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Tech Moves: 2 Microsoft execs depart; Kymeta hires former CIA leader; Alaska Air names CITO

21 October 2026 at 18:51
Elizabeth Kimber. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Kymeta has appointed former CIA Deputy Director Elizabeth Kimber as chief growth officer.

Kymeta, a Redmond, Wash.-based mobile satellite communications company, is working to increase sales with the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and other organizations in national security.

Kimber had a 37-year career with the CIA, departing in 2022 as the agency’s deputy director for operations. She most recently worked as a vice president with Two Six Technologies and has served on Kymeta’s board of directors for two years.

Amaresh Siva. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Alaska Airlines has named Amaresh Siva as its first chief information technology officer. Siva joins from CVS Health and has held technology leadership roles for more than two decades at companies including Lowe’s, Target and GE Money.

“Technology touches nearly every part of how we run our airline and serve our guests, and Amaresh will bring our technology and digital teams together under one leader,” said Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska Air Group, in announcing the news.

— Vijaye Raji, founder and former CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Statsig and now OpenAI’s CTO of applications, has joined the board of Amplitude, a digital analytics and product intelligence company. OpenAI acquired Statsig last year, and Statsig and Amplitude announced a strategic partnership in May in which Amplitude would build on Statsig’s brand and customers.

“Statsig continues as a platform and brand within Amplitude,” Raji said. “Joining the board is an opportunity for me to help carry that mission forward as Amplitude and Statsig build their next chapter together.”

Here are four departures and arrivals for Microsoft leaders:

Vasu Jakkal. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Vasu Jakkal has left her role as Microsoft corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, management and privacy after more than six years. She has joined Armadin, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based cybersecurity company, as chief strategy and business officer.

Jakkal is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and previously held executive roles at FireEye and Intel. She praised Armadin’s mission, which she described as building “autonomous security to stay ahead of attackers and build a safer world for all.”

Hans Yang. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Microsoft VP Hans Yang is leaving. The Los Angeles-based leader, most recently focused on AI transformation, product strategy and growth, was formerly a general manager for Microsoft for Startups and Microsoft Learn.

“I think my next hill to climb is helping companies capture real ROI from AI,” Yang said, adding, “If you know a company that is struggling to get started with AI, or has invested but is not yet seeing meaningful value, I would welcome any introductions.”

— Venky Chandrasekharan is returning to Microsoft for the role of general manager of Windows commercial category and investments. He left the company in 2021 after 12 years and worked at Qualcomm and Acuity Brands in the interim.

“Having spent some of my most formative years at Microsoft, there’s definitely a sense of familiarity — but I’m coming back with new experiences, a broader perspective, and a lot of excitement for what’s ahead,” Chandrasekharan said.

— Meg O’Conor Bannecker has left Microsoft after two years leading communications for the company’s Washington state team. Past roles include communications leadership at NanoString Technologies, Bannecker Public Affairs and Pier 70 Ventures.

Patrick Miller. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Patrick Miller has been appointed as global division president of real estate company JLL’s technology sector. Miller joins from Snap, where he served as senior director of global workplace services. He previously oversaw real estate operations for Amazon’s Seattle-area headquarters for more than three years and has worked for Facebook and DTZ.

“I’ve spent my career on the client side … so I know exactly what it feels like to need a partner who shows up, tells you the truth, and solves real problems,” Miller said.

— DigniFi, a Bellevue, Wash.-based fintech company providing repair financing for autos, RVs, ATVs and other motorized vehicles, has named Jefim Piekarz as chief product officer. Piekarz joins from Arch, and his past employers include Skylab74, Welo, Octane and Etsy. Launched in 2012, DigniFi has facilitated more than $575 million in transactions for automotive merchants in the U.S.

— Seattle-based global logistics company Tideworks Technology has named two C-suite leaders:

  • Mark Traynor, chief product and technology officer, joins from Lynxis. He is an entrepreneur who has worked in port, rail and terminal logistics for more than 20 years.
  • Guenter Schmidmeir, chief revenue officer, joins from Avlino and has decades of maritime leadership from Germany.

— Adaptiva, a Kirkland, Wash.-based company automating software updates across computers, has named Allison Armstrong VP of product marketing. She joined from Elemica and has worked for Transmit Security, Hopin, Qualtrics, Apptio and others.

— Smarsh, a Portland, Ore.-based company providing communications data and insights, has appointed Alessandro Silva as its first chief growth officer. He joins from ACI Worldwide, and his past employers include Western Union and Carlyle Group. Silva is also a board member for Teach for America.

