— Seattle tech leader Lauren Sato joined Seattle hardware startup studio Conduit Venture Labs as an entrepreneur-in-residence. The former CEO of Ada Developers Academy said she will focus on Conduit’s health and performance vertical.
“Ada was at a transitional point given the dramatic contraction in the tech talent market, and I am a builder/growth stage leader,” Sato told GeekWire. “So, realigning my skillset to space where I can add a lot of value that I also happen to be passionate about was a natural move.”
Sato could not share details about particular projects she is currently working on, but she added that her personal area of expertise is around knee injuries and specifically their impact on female athletes.
Sato, who is also part of the team bringing the 2026 FIFA World Cup to Seattle, pointed to the number of athletes in the Women’s World Cup who missed the tournament this summer due to ACL injuries as a focus area.
“As a former college soccer and track athlete who was trained like a small man, it has always been clear to me that there is room for significant growth in how we develop and address the needs of female athletes,” she said.
Conduit Venture Labs, founded last year by Amish Patel and Susan Paley, is a new startup studio in Seattle that aims to create a portfolio of hardware companies in areas including health and fitness tech. Patel previously held tech roles at fitness wearables maker Katalyst and high-tech helmet manufacturer Vicis.
“Conduit is unique in that hardware is an incredibly difficult space to get into as a standalone founder,” Sato said. “Prototyping alone sidelines most hardware founders. So, access to the seasoned team and ecosystem of production support Conduit has assembled is going to be a game changer.”
— The Riveter co-CEO Heather Carter is stepping down from her role as co-CEO of the women-focused professional network and mentorship company. Amy Sterner Nelson, who founded the company in Seattle in 2017, will again be the sole CEO of the 5-person startup. Carter is launching Venture Vitamin, a startup consulting firm with a venture capital arm, and will remain as advisor to The Riveter. She previously founded a hotel co-working startup that The Riveter acquired.
— Startup accelerator Techstars Seattle announced four new entrepreneurs in residence joining its team in October:
- Arean Van Veelan was named CTO-in-residence. He is the co-founder and founding CTO of OfferUp, the Bellevue, Wash.-based mobile marketplace company. Veelan is an active advisor and investor in the Seattle startup ecosystem.
- Bill Bryant was named investor-in-residence. The Seattle tech vet is a general partner at Threshold Ventures and a founder of a number of companies including Airworks and Medio Systems.
- Chris Pitchford was named chief revenue officer-in-residence. He is co-founder and CEO of a startup in stealth mode. Pitchford previously held roles as CRO at VComply and was VP of sales at Ally, a Seattle collaboration software startup acquired by Microsoft in 2021.
- Yifan Zhang was named CEO-in-residence. A Harvard university graduate, she is the VP of affordability and innovation at homebuying company Flyhomes. She previously was CEO and co-founder of Seattle real estate tech company Loftium, which was acquired in February.
— Starbucks announced Wednesday former CEO Howard Schultz will retire from the coffee giant’s board of directors. In March, he stepped down from his position as interim CEO to hand over the reins to current CEO Laxman Narasimhan.
— Cynthia Randall was promoted to deputy general counsel and head of litigation at Microsoft. She has been at the Redmond, Wash. tech giant for nearly a decade in various general counsel roles.
— Craig Sadowski joined Seattle AI contract management startup Lexion as vice president of finance. He was most recently VP of finance at cloud automation startup SkyKick. Prior to that, Sadowski was director of financial planning and analysis at Seattle-based sales tech company Outreach.
—Britt Stromberg was hired as CMO at Seattle menopause health startup Gennev. She previously was founder and editor-in-chief at Underwire, which provided part-time CMO services for women’s health and wellness companies.
— Randa Sbeity was hired by Seattle startup Humanly as senior engineering manager. She previously served as senior engineering manager at BetterUp, which sells virtual professional coaching services to enterprises.
— Kirkland, Wash.-based cloud software company Acumatica appointed Jeff Smits as chief information officer. He previously was CTO at Prime Trust, a provider of financial infrastructure APIs for fintech and digital asset companies.
—Seattle mentoring software company Chronus announced it named David Satterwhite as CEO. He previously spent five years as chief revenue officer at UserTesting, a video-based human insights company that was acquired last year by private equity firms Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners.
— Annie Pankiewicz will join Seattle elderly mental health startup Rippl Care as senior business development manager. She most recently served as senior external relations liaison at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
— Seattle-area recruitment platform Crelate promoted Kortney Harmon to director of industry relations. She previously was staffing and recruiting industry principal. Harmon is host of the Full Desk Experience, a podcast about staffing and recruiting.
