Oct 14, 2022

Summit Bank

Moreland

Jenny Bennett, market president for Summit Bank, announced that Megan Moreland has joined the Eugene & Springfield Lending team as a business client advisor. Moreland is a native of Alaska and comes to Summit from SELCO Community Credit Union, where she had eight years of experience in commercial banking. Prior to SELCO, she was a personal banker with Chase Bank for three years. Moreland graduated from the University of Oregon. She serves on the board of directors of Kids FIRST, the Springfield Twin Rivers Rotary Club, and is a past board member of the Eugene Active 2030 Club. Summit Bank has offices in Eugene, Central Oregon, and downtown Portland.

SirionLabs

Seattle-based SirionLabs, a global provider of AI-powered contract lifecycle management, announced the expansion of its Customer Success team as it positions itself to scale operations for its accelerated growth plans following its recent infusion of $85 million in funding. The new members of the executive team will report directly to Sirion COO Madhukar Yarra. Naveen Mehta has come on board as senior vice president and will be responsible for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) portfolio growth. Mehta has 25 years of experience spanning technology, product and business operations. Most recently he was vice president and head of sales for Europe and Asia at Conduent. Manish Chhabra joins Sirion as vice president. He brings experience as a global leader in customer success and analytics at organizations including Sprinklr, Amazon, Dell and Accenture. Stephen Brickley joins as vice president for key accounts in North America. Brickley is a growth-oriented SaaS executive with over 20 years of experience leading customer success teams in privately funded enterprise SaaS companies, including iRise and Blueprint Software Systems. Sirion also brought in key members to both its business strategy and its marketing teams. Executive veteran Gordon Thompson has come on board as executive vice president of pre-sales & business strategy. Thompson brings more than 25 years of experience in enterprise software and SaaS applications, most recently as senior vice president of pre-sales & business transformation at Mindtickle. Spearheading the company's global marketing initiative, Hiro Notaney joined Sirion earlier this year as chief marketing officer. Notaney has over twenty years of experience with industry leaders such as Oracle and Deloitte, and more than five in contract management.

Building Transparency

Building Transparency announced a new influx of pilot partners and that Stacy Smedley is joining the organization full-time as executive director. Building Transparency's latest pilot partners are in the manufacturing and architecture, engineering, and construction sectors and are committed to material transparency and clean procurement. Building Transparency's latest partners include: American Wood Council, Softwood Lumber Board, The Tile Council of North America, TK Elevator and WoodWorks. As partners, these organizations are driving the continued support and development of EC3, a tool that allows benchmarking, assessment, and reductions in embodied carbon and focuses on the upfront supply chain emissions of construction materials. The partnership enables companies to support material transparency, while also improving carbon accounting efforts to make it easier to set and achieve emission reduction targets. Prior to serving in a full-time capacity, Smedley served in two roles, her position at Building Transparency and as senior sustainability director at Skanska, one of the companies responsible for co-conceiving, funding and piloting the EC3 tool. In addition, Steve Clem, senior vice president of project planning services and head of green function at Skanska, will join Building Transparency as a board member and treasurer. Building Transparency is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides open access data and tools that support action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon's role in climate change. Formed in 2020, Building Transparency is headquartered in Seattle.

Oct 13, 2022

Wizards remains in Renton

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Several recent office reports from various brokers agree that Wizards of the Coast is moving its headquarters in Renton, where the game company was founded 32 years ago. It has leased 110,947 square feet at Southport, representing the biggest tenant signed there to date. Landlord Seco Development confirmed the lease last month with Puget Sound Business Journal; CBRE brokers the space for Seco. Wizard's many popular titles include Dungeons & Dragons and Magic, the Gathering. Its currently based in the old Landmark office park a little south of Interstate 405. Based on that old lease, it may be shedding a little space, but it also has 28,000 square feet in Bellevue's Eastgate Office Park.

BH Properties

McLaughlin

BH Properties recently announced that Hughes McLaughlin has joined the firm as managing director. He'll be tasked with leading acquisitions in the Pacific Northwest, with an emphasis on value-add deals and opportunistic real estate. He makes the move from Cushman & Wakefield. He's a 20-year veteran in our market. He said in a statement, “My role is to find fundamentally strong real estate assets that are suffering from today's market dislocation. One of the things that attracted me to BH is that they are self-funded and require little to no leverage to close on even the most complex transactions. This also allows us to deploy capital in scenarios where traditional joint ventures wouldn't.” BH is based in Santa Monica, Calif. and has an office in Seattle. The privately held firm now has about 100 properties under management, which total about 10 million square feet.