— Seattle-based Yoodli has named Mike Mather as chief learning advisor. The startup recently expanded from helping people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews to providing corporate training across wide-ranging skills. Mather is CLO for the accounting firm KPMG US and was previously a partner at EY, IBM and PwC.

“For most of my career, the hardest part of [learning and development] was the gap between training and the moment someone actually has to perform,” Mather said. “Yoodli closes that gap.”

— DigiStor, a company with offices in Austin, Texas, and Vancouver, Wash., that offers secure data storage products, has appointed Peter Bell to its board of directors. Bell co-founded StorageNetworks and serves as managing partner at Stowe Capital, among other roles.

— Seattle-area tech leader Jake Varghese has been promoted to chief product and technology officer for Dayforce, a Minneapolis company providing HR, payroll and related technology. He previously worked for companies including Microsoft, ServiceNow, Tanium and ConnectWise.

— The Association of Washington Business Institute has appointed Meagan Darrow as executive director. Darrow is also an adjunct professor at Evergreen State College and was most recently executive director of the American Diabetes Association. The AWB Institute is the nonprofit research and education affiliate of the association, a longtime organization advocating on behalf of its 8,000 members.

— Five Seattle-area physicians were appointed to the National Academy of Medicine:

  • Dr. Susan Stern, professor emeritus and founding chair of UW Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine
  • Dr. Elizabeth Swisher, professor in the Fred Hutch Clinical Research Division and UW Medicine’s Division of Gynecologic Oncology, as well as deputy director of the Fred Hutch/UW/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium
  • Dr. Leslie Walker, chair and professor of UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and chief academic officer at Seattle Children’s
  • Dr. Dimitri Christakis, professor in UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, pediatrician at Seattle Children’s and chief health officer with Special Olympics International
  • Dr. Christopher Longhurst, CEO of Seattle Children’s and clinical professor with UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics

Seattle-area innovators shine on Time’s ‘Best Inventions’ list, from tactile tablets to ultrasonic knives

15 October 2026 at 11:43
Innovations from Seattle startups that made Time’s Best Inventions list, clockwise from top left: Tin Can’s landline-style phone; OneCourt’s tactile tablet for low-vision sports fans; Seattle Ultrasonics chef’s knife; Yoodli’s “Create” tool. (Images via Tin Can, OneCourt, Seattle Ultrasonics, Yoodli)

Seattle-area innovators made a strong showing on Time’s 2026 Best Inventions list released Thursday, claiming spots for breakthroughs ranging from a tactile sports tablet for low-vision fans to an ultrasonic chef’s knife.

The annual roundup — featuring 300 innovations, with Apple CEO John Ternus and the new iPhone Duo gracing the cover — includes startups like Yoodli, Tin Can, and OneCourt, alongside major regional hardware operations like SpaceX’s Redmond-based Starlink team and Bellevue’s Valve.

Apple CEO John Ternus and the iPhone Duo on the cover of Time. (Time Photo)

While the main headline focused on Apple’s leadership transition and new flagship hardware, the Pacific Northwest’s outsized presence on this year’s list highlights the region’s growing influence across everything from consumer AI and assistive hardware to outdoor gear.

Among the region’s tech giants, Amazon landed two spots on the list, for both its Amazon Pharmacy Kiosk in the medical category and its voice-directed Proteus warehouse robots in logistics. But Microsoft was shut out entirely, missing a placement in both the main 300 list and special mentions.

“These are creations changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible,” Time’s editor’s wrote, adding that each contender was evaluated on key factors, including originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.

Here’s a breakdown of regional innovations honored by Time:

OneCourt (Accessibility): Developed a tactile tablet that translates real-time player and ball data into physical vibrations, allowing blind and low-vision fans to track live sports action with their fingertips.

Yoodli (Education): Recognized for its AI platform for human skills, which uses realistic AI roleplays and real-time coaching to help users build and practice workplace communication skills.

Tin Can (Parenting): Earned a spot for its landline-style home phone built specifically for kids, offering a safe way for families to stay connected without screens.

Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 (Food & Drink): Created by Modernist Cuisine alum Scott Heimendinger, this ultrasonic chef’s knife vibrates tens of thousands of times per second to slice effortlessly through food.

