— Shawn Bice returned to Microsoft to serve as corporate vice president of cloud security. Bice left a general manager position at Microsoft in 2016 to become vice president of databases at Amazon.
“Security is a data problem, and I have spent most of my career building distributed data systems,” said Bice in a blog post. More recently Bice was president of products and technology at data platform company Splunk.
— Susan Athey, a professor of economics at Stanford, resigned from Expedia’s board of directors. A former consulting chief economist for Microsoft, Athey serves as an advisor or board member to multiple companies.
Athey is also the founder of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab, a Stanford effort to improve social sector organizations through digital technology and social science research. She has previously-announced plans to step down from the board of Seattle pet sitting company Rover in August.
— A pair of top Black leaders at Amazon who helped oversee the company’s e-commerce operations are departing:
- Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vice president of global customer fulfillment and a member of Amazon’s senior leadership team (S-team)
- Dave Bozeman, vice president of Amazon Transportation Services
Their departures come as Amazon reorganizes its operations organization. On Tuesday the company announced that Doug Herrington, a veteran of Amazon’s consumer business, will be promoted to the new role of CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores following the departure of top consumer exec Dave Clark. Read more here.
— Electric aircraft company magniX appointed a new chairman of the board: John Saabas, previously head of engineering and technology for Bombardier Transportation.
Saabas previously also served as an advisor to MagniX and chairman of its technical steering committee. “I am excited at taking on a bigger role at magniX at a critical stage, as we advance from product development to certification and commercialization,” said Saabas in a statement.
MagniX announced a partnership last year to develop electric commuter airplanes with Vancouver, B.C.-based Harbour Air Seaplanes and Swiss battery company H55, and recently landed $74.3 million from NASA.
Outgoing chairman Dominique Spragg will remain with the company as an advisor.
— Logistics startup Shipium is building up its leadership team. Shipium hired Shilpa Tiwari as vice president of engineering and data science, Jason Kerner as senior vice president of sales engineering, and Brian Thom as vice president of sales.
Shipium raised $27 million this spring to fuel the growth of its tools to helps e-commerce shops manage fulfillment. The startup targets mid-sized retailers that can’t afford to build out the type of software that giants such as Amazon and Walmart use to coordinate and optimize e-commerce operations.
Other personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Joseph Williams joined Infosys as a consulting partner, running their global cybersecurity strategy consulting group. He will remain in Seattle, where he was previously Seattle director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
- Randall Tau moved from Amazon Transportation Services to NEXT Trucking, where he is senior vice president of operations.
- Mike Kaplan is now vice president of business development at satellite company LeoStella. He was previously vice president of new business development for defense and space at Belcan.
