Oct 27, 2022

PCC Community Markets

Naismith

Livingston

Mallory

PCC Community Markets announced three executive hires: Chris Naismith as chief financial officer; Susan Livingston as vice president of marketing and purpose; and Michele Mallory now serves as vice president of IT. These three leaders complete the executive team that will guide PCC into the future with a newly defined three-year strategic plan under the leadership of Krish Srinivasan, who stepped into the role of president and CEO in January. Naismith has more than two decades of experience with consumer retail for both public and privately held companies. She started her career in public accounting and went on to hold CFO or senior financial roles at Walt Disney, Gap, Williams Sonoma, Microsoft and Sur La Table. Livingston's hire marks a new era for PCC, as she leads the merger of the marketing and social and environmental responsibility teams to form the co-op's first Marketing + Purpose department. She comes to PCC as a brand marketing and social impact leader with more than 25 years of cross-sector experience. She bridged from her early career in public health policy into purpose-driven brand strategy for consumer brands, including Nike and Whole Foods Market. In her new role, Livingston's focus will be optimizing private sector resources, systems, and teams to deliver scaled social impact solutions through PCC's triple bottom line business strategy. Mallory has over 20 years of technology experience across multiple industries. She will oversee all aspects of the planning, development and maintenance of PCC's information systems, technologies, and processes to support brick and mortar retail, online/digital and e-commerce. Founded in Seattle in 1953, PCC operates 16 stores in the Puget Sound area.

Leafly Holdings

Leafly Holdings, an online cannabis discovery marketplace and resource for cannabis consumers, hired Carlos Pinto as chief commercial officer. Pinto will lead Leafly's sales, marketing and content teams. As part of his role, he will manage and shape the go-to market strategy for existing and new products, oversee the sales planning process and refine the company's product strategy to increase revenue generation in both existing and new markets. Prior to joining Leafly, Pinto was chief commercial officer at Adnet Global. Before Adnet, Pinto spent two decades at Getty Images, where he managed multiple business units. Leafly is headquartered in Seattle.

Jigx

Eric Sprunk, former Nike COO, and General Mills and Bombardier board member, has joined the Jigx board of directors. During his tenure at Nike, Sprunk was known for modernizing the operations and technology groups. Additionally, he brings years of board experience across a range of retail and corporate entities. Jigx, based in the Seattle area, is a mobile application development software as a service that enables companies to build mobile applications. In addition to joining the board of directors, Sprunk invested in Jigx. His funding adds to the Series A funding previously received from FUSE.vc, with a post-money valuation of $45 million. Jigx was founded in 2020 by Adriaan van Wyk, former CEO of K2 technologies software, and Grant Dickenson.

Oct 26, 2022

Madrona

Seattle-based Madrona appointed Wei Gao as venture partner, Anna Baird as operating partner and Vivek Ramaswami as partner. Gao will help identify new investments and provide strategic and operational advice to Madrona portfolio companies. She brings over 20 years of operating leadership across product, technology and business operations. As a 16-year veteran of Amazon, she worked in increasingly senior technical leadership roles, including as technical adviser to Jeff Bezos and vice president of Amazon Grocery. She later became the COO at shared experiences platform Hopin. Baird has been a COO, CFO and CRO — most recently at Outreach.io, a sales engagement platform. Prior to Outreach, she was CFO of Livongo, senior vice president at McAfee, and partner at KPMG. Baird also serves on the SeatGeek board of directors. Ramaswami, based in the Palo Alto, California, office, joins Madrona from Steadfast Capital. Prior to Steadfast, Ramaswami was a principal at Redpoint Ventures. Madrona is a venture capital firm with over 25 years of experience investing in early-stage technology companies.

State of Washington

At the Governor's Committee on Disability Issues & Employment (GCDE) 30th Annual Governor's Employer Awards Program, six public and private employers were honored for their work recruiting, hiring, retaining and advancing workers with disabilities. Two individuals were also recognized for their commitment to improve the lives of those with disabilities. Recipients of the awards were: Walgreens in Sedro-Woolley for Youth Employer of the Year; Spectrum Studios in Kennewick for Small Nonprofit Employer of the Year; Seattle Children's Hospital for Large Nonprofit Employer of the Year; Restoration Management in Kent for Small Private Employer of the Year; JCPenney in Marysville for Medium Private Employer of the Year; and ABM Business & Industry in Seattle for Large Private Employer of the Year. The committee also honored Ivanova Smith and Mary Sabetto. Smith was awarded the Governor's Trophy in Memory of Carolyn Blair Brown. This award, named after a former GCDE member, is the highest honor given to someone with a disability who has significantly empowered people with disabilities in Washington. Sabetto was awarded the Direct Support Professional of the Year Award. Sabetto works for Washington Vocational Services, where she has helped numerous employers recognize the benefits of hiring individuals with disabilities. A panel of GCDE members, business representatives and previous award recipients selected this year's honorees. The GCDE advises the governor, Legislature, state agencies and other policy makers on issues important to people with disabilities.

Altavair

Commercial aviation finance firm Altavair announced a deal to lease 10 Airbus A330-300 aircraft to Amazon Air. The aircraft will be delivered following freighter conversion by Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH, a joint venture between ST Engineering Aerospace and Airbus. The aircraft are owned by funds and accounts managed by KKR, with Altavair acting as lease servicer. The first of the A330 freighters will be placed in service with Amazon Air in late 2023. KKR Capital Markets and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) acted as joint mandated lead arrangers, and MUFG acted as structuring agent and hedge provider in this transaction. Altavair is an asset manager focusing on the acquisition of new and used commercial aircraft for leasing to domestic and international passenger airlines and cargo operators. It maintains offices in Seattle, London, Dublin and Singapore.

Oct 25, 2022

NuScale Power

Goodnight

NuScale Power, a provider of advanced small modular nuclear reactor technology, appointed Charles “Chuck” Goodnight to its executive leadership team as vice president of sales. Goodnight will seek new business opportunities for NuScale and help lead the development and implementation of sales and marketing programs. He has extensive executive-level nuclear energy industry expertise, including serving as a partner in the Energy & Utilities practice at Arthur D. Little, a global management consultancy. Prior to that, he founded and led Goodnight Consulting for almost 20 years, serving the global electric power industry, with a focus on nuclear power generation. Founded in 2007, NuScale is headquartered in Portland.

DexCare

Seattle-based health care technology company DexCare acquired e-commerce and online merchandising technology company Womp. The company's brands, WompHealth and WompMobile, remain independent subsidiaries of DexCare. WompHealth applies online shopping technology to empower health systems to deliver intuitive digital experiences for consumers. WompMobile uses technology to convert any website into a mobile experience. Incubated at Providence, DexCare's core offering is a software platform, provided exclusively to health systems, that directs digital demand and health system capacity across all lines of care.

Betacom

Private wireless network provider Betacom announced that its Betacom 5G as a service (5GaaS) has been selected as the winner of the Industrial IoT Solution of the Year award in the Mobile Breakthrough Awards. The awards program recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global wireless and mobile market, and attracts thousands of nominations. Winning products and companies are selected based on a variety of criteria, including most innovative and technologically advanced products and services, with the ultimate goal of recognizing breakthrough solutions for each mobile technology. This recognition follows Betacom being named to the Puget Sound Business Journal's 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Bellevue, Betacom offers a fully managed private 5G network. The company has offices across the nation, including local offices in Seattle and Portland.