— Sonny Patel was hired by San Francisco-based insurance information technology company Socotra as CTO and CPO.
She spent eight years at Microsoft, working her way up from an entry-level product manager to senior program manager lead. She then led product and engineering at Amazon’s Alexa team. Most recently, Patel served as senior vice president of product and engineering at LivePerson, a publicly traded conversational artificial intelligence tools provider for enterprises.
Patel holds two graduate-level degrees: an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University.
“Sonny Patel is an outstanding and proven leader; she brings business intuition, product vision, and technology depth,” Socotra CEO Dan Woods said in a statement.
Founded in 2014, Socotra sells cloud-based tools for insurance tech companies. Its backers include Founders Fund, 8VC, Nationwide, USAA, and others.
— Seattle-area cybersecurity company Cyemptive Technologies announced that it appointed Jason Huff as COO. He most recently served as IT manager for the U.S. Air Force. Prior to that, Huff was chief information officer for NATO Special Operations Forces headquarters.
— Allison Davy was named head of marketing at PDM Automotive, a Seattle-based auto parts data platform. She previously served as associate marketing director at Deel. Before that, she was vice president of marketing at LegalPad, customer advocacy manager at Apptio, and customer loyalty events manager at Avalara.
— Nitin Rai will serve as board observer at PredictionStrike, a New York-based startup that allows users to purchase “stock” in professional athletes. Rai is managing partner at Elevate Capital, a Portland, Ore.-based venture capital firm.
