another biologic to the pipeline. Programs in autoimmunity are being carried out in partnership with Selecta Biosciences, announced earlier this year. Cyrus also previously announced its collaboration with The Broad Institute in next-generation CRISPR engineering for reduced immunogenicity. Cyrus is based on core software from the lab of David Baker at the University of Washington, and is financed by leading US and Asian biotech and tech investors.