— Sonia Jain, formerly CFO from Cars.com, will join Seattle startup Convoy as its new chief financial officer.
Jain served as CFO of Cars.com since 2020 and previously spent 10 years at Redbox/Outerwall. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School.
Convoy, backed by the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff and others, operates a digital freight network that matches shippers with truck drivers. Founded in 2015, Convoy currently has 1,300 employees.
Jain replaces Mark Okerstrom, president and COO who was serving as acting CFO since December 2020. Jain will report to Okerstrom, the former Expedia CEO who joined Convoy in August 2020.
— James Phillips, former president of Microsoft’s Digital Transformation Platform Group, joined payment processing giant Stripe as president of financial services.
Phillips has more than 10 years of leadership experience at Microsoft and most recently led its 15,000-person Digital Transformation Group. He also previously led three startups, including Couchbase. Phillips is currently a board member at F5 and joined Madrona Venture Group in January as strategic director.
San Francisco-based Stripe is currently valued at $115 billion and has 7,000 employees. It opened a Seattle office in 2017.
“James brings a rare mix of experience as a software engineer, repeat entrepreneur, and experienced enterprise leader,” said Stripe CEO Patrick Collison in a statement.
— Providence named Sara Vaezy as its executive vice president and chief digital officer leading the Digital Innovation Group.
Vaezy replaces Aaron Martin, who recently returned to Amazon as vice president of health.
Vaezy joined Providence in 2017 and was most recently a senior vice president helping lead the health nonprofit’s digital efforts. She will also now serve on the organization’s executive council.
The Digital Innovation Group oversees Providence’s internal startup incubator and helps establish digital-related partnerships.
Providence also announced that Shweta Ponnappa was promoted to chief marketing and digital experience officer.
— Rohit Wad, former Microsoft corporate vice president, joined cryptocurrency marketplace Binance as chief technology officer.
Wad spent more than 20 years at Microsoft and previously worked at Meta, helping the social media giant grow its Seattle engineering office. He also spent a year-and-a-half at Google as an engineering director.
Founded in 2017, Binance is the largest global cryptocurrency exchange. Its U.S. affiliate Binance.US recently raised more than $200 million at a $4.5 billion valuation.
— Mina Yoo, a Seattle entrepreneur who recently sold her gear-holding gadget Heroclip to Gear Aid, joined the Seattle outdoor retailer as entrepreneur-in-residence.
REI recently launched a $30 million venture fund and accelerator program called Path Ahead Ventures to invest in diverse founders.
“It is so exciting to me that I will be able to use my experiences as a startup operator, my passion for the outdoors, my love of mentoring and my background as an entrepreneur professor to contribute to this game-changing venture,” Yoo wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Yoo, a Ph.D. former professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Washington, founded Lulabop and her Heroclip product in 2015. The hardware, originally called the Qliplet, is part carabiner and part utility hook and was designed to hold and hang gear for everyone from outdoor enthusiasts to garage re-organizers.
Yoo raised about $2 million for Heroclip and sold more than 1 million units worldwide.
