Oct 11, 2022

Gordon & Rees

Drew

Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani hired Kelly Drew as a partner in the firm's Spokane and Boise offices. She joins the Commercial Litigation, Professional Liability Defense, and Employment Law practice groups. She is a litigator who practices in the areas of employment law, education law, professional liability, premises liability, catastrophic personal injuries and other general litigation matters. She defends against single-plaintiff lawsuits, class actions and administrative charges. Drew regularly advises and presents trainings for employers and educational institutions on compliance with employment and education laws. She is also an ATIXA-certified hearing officer for Title IX matters. Drew is also vice president of the board of advisors for Gonzaga University School of Law and a member of the board of directors for the non-profit charity Family Promise. Drew is admitted to practice in Washington, California and Idaho. She earned her law degree from Gonzaga University School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Gonzaga University. Founded in 1974, Gordon & Rees has offices and attorneys in all 50 states.

Shiftboard

Seattle-based Shiftboard, a provider of enterprise workforce scheduling software, hired Jennifer Kline Shernoff as vice president, customer experience and product marketing. In this role, she will spend time with customers to gain an understanding of the perceptions, expectations, and needs of Shiftboard users. Shernoff will also work closely with the customer success team. Shernoff joins the company's executive leadership team, reporting to Shiftboard's president and CEO, Sterling Wilson. Shernoff comes to Shiftboard with more than 20 years of customer experience and marketing experience at B2B and B2C technology companies. Most recently, she was senior vice president of product and design at Ada, a company that develops customer support automation software. Before Ada, Shernoff led teams responsible for go-to-market strategy and helped develop products that expanded customers' self-service options at LivePerson. She was also vice president of marketing and experience at Avvo.

Amazon

Amazon announced that it is hiring 150,000 employees throughout the United States in full-time, seasonal, and part-time roles across its operations network. Jobs in Amazon's operations network include stowing, picking, packing, sorting and shipping customer orders, and are available in hundreds of cities and towns across America. Sign-on bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 are available in select locations. While there are jobs available across the country, the states with the greatest number of available positions include Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Employees can earn, on average, more than $19 per hour based on position and location in the U.S. Interested candidates can see all the regions with open positions at http://www.amazon.com/apply.

ABC of Western Washington

Three companies recently joined the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington: TNT Building Community of Seattle; Tony's New Life Construction of Longview; and PS Contractors & Construction Management of Auburn. TNT says it's “building community by educating and teaching trades/skills and working on projects to stimulate community and sustainability for all people.” Tony's is a design and build firm working on both commercial and residential projects. PS is a full service general contractor and construction management firm with an accumulated 30 years of experience in construction, engineering and project management.

Skyline Construction

San Francisco-based Skyline Construction acquired Prevost Construction of San Diego. Skyline says this is a major step in expanding its operations, which include nine offices in California, Washington and Illinois. Prevost is known for building complex and technical life science facilities throughout the greater San Diego area, and that falls into Skyline's desire to scale this service to customers in all its markets. Skyline operates locally as Unimark Construction.

Harbor Freight Tools

California-based Harbor Freight Tools awarded $1.25 million in cash prizes to 20 teachers and their schools, with two of the five grand prize winners from southwest Washington. The grand prize winners of the Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence each received $100,000 and 15 others got $50,000 each. Local grand prize winners were Cory Torppa of Kalama High School and Bill Culver of Evergreen High School in Vancouver. Also, Mark Simmons of Springfield High School in Oregon was named a winner of $50,000. Doug Merrill of Wenatchee High School and Adam Wood of Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School were finalists in the competition.

Washington River Protection Solutions

Washington River Protection Solutions earned its sixth DOE Voluntary Protection Program Innovation Award for an innovative system used to make digging trenches safer and faster at the Hanford Site. WRPS deployed the system during a recent transfer line replacement project that required hand excavation around old equipment buried in a tank farm. The system used a conveyor belt to lift soil from trenches, decreasing the potential for injuries while increasing efficiency by over 50%. The hand-dug trenches were more than 7 feet deep and workers removed over 800 tons of soil.

Oct 07, 2022

Summit Bank

Summit Bank hired Zak Sundsten as senior vice president, business client advisor for the Central Oregon office. Sundsten brings over 25 years of commercial banking experience to Summit. His previous position was at Idaho First Bank as a commercial relationship manager. In addition, he has a wide array of lending knowledge ranging from commercial real estate, residential, commercial and industrial, and construction and consumer loans. Sundsten is a past board member of the Habitat for Humanity and current board member for the Economic Development of Central Oregon. Summit Bank has offices in Eugene, Central Oregon, and downtown Portland.

iGrafx

iGrafx, a worldwide provider of intelligent process management, has been named a Leader in Business Process Management software by tech marketplace, G2. This is the eighth quarter in a row that iGrafx has received the Leader quadrant distinction as showcased in G2's Business Process Management Grid Report. Through G2 customers reviews, iGrafx ranked higher in the market presence category than in previous reports. The G2 market presence score is a combination of more than 15 data points from G2's user reviews, publicly available information, and third-party sources. Through the acquisition of process mining specialist Logpickr and a strategic partner program including the recent addition of Zeitworks, iGrafx combines process mining and business process management with automated desktop data collection, AI, and real-time analytics. iGrafx is headquartered in Tualatin, Oregon.

Amazon

Amazon announced Amazon Catalytic Capital, a new initiative to invest $150 million in venture capital funds, accelerators, incubators, and venture studios that provide funding to entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds, primarily at the pre-seed/seed stage of venture capital funding. The company will invest in funds that focus on Black, Latino, Indigenous, women, and LGBTQIA+ founders. Amazon expects to support more than 10 funds and over 200 companies through the next year. In addition to capital, the companies in the funds' portfolios will receive mentorship from Amazon executives and gain access to resources to support their business and technical strategy. Amazon teams will also work with the startups to identify partnership and product collaboration opportunities that could accelerate their growth. Through this initiative, Amazon has invested in the following funds: Collide Capital; Elevate Future Fund; Share Ventures; and Techstars Rising Stars Fund. In turn, investors from the venture capital funds supported by Amazon have supported hundreds of underrepresented startup founders.