— Entrepreneur Jeff Ma is now general manager of Microsoft for Startups. Ma founded CircleLending, Citzen Sports and tenXer, all of which were acquired. He was a predictive analytics expert for ESPN and VP of analytics and data science at Twitter after the social media giant acquired tenXer. Ma was also a member of the MIT Blackjack Team.
“As a four-time founder myself, I understand and have deep empathy for the startup journey and what founders need to build a successful business. The prospect of working with startups with the incredible backdrop of Microsoft was extremely exciting,” said Ma.
— Longtime Seattle entrepreneur Ben Elowitz is back in the game with a stealthy new startup called Zeitworks. The Seattle-based startup is staying quiet for now, but its website reveals a glimpse at a potential product. The company is aiming to help customers maximize “people and time” within an organization. Read the full story.
— Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare Partners named three new entrepreneur-in-residence consultants to its Life Sciences Team; Scott Byrd, Ian Mills and Gordon McMurray. They all were previously executives at Outpost Medicine, one of the health-focused VC firm’s portfolio companies.
Byrd currently serves as chairman of the board of Acacia Pharma Group, where he previously served as president and COO. Mills was previously head of clinical development at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Europe and spent more than 15 years at Pfizer. Gordon previously held senior roles at Pfizer Global R&D.
— Former Docker CFO Brian Camposano is the founder and CEO of a new Madrona Venture Labs company called Stratify, currently in stealth-mode. The Seattle-based “startup studio” recently launched the “Founders Unite” community group. Another spinout company, Uplevel emerged from stealth mode earlier this year with $7.5 million in seed funding. Prior to joining Docker, Camposano was SVP of strategy for the SAP business network group and led corporate strategy at Concur Technologies, which SAP acquired in 2014.
— PayScale, a Seattle company that provides compensation software, hired Shelly Holt as chief people office and Jeff Bailey as chief revenue officer. Most recently, Holt was vice president of learning and development at Expedia Group.
She previously held talent and leadership development roles at SAP and Concur. Holt replaces longtime PayScale exec Stacey Klimek, who joined the company in 2009.
Bailey was SVP of sales and solution consulting at Denver, Colo.-based ServiceSource and VP of sales at JP Morgan Chase following the acquisition of startup Xign, which he joined in 2000 as director of sales.
— Seattle startup SkyKick promoted Kathryn Saducas to global vice president of managed services provider sales. Saducas is the first international member of the software company’s executive team. She is based in SkyKick’s Amsterdam office.
— Emily Cangie, a former member of Madrona Venture Group’s Create33 team, is now a senior manager of venture capital business development at Amazon Web Services. Cangie joined Create33 a year ago as director of business development after stints at several startups and The Robert Allen Group. Micah Baldwin, Create 33’s original executive director, departed in January.
— Sergeant Sean Whitcomb of the Seattle Police Department is retiring from the City of Seattle to join Sony Interactive Entertainment. Whitcomb spent 25 years with SPD and lead the department’s digital communication efforts.
“Sean’s commitment to online safety leaves behind a legacy of best practices for policing in the virtual world,” said Carmen Best, chief of Seattle Police Department.
— etailz CEO Kunal Chopra was named principal executive officer of Trans World Entertainment, the publicly traded company that acquired etailz in 2016. Last month, Trans World Entertainment raised $5.2 million for etailz and its CEO Michael Feurer stepped down.
— The Marketing Practice appointed US Managing Director Matt Harper to CEO, promoted Harmony Crawford to US managing director, and hired David Hayes as VP of client growth. The UK-based marketing agency currently has 34 employees in its Seattle office. Harper will now be based in the UK. Crawford and Hayes are based in Seattle.
Crawford joined The Marketing Agency a year ago and previously held marketing leadership roles at digital marketing firms Rational Interaction and POSSIBLE. She spent more than 13 years at The Seattle Times in audience development, business intelligence and marketing analytics roles.
Hayes spent the past nine years at agency POP with clients that included AWS, Sony Playstation, Microsoft and Intel.