SpaceX Starlink V5 (Connectivity): Engineered by SpaceX’s team in Redmond, the newest internet terminal is roughly 35% smaller and 52% lighter than its predecessor, making on-the-go satellite connectivity easier to mount and deploy.

Valve Steam Machine (Entertainment & Gaming): The Bellevue-based gaming giant made the list for its latest hardware push to bring PC gaming into the living room.

NBBJ (Architecture): The legendary Seattle-founded architecture firm was recognized for its design of the Life and Mind Building at the University of Oxford.

Pebblebee Halo (Privacy & Security): Created by the Issaquah-based startup founded by former Boeing engineers, earning a special mention for its latest tracking and safety hardware.

Therm-a-Rest NeoLoft (Outdoors): Honored for its ultra-comfortable sleeping pad, designed under Seattle-based parent company Cascade Designs.

Superfeet ME3D (Sports & Fitness): Selected for its personalized 3D-printed insoles, crafted by the Ferndale, Wash.-based footwear innovation company.

Several other Pacific Northwest companies made the cut. Three Vancouver, B.C., startups earned recognition: Moment Energy for its clean energy storage made from second-life EV batteries, Glüxkind for its AI-powered self-pushing stroller, the Rosa, and Form for its Smart Swim 2 Pro real-time coaching goggles. And in Oregon, Nike secured a spot in apparel for its innovative ACG cooling running shirt.

The Oct. 26 issue of Time goes on sale on Friday.

LinkedIn just released its list of the top 10 Seattle startups: One problem, nearly half aren’t based in the region

By: John Cook
14 October 2026 at 17:42
Image via LinkedIn

Every so often, we get sucked into a list touting the top regional startups or the most robust entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Well, a startup list released today from Microsoft-owned LinkedIn — titled “The 10 companies on the rise in Seattle” — grabbed our attention, for all of the wrong reasons.

Let’s just say: We know a thing or two about Seattle-area startups around here. And so we had to do a little fact-checking.

First of all, four of the companies on LinkedIn’s list — Anthropic, Auger, Whatnot and Armada — are not even headquartered in the Seattle area.

San Francisco-based Anthropic — ranked #1 on LinkedIn’s Seattle startup list — has a growing engineering center at Dexter Yard North in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. But to think that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his team are cutting deals at the Washington Athletic Club or debating the future of AI over lattes in Kirkland is a hallucination bigger than most AI models could create.

If the LinkedIn team were studying GeekWire’s coverage, they’d also realize that #2 on their list, Auger, is not headquartered in the Seattle area, either. The AI logistics startup, co-founded by former Amazon executive Dave Clark, moved its headquarters to Dallas in August, although it maintains a Bellevue engineering center.

It keeps getting more bizarre from there. The #3 company on LinkedIn’s Seattle list is Whatnot, the heavily funded video-based shopping startup that set up an engineering center in Seattle last year, but is clearly headquartered in the Los Angeles area.

Finally, ranked #9 on the Seattle list is data center upstart Armada — a company that, according to its own LinkedIn profile, is based in San Francisco.

So, just to summarize: Three of the top Seattle startups (according to LinkedIn) have their headquarters in California, and one has its headquarters in Texas.

GeekWire columnist and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald pointed out the flaws in the list, calling it a “half-assed” effort. “For a Microsoft-owned company, you’d think they’d have better insight into where Seattle is actually located,” Fitzgerald said.

The list does include some companies that are actually based in the Seattle area.

Making the top 10 are: Bellevue-based Truveta (#4); Seattle-based Yoodli (#5); Redmond-based Worldscape (#6); Seattle-based Overland AI (#7); Seattle-based Gradial (#8); and Kent-based Stoke Space (#10).

All of those companies (except for Worldscape) are listed on the GeekWire 200, our ranking of the top 200 privately held startup companies in the Pacific Northwest. The other companies — Anthropic, Auger, Whatnot and Armada — are listed on our engineering center list.

Notably absent from LinkedIn’s Seattle list is Chainguard, which ranked #42 on LinkedIn’s accompanying report on the top 50 startups in the U.S. Chainguard is headquartered in Kirkland but is a fully remote company. The Seattle ranking counts only employees and hiring in the city, which may explain why a remote company like Chainguard didn’t make the cut.

For our purposes, given that one of the co-founders of the cybersecurity startup calls the Seattle area home, we claim it as a Seattle-area startup.

In its defense, LinkedIn describes a Seattle startup a bit differently than we do here at GeekWire.

