— Longtime Pacific Northwest executive and entrepreneur Kelly Smith is now chief digital officer at Athletic Greens, a nutritional supplement beverage company. The company raised $115 million in funding in January at a valuation above $1 billion.
Smith was previously chief digital officer and chief information officer at Hagerty, a classic car insurer that went public last year in a SPAC deal valuing the company at more than $3 billion. Smith also previously was chief digital officer of MGM Resorts International and helped lead Starbucks’ digital and mobile app expansion from 2014 to 2017, most recently as its vice president of global digital products.
Smith founded several Seattle startups, including RocketVox (sold to ThePlatform), ImageKind (sold to CafePress) and Zapd (sold to RealSelf). He now lives in Idaho. Related: Q&A with Kelly Smith, startup founder and ex-Starbucks VP leading digital transformation at car company Hagerty
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Amazon Studios hired Sue Kroll as its head of marketing. The former Warner Bros. executive recently led the rollout of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings spinoff series The Rings of Power as a marketing consultant.
- Expedia Group elected Henrique Dubugras, founder and co-CEO of Brex, to its board of directors, following the resignation of Susan Athey this summer.
- Zoe Cat is the new livestream community manager for Microsoft’s Xbox. She is a former Fandom community manager and Twitch streamer.
- CurvaFix, which markets medical devices to repair fractures in curved bones, added three new members to its surgeon advisor board: Samir Mehta, Maria Rommens and G. Karl Van Osten, III.
- Nori, a Seattle startup that sells carbon credits to offset emissions, hired David Betz as head of brand marketing and communications. Betz was previously at law firm Fenwick & West and is a former creative director at Microsoft.
- Parisa Sadrzadeh is now senior vice president, product and technology for small- to medium-sized businesses at global logistics platform Flexport. She was previously at Amazon, most recently as vice president for the worldwide delivery service partner program.
- Bellevue College has two new members on its board of trustees: Pradnya Desh, a former diplomat and CEO of contract generation software platform Advocat AI, and Conor O’Meara, a Bellevue College student.