Brokers both bearish and bullish?

Beddard

Nov. 16 marks the next NAIOP monthly breakfast, to be held at Hyatt Regency Seattle at 8 a.m. The panel discussion will consist of office brokers trying to forecast a very cloudy 2023 ahead. Interest rates, work-from-home, the ascendancy of industrial and life science, the cratering of office and the durability of apartments will all likely enter into the discussion. Alison Beddard of Cushman & Wakefield will moderate the discussion among CBRE's Laura Ford, Thad Mallory of Newmark and Chris Moe of Kidder Mathews. Details and registration: naiopwa.org.

Orchard sprouts downtown

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As traditional office leases are decreasing in size and duration, hybrid work and co-work spaces are picking up some of the slack. Thus, JLL is expanding its Orchard Workspace by JLL platform, it recently announced. That expansion, marking its second location in the U.S. after Brooklyn, recently opened with 35,000 square feet on two floors at Westlake Tower, at 1601 Fifth Ave., overlooking the monorail. Jacob Bates, the head of Flex by JLL, said in a statement, “We are excited to activate the Seattle location and add the space to JLL's growing network of flex locations around the world. With hybrid work, flex is becoming a significant part of employers' flexible work strategies, and our new Seattle location serves to effectively implement these plans.”

F5

Budnik

F5 appointed Marianne Budnik to its board of directors. Budnik has extensive marketing and cybersecurity expertise, as well as more than 25 years of operating experience in the technology sector. Budnik currently serves as chief marketing officer for Talon Cyber Security. Previously, she served as chief marketing officer for CrowdStrike, where she also oversaw the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Budnik's prior roles include chief marketing officer for CyberArk, as well as leadership roles with SimpliVity, Acme Packet, CA Technologies, and EMC Corp. Budnik earned an M.B.A. from Boston University and currently serves on the board of directors for Cerence, Inc. With Budnik's appointment, F5's board expands to 12 members, 11 of whom are independent. Headquartered in Seattle, F5 is a multi-cloud application services and security company.

The Beer Institute

Crawford

The Beer Institute, one of the nation's oldest trade associations representing brewers, beer importers and beer industry suppliers, appointed Brian Crawford as president and chief executive officer of the trade association. Crawford joins the Beer Institute from the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), where he is executive vice president of government affairs. The position of president and chief executive officer has been vacant since May, after the departure of Jim McGreevy. Celebrating its 160th anniversary, Crawford will lead and represent the Beer Institute before lawmakers, regulators, news media and in public forums. Crawford came to AHLA following eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives, having served five as chief of staff to U.S. Congressman Tom Rooney. He previously served as the deputy chief of staff for Florida Congressman Ric Keller, and held senior roles in other national trade associations.

Genuine Auto Glass

Safelite Group, owner of Safelite AutoGlass, announced an agreement to acquire the assets of Genuine Auto Glass in Seattle. Genuine Auto Glass will leverage Safelite's operational systems, safety system recalibration expertise, distribution network, global purchasing power and insurance and commercial relationships. Safelite Group is a vehicle glass and claims management service organization based in Columbus, Ohio, and operates facilities in 50 states. The company, which has been in business since 1947, includes Safelite AutoGlass and Safelite Solutions, which offers fleet and insurance claims management services for vehicle glass and other claims. The company employs over 16,000 people throughout the United States.

Itron

Liberty Lake-based Itron appointed Mary Hemmingsen to its board of directors. Hemmingsen brings more than 30 years of expertise in finance, asset management, project delivery, business development and governance. Since 2017, she has served in a variety of executive advisory roles for energy industry organizations as well as board roles. From 2013 to 2017, Hemmingsen was a global partner and gas, power and utilities industry lead at KPMG. Previously, she held senior executive positions in business and project development within the power and utilities group at Brookfield, a global asset management company, and several executive and corporate finance positions at BC Hydro Power Authority. Itron enables utilities and cities to deliver infrastructure solutions to communities in more than 100 countries.