According to its methodology, the ranking weighs four factors: employment growth, engagement with company pages, interest in job openings, and the ability to recruit talent from LinkedIn’s list of top companies. The data covers July 2025 through June 2026.

LinkedIn requires privately-held companies to be less than seven years old and headquartered in the United States to qualify for its U.S. rankings, but doesn’t require them to be headquartered in the Seattle area to make the Seattle list. All of which explains how a startup can make a list of Seattle’s top startups without actually being based in Seattle.

We have to admit, this is a new one on us.

As GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop notes: What the heck is going on, LinkedIn?

UPDATE: LinkedIn provided this statement to GeekWire:

“While companies do not need to be headquartered in Seattle to qualify, they must have at least 30 full-time employees based in the metro area. Our city lists are designed to spotlight startups gaining momentum, locally, recognizing that growing companies often have employees and operations across multiple markets. Further, the data for the city lists are reflecting employees based in that city only, versus the entire country.”

Yoodli’s next act: AI that can teach workers almost any job skill

7 October 2026 at 09:00
A portion of the Yoodli team gathers for a photo this week inside the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70, under a neon version of the startup’s logo. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Yoodli, the Seattle startup that offers AI to help people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews, is expanding to pursue a larger vision: AI that can teach people almost any skill they need on the job, and track whether they’re improving.

The company is recasting itself as the “AI platform for human skills” with the launch of new tools that create courses, teach people to use AI and software, answer employees’ questions, coach them during calls and meetings, and show managers whether the training is paying off.

One of the new tools takes the AI personas that companies build for practice sessions and puts them to work elsewhere. Loaded with a company’s own material, they can answer questions on an intranet, a partner site or a live call, handing off to humans when needed.

The move pushes Yoodli beyond practice sessions and into the much larger business of corporate training, where Workday and Microsoft’s LinkedIn are among the larger companies offering AI tools for training and coaching employees.

It also expands the potential market for the company, which counts Google, Snowflake and Databricks among its customers and has raised nearly $60 million from investors including WestBridge Capital, Neotribe, Madrona and AI House.

Yoodli co-founders Varun Puri, left, and Esha Joshi at the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Varun Puri, Yoodli’s co-founder and CEO, said the goal is to use AI to help people get better at their jobs, at a time when the technology is more often raising concerns and questions about the future of work.

“This is all about upskilling humans and believing in the human potential,” Puri said in an interview this week at the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70. “How do we help humans be the best versions of themselves and get measurably better?”

Esha Joshi, Yoodli’s co-founder and chief customer officer, said the company is taking its cues from what businesses were already starting to do: using Yoodli to teach employees new skills, beyond the situational AI “roleplays” that have fueled the company’s growth.

Many of Yoodli’s first business customers were tech companies, but the list has since expanded to include the likes of governments, pharmaceutical companies and banks.

“There’s a whole world of people that need to develop their skills,” Joshi said.

How Yoodli got here: GeekWire has followed the company almost from the start. Our first story ran five years ago today, when the startup had just spun out of what was then known as the AI2 Incubator, with an AI tool to help people improve their public speaking.

Puri had run special projects for Google co-founder Sergey Brin and worked at X, the research arm of Google parent Alphabet. Joshi spent more than four years at Apple as a software engineer and product manager, and was Yoodli’s original chief technology officer.

With its transition to AI roleplays about two years ago, Yoodli shifted to selling primarily to companies and other organizations. Google, Snowflake and Databricks use it to train sales teams, Puri said. The government of El Salvador uses it to train doctors on talking with patients, and the University of Washington uses it to prepare students for job interviews, he said.

Yoodli’s new “Create” tool builds a training program from a prompt, asking follow-up questions and drafting personas along the way. (Yoodli Image)

The company raised $13.7 million in May 2025 and another $40 million in December, in a round led by WestBridge Capital that valued it at more than $300 million.

Yoodli reported 900% revenue growth when it announced the December round. Puri declined to disclose current revenue or say whether the company is profitable, but said it isn’t actively raising money. “It’s been a very strong year,” he said.

The startup will face plenty of competition as it expands into the broader market. Tech giants Salesforce and Microsoft, for example, both offer AI roleplay coaching as part of their larger platforms.

Workday last year acquired Sana, an AI startup with a corporate learning platform. Highspot, the Seattle company that merged with rival Seismic in August, offers an AI roleplay tool, and startups including Hyperbound and Second Nature focus on sales roleplay.

Yoodli also integrates with some of them, including Workday and Highspot.

