Oct 06, 2022

Hotel Ändra

Condé Nast Traveler announced the results of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards with Hotel Ändra in downtown Seattle named a Top 10 Hotel in the Pacific Northwest market. More than 240,000 Condé Nast Traveler readers submitted responses rating their travel experiences across the globe to provide a full snapshot of the top places they enjoyed this year and can’t wait to return to next. The Readers’ Choice Awards are among the longest-running recognition of excellence in the travel industry. Hotel Ändra is located at 2000 4th Ave. in Belltown, Seattle. Ändra, which means ‘change’ in Swedish, has transformed a historic 1926 building into a luxury hotel with 123 rooms and suites. Thanks to its partnership with Chef Tom Douglas restaurants, Hotel Ändra is home to his recreational cooking school Hot Stove Society, and Greek-inspired restaurant Lola. Also on property is Assaggio Ristorante, featuring the cuisine of central and northern Italy.

Neighbors

Neighbors, an enterprise-focused computing devices protection plan company, announced the launch of twelve new program offerings for laptops and tablets designed to increase workforce productivity and lower technology costs. The company has partnered with Fortegra, a global specialty insurer, to help design, support and back its products. Neighbors' products are currently available in 48 U.S. states. Founded by a team of consumer electronics, software and insurance experts, Neighbors, headquartered in Seattle, is an AI-powered digital-first platform. Fortegra and its subsidiaries underwrite and administer insurance products and protection plan solutions across the U.S. and around the world.

Itron

Itron, headquartered in Liberty Lake, has joined forces with Severn Trent Water to digitally transform Warwickshire, England into a smart water region. The collaboration is part of Severn Trent Water's Green Recovery Program and includes the deployment of Itron's advanced metering infrastructure solution, including Itron smart water meters equipped with Cyble multi-connectivity communication modules connected through Itron's partner, Connexin. Deployment of the solution is currently underway and will allow Severn Trent Water to gain a better understanding of water consumption on its network. Severn Trent Water is also taking advantage of Itron's Temetra, the next-generation mobile meter data collection and management solution, as a single meter data management platform to collect and manage meter data, whether via mobile meter reading or communication network. Itron enables utilities and cities to deliver critical infrastructure solutions to communities in more than 100 countries.

Oct 05, 2022

Moda Health

Moda Health, founded in Portland in 1955, will begin offering medical plans in the state of Idaho. Moda Health currently serves communities in Oregon, Alaska, and Texas. In Idaho, the company will offer individual, family, medicare supplement and group medical plans. Moda Health is partnering with the Saint Alphonsus Health Alliance network; the Patient Quality Alliance network, a comprehensive network of hospitals and physicians throughout Southeast Idaho; and Minidoka Memorial Hospital, along with other local providers. Open enrollment for Moda's individual/family medical plans begins Oct. 15 and runs through Dec. 15.

Avalara

Avalara, a provider of tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, announced that independent proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services has recommended that shareholders vote “For” the pending transaction with Vista Equity Partners at the company's upcoming Special Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for October 14, 2022. The recommendation supports the Avalara board's unanimous recommendation that shareholders vote “For” the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by Avalara shareholders. Goldman Sachs is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Avalara, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Perkins Coie are acting as legal counsel. Headquartered in Seattle, Avalara has offices across the U.S. and around the world in Brazil, Europe, and India.

DexCare

Seattle-based DexCare has been selected to participate in Amazon Web Services' Health Equity Initiative, a $40 million, three-year commitment, supporting organizations in developing solutions to advance health equity. Through the initiative, AWS offers AWS credits and customized technical expertise to selected organizations around the world that want to use AWS services to improve health outcomes and health equity in any of the following areas: 1) increasing access to health services for underserved communities; 2) addressing social determinants of health; and 3) leveraging data to promote more equitable and inclusive systems of care. DexCare will use the grant from AWS to build customized dashboards for use by health systems across the country to measure, track, and trend progress towards increased access for medically underserved communities. The initiative is occurring in tandem with the rollout of DexCare's new Localization for Equitable Access feature. The new feature provides language translation to non-English speaking patients while booking a telehealth appointment. Incubated at Providence, DexCare is a data-driven intelligence company focused on making access to healthcare better for everyone. DexCare's core offering is a software platform, provided exclusively to health systems, that orchestrates digital demand and health system capacity across all lines of care.

Oct 04, 2022

CoreStack

Bellevue-based CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance provider, announced that Sridhar Chandrashekar will be joining the leadership team as chief digital officer. Chandrashekar is the former co-founder and CEO of Optio3, which was recently acquired by CoreStack. Optio3 is an AI-powered operations management company based in Seattle. Prior to his time at Optio3, Chandrashekar was the founding general manager and vice president of the IT Operations Management business unit at ServiceNow. Chandrashekar joined ServiceNow after 18 years at Microsoft. He has been awarded 24 patents for his work at Microsoft and ServiceNow.

Amazon

A year after its pilot launch, Amazon announced that it will roll out the Amazon Community Lending program as a long-term offering. In partnership with BSD Capital (dba Lendistry), this program will continue to support urban and rural small businesses in socially and economically distressed communities through short-term loans at competitive rates. Since its launch, the program has loaned more than $35 million to over 800 Amazon sellers, surpassing the original goal of $10 million during the pilot. Now, the program plans to loan more than $150 million in the next three years to small businesses selling in the Amazon U.S. store. Small businesses in the program can use these funds to grow their business and cover other strategic needs, such as staffing and operations costs, inventory, product development and manufacturing, and marketing efforts. Loans provided by Lendistry through this program will range from $10,000 to $250,000, with terms of up to five years. The program also provides small businesses access to supplementary resources from Lendistry, including one-on-one consulting, webinars, and on-demand educational classes.

Symetra

Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work have recognized Symetra as one of the 2022 Best Workplaces for Women. The ranking is based on analysis of confidential survey feedback representing over 7 million employees from Great Place to Work-certified organizations across the United States. The Best Workplaces for Women selects winners based on how fairly women say they're treated at their workplace. Great Place to Work measures the differences in women's survey responses with those of their peers and assesses the impact of demographics and roles on the quality and consistency of women's experiences. Led by CEO Margaret Meister and a gender-balanced senior leadership team, Symetra was certified by Great Place to Work earlier this year, with 90% of employees saying it's a great place to work. To determine the Best Workplaces for Women, Great Place to Work analyzed the survey responses of over 640,000 women who work for Great Place to Work-certified companies that employ at least 50 women. Companies must also have at least 20% of non-executive managers who are women, and at least one executive who's a woman. Symetra is a diversified financial services company based in Bellevue.