Dec 22, 2022

Tacoma Arts Commission

The Tacoma Arts Commission recently awarded $138,000 in Community Arts Projects funding to 27 Tacoma organizations, groups, and businesses in support of 2023 public outreach projects in the fields of culture, dance, film, literary, music, performing, visual, and cross-disciplinary arts. Funded projects include the production of six cultural and arts festivals, four hands-on visual arts workshops, three music and performing arts series, two murals, two sound art projects, two video productions, two youth education programs, one community engagement project, one cultural dance party series, one dance performance series, one film festival, one literary arts publication and workshop, and one visual art exhibit. The Community Arts Projects funding program financially supports organizations and groups producing arts-focused community projects that are inclusive, accessible, and/or address equity issues. Community Arts Projects is one of two funding programs administered by the Tacoma Arts Commission.

GolfTec

The new Golftec Tacoma is now open. The is the sixth location in the Seattle area. The new training center is located at 3815 S Steele St, Suite H in Tacoma. The location features four training bays and the latest in teaching technology. The location also features Golftec's club fitting experience, TECFIT. This golf club fitting system matches ideal clubs and shafts to your swing. Additionally, the center will have a putting green, allowing staff to provide putting lessons and fittings with TECPUTT.

Symetra

Working with regulators in the U.S., Japan and Bermuda, Symetra Financial Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Life Insurance, announced that it had established Symetra Bermuda Re Ltd. to reinsure certain risks of Symetra Life Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Symetra Financial Corporation. Symetra Bermuda Re is registered with the Bermuda Monetary Authority as a Class C insurer. On Dec. 20, 2022, Symetra Bermuda Re completed its first reinsurance transaction, reinsuring an 80% quota share of fixed deferred and fixed indexed annuities issued by Symetra Life on and after Jan. 1, 2022. Symetra will increase staffing and operations in both the U.S. and Bermuda to support the newly formed entity. Marsh Management Services (Bermuda) Ltd. will provide insurance management services and compliance support. Symetra Investment Management Company, a registered investment advisor, will act as asset manager for Symetra Bermuda Re's investment portfolio. In business since 1957, Symetra Financial Corporation is a diversified financial services company based in Bellevue.

Dec 21, 2022

City of Tacoma

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency selected the city of Tacoma to receive a total of $1 million in grants for environmental job training programs funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding is among 29 new grants awarded nationally through EPA's Brownfields Job Training Program to recruit, train and place workers for community revitalization and cleanup projects at Brownfield sites. EPA's $500,000 Brownfields Job Training grant will support the city of Tacoma's Local Employment and Apprenticeship Training Program, known as LEAP. With this new round of funding, LEAP will train 140 students and place at least 79 in local environmental jobs. Graduates of LEAP will receive 260 hours of instruction in HAZWOPER, flagger and forklift operator, asbestos and lead paint safety, and up to seven certifications. Partners include Child Care Resources of Pierce County, Clean Harbors, Clover Park Technical College, Conoco Concrete Plumbing, Department of Agriculture, Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region, NOW Environmental, Scot Eckley Landscape and Design, TCB Industrial, Walker Specialty Construction, Washington Brownfields Coalition, Workforce Central and Worksource Pierce. Since 1998, the EPA has awarded 371 Brownfields Job Training grants. With these grants, more than 20,341 individuals have completed trainings and over 15,168 individuals have been placed in careers related to land remediation and environmental health and safety.

Neurilink

AVI Systems, a global systems integrator, announced it will acquire Neurilink, a full-service audiovisual design and integration business that serves the Northwest United States with a staff of 47 in Boise and Seattle. Neurilink was launched in 2012 by founder and CEO Michael Fornander, who will continue in a leadership role with AVI Systems after the acquisition is complete. Bill Smith, who has served Neurilink as CFO, will become regional finance manager at AVI Systems. All Neurilink employees will be invited to transition to AVI Systems, joining the company and its 830 employee owners. With this acquisition, AVI will have 28 office locations in the United States.

Suquamish Tribe

The Suquamish Tribe's charitable giving is nearly $1 million so far in 2022, with most help going to non-profits, schools and first responders working within the Tribe's traditional territory. Much of this giving happens via the Tribe's charitable nonprofit, the Suquamish Foundation. In the third quarter of 2022 alone, the Suquamish Foundation donated $150,437 to charitable organizations, schools, Native American groups, event sponsorships, and civic organizations, mostly in Kitsap County. The Suquamish Foundation's total giving for the year was $530,876. The Tribe's business ventures, which operate under the Port Madison Enterprises umbrella, donated an additional $222,164 to local groups in 2022. Suquamish Tribal government donated another $210,000 to area first responders. Total funding from the Tribe's foundation, enterprises, and government totaled more than $960,000. The Suquamish Tribe's Foundation is a tribally chartered non-profit that contributes each quarter to groups that support the quality of life, environment, and culture of the central Puget Sound region. Some of the Foundation's largest ongoing gifts go to Kitsap Strong, which helps people in the Kitsap community heal from intergenerational trauma and toxic stress. The Tribe also contributes matching funds to Kitsap Great Give, as it has since the first year of the group's countywide funding campaign. The Foundation also help fund the Seattle Aquarium's planned new Ocean Pavilion, and contributed to Western Washington University's planned longhouse, which will offer a space for indigenous students and others to learn about the state's tribal nations and diverse cultures.

Dec 20, 2022

Appen Limited

as chief executive officer and president of the company, effective from no later than 30 January 2023. Ahmad will also serve as managing director. Appen's current CEO and managing director, Mark Brayan, will remain with the business until February 28, 2023 to ensure a smooth transition. Armughan brings over 25 years of global experience in the technology industry having led product, sales, and services organizations at KPMG, Dell Technologies, and Hewlett Packard in the past. He was most recently president and managing partner of digital at KPMG in Canada. Armughan will be based out of Appen's offices in North America. Appen is a global provider of data for the AI Lifecycle. Founded in 1996, Appen has customers and offices globally, and maintains its United States headquarters in Kirkland.

F5

Seattle-based F5 appointed Kara Sprague to the newly created role of chief product officer. In this role, Sprague will oversee F5's entire portfolio of multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions, with a focus on expanding SaaS offerings on the F5 Distributed Cloud Platform and enabling organizations to streamline application security and delivery operations across their complex application environments. Sprague joined F5 in 2017 to lead the Application Delivery Controller business. In her most recent role, she served as executive vice president, Application Delivery and Enterprise Product Ops, where she was responsible for the BIG-IP and NGINX product families, along with enterprise-wide product operations.

Protect AI

Protect AI, a cybersecurity company focused on the security of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, emerged from stealth with $13.5 million seed funding and its first product, NB Defense. The free product is the industry's security solution to address vulnerabilities in a core component used at the beginning of the machine learning supply chain – Jupyter Notebooks. The company was founded by a leadership team who have led AI businesses from AWS and Oracle, with track records of creating new market categories and launching successful startups in the ML space. The round was co-led by cybersecurity investors Acrew Capital and boldstart ventures. Additional investors include Knollwood Capital, Pelion Ventures, Avisio Ventures, and cybersecurity leaders Shlomo Kramer, Nir Polak and Dimitri Sirota. It was also announced that Mark Kraynak and Ed Sim joined the Protect AI Board of Directors. The privately-held company is based in Seattle, with offices in Dallas and Raleigh.