Asked what keeps Yoodli from becoming a feature in a larger company’s product, Puri cited the depth of its software, and pointed out that Google, for example, uses Yoodli to train its own teams on Gemini.

The company today: Yoodli has grown to about 100 employees, up from 25 in May 2025. Recent executive hires include:

Other executives include Josh Vitello, the chief revenue officer, who joined in April 2025 after more than 15 years at Tableau and Salesforce; and Derek Sessions, the chief technology officer since February 2023, previously an engineering manager at video software company Panopto.

Yoodli’s new offices are on the eastern side of Pier 70, sharing a building with AI House, the incubator and venture capital fund formerly known as the AI2 Incubator. Yoodli began at the incubator when it was across town near the northern shore of Lake Union.

The conference room names reflect the company’s culture. “Speakeasy” was Yoodli’s code name before launch. “PlankoClock” honors a daily ritual: at 3:45, the whole company stops to do planks. “Agnes Potts” is named for one of Yoodli’s earliest AI personas — a “customer” so tough that users wanted T-shirts saying they’d booked a call with her, Puri said.

Yoodli’s “Personas” are AI experts that companies can create and train on their own material. (Yoodli Image)

The new tools: Yoodli describes the expanded platform as five products.

  • Roleplays: The practice sessions the company is known for, in which an employee rehearses a sales call or other conversation with AI personas. They now teach as well, with an AI tutor that can explain a topic, pull up slides and take questions.
  • Personas: AI experts that companies build for practice sessions can now also answer questions on an intranet, a partner site or a live call. Yoodli has an AI version of Puri that job candidates can talk with before they interview with the real CEO.
  • Create: Builds a full training program from a single written request, in minutes instead of weeks, Yoodli says. In a demo, Puri typed a request for a course on Google’s Gemini and got back a multi-step training program.
  • Coach: A personal coach that works inside apps such as Zoom, Slack and Teams, and learns each employee’s strengths and weak spots. Puri compared it to a friend “kicking you under the table” in a meeting.
  • Measure: Reports for employees and managers on whether skills are improving, not just whether the training was completed. For sales teams, Puri said, that can mean tying training to deals closed.

Yoodli’s website lists individual plans at $8 and $20 a month, billed annually, with custom pricing for businesses depending on team size and use case.

When GeekWire visited this week, employees took a quick break from preparing for the new platform launch to gather for an impromptu team photo. They goofed around under a Yoodli sign with the type of energy you’d see at a much smaller startup.

As they headed back to their desks, I mentioned that we’d all remember this moment when the company has its IPO in 10 years. They laughed and groaned at the suggestion that it would take that long.

Editor’s note: Yoodli is a client of GeekWire’s GeekWork recruiting business.

Tech Moves: Microsoft, Amazon and Kestra promotions; Gradial names CMO; Yoodli adds VP

14 September 2026 at 10:56
Silvia Candiani. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Silvia Candiani has been named corporate vice president of Worldwide Telco & Media within the Microsoft Frontier Company, a $2.5 billion initiative launched by the tech giant in July to embed engineers inside customers to build and run AI systems. In her new role, Candiani will lead Microsoft Frontier Company’s work with some of the largest telecommunications operators and media conglomerates.

“The momentum across our industry is extraordinary, and I believe we are only at the beginning of what AI can make possible,” said Candiani, who is based in Milan.

Before joining Microsoft in 2010 as a general manager, Candiani was a marketing director for Vodafone in Italy for more than a decade.

Kevin Frey. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Kevin Frey has been appointed vice president and chief impact officer of Microsoft Elevate, the company’s philanthropic effort providing technology support, donations, sales and AI training for educational organizations and nonprofits. Frey joined from UNICEF, where he was the first CEO of Generation Unlimited, the organization’s skills and employment initiative.

Frey said he was joining Microsoft because it’s “one of the only organizations in the world with the scale, scope and influence to bend the arc of the AI-powered future we are entering.”

“I will be spending my time and energy trying to ensure that the benefits of AI are shared broadly and safely across society — by every teacher, every student and every worker — regardless of their postal code,” he added.

— And while we’re on Microsoft, Anne Linge has been promoted to director of communications for commercial and consumer experiences after nearly 10 years with the company. She previously worked in communications at Weber Shandwick and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, which has since rebranded as We.

Alexis Bateman. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Alexis Bateman has been promoted to director of global sustainability at Amazon Web Services after more than five years with the company. She was director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics for 14 years before coming to Amazon.

Her work with AWS has given her the chance to help “shape sustainability at enormous scale,” Bateman said. “AI and cloud are transforming technology and society at an unprecedented pace, creating both enormous challenges and incredible opportunities for sustainability.”

Lynn Girotto. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Gradial has appointed Lynn Girotto as chief marketing officer. In June, the Seattle startup announced $65 million in new funding for its agentic AI platform that automates enterprise marketing. The company is No. 127 on the GeekWire 200, a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.

Girotto joins from Qualtrics, where she was CMO for two years. She has previously led marketing teams at companies including Vimeo, Tableau and Getty Images, and was a senior director at Microsoft for nine years earlier in her career.

“The best marketers I know want to build ideas and customer relationships, not manage processes,” Girotto said. “Gradial is the first company I’ve seen that’s built to give them that time back.”

Kam Ghaffarian. (LinkedIn Photo)

— A Seattle-area nonprofit group known as the Fermi Explorer Mission announced that Kam Ghaffarian has joined as co-founder. Earlier this month, the organization shared its plans to send a spacecraft on an 80,000-year trip to the nearest alien star system, Alpha Centauri.

Ghaffarian is a billionaire who helped launch companies including X-energy, Axiom and Intuitive Machines. “By committing to launching a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri by 2029, we are not just pushing the boundaries of current technology; we are inspiring a new generation to look up and dream of interstellar exploration,” Ghaffarian said.

Philip Johnston, co-founder and CEO of the Fermi Explorer Mission, also leads Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud, a startup aiming to launch up to 88,000 satellites to serve as AI data centers.

Rachel Cougan. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Yoodli, the Seattle-based AI roleplay platform for enterprise training, has named Rachel Cougan vice president of human resources. Cougan previously served as a fractional HR leader through her consultancy, Possible HR. Before that, she was VP of people for Logixboard and Hiya, and also served as VP of talent for Textio.

Yoodli, which launched in 2021, has grown to more than 100 employees. The company is No. 17 on the GeekWire 200.

Daniel Finney. (LinkedIn Photo)

— Kestra Medical Technologies has promoted Daniel Finney to vice president of research and development. The Kirkland, Wash.-based company sells cardiac monitoring and therapeutic devices. It raised $202 million in its IPO in March 2025 and was nominated for Deal of the Year at this year’s GeekWire Awards.

Finney has been with Kestra since 2019. CEO Brian Webster praised his role in developing the company’s FDA-approved monitoring device, adding that his “technical depth, product experience, and demonstrated leadership positions him to guide our next phase of innovation.”

Finney succeeds Phillip Foshee, Jr., who recently retired after leading Kestra’s R&D organization for nearly a decade.

— PATH has named Dr. Jeremy Farrar chief of its Asia, Middle East and Europe regional division. Farrar, a globally recognized leader in public health and clinical medicine, will join PATH effective Oct. 1 and be based in Geneva. His past roles include assistant director-general at the World Health Organization and director of the Wellcome Trust.

PATH CEO Nikolaj Gilbert praised the appointment, and noted that Farrar “possesses deep knowledge of the realities that prevent access, the people that make health care possible, and the need for PATH’s mission of ensuring breakthrough innovations reach all who need them.”

Emily Levesque. (AAS Photo)

— American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced that University of Washington scientist Emily Levesque is the next editor in chief of the AAS journals. She will succeed Ethan Vishniac, who is stepping down from the role at the end of summer 2027 after 12 years.

“In the writing and publishing landscape we’re facing today, sharing information has never been easier, but trusting information has never been harder — which makes the AAS journals’ combination of rigorous peer review and accessible science more valuable than ever,” Levesque said.

Levesque has been an assistant astronomy professor at the UW for 11 years. She leads the massive stars research group, which studies the evolution and death of the largest and “most extreme” stars in the universe.

— The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber has added eight members to its board of trustees:

  • Deniz Anders, Nordstrom’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer
  • Reuven Carlyle, founder of Earth Finance and former state senator
  • Carl Gipson, vice president of government and community affairs for Comcast
  • Trevor Gooby, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Seattle Mariners
  • Daniel Huber, BNBuilders’ vice president of operations for the Northwest and Colorado
  • Karen Lee, CEO of Plymouth Housing
  • Holli Martinez, vice president, head of belonging, recognition and corporate responsibility for T-Mobile
  • Rajat Puri, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Premera Blue Cross

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