— Ziad Ismail is now chief operating officer of Xembly, a Seattle startup that offers an artificial intelligence “chief of staff” designed to automate tedious tasks such as meeting notes, scheduling, to-do lists and more.
Ismail was previously chief operating officer of H1, a New York City-based healthcare data company. Prior to H1, he worked for more than five years at Seattle-based logistics company Convoy, where he was chief product officer.
Ismail also worked with Xembly founder and CEO Pete Christothoulou at Seattle conversational analytics company Marchex, founded and previously led by Christothoulou. Ismail was chief product officer at Marchex, and is also a veteran of Microsoft, where he was director of product management for Internet Explorer. He is on Xembly’s board.
— Jennifer Sullo joined corporate strategy and climate investing firm Earth Finance as managing director of asset management and investing solutions. Sullo previously worked more than nine years at Goldman Sachs, most recently as global head of sustainable investing solutions, and was a vice president at J.P. Morgan. She also worked for ING and GE.
Earth Finance raised $14 million and was launched earlier this year by Reuven Carlyle, who recently retired from the Washington state Senate. The other two founding partners are investment executive Bryan Weeks, who serves as CEO, and climate strategy expert Garrett Kephart, who is president of the firm.
— Aaron Bird is now CEO of Inflection.io, the Seattle marketing startup he co-founded more than two years ago. Bird was formerly founder and CEO of Bizible, which was acquired by marketing automation company Marketo in 2018. Dave Rigotti stepped down as Inflection CEO and is now heading marketing at the startup. Rigotti is a Bizible alum and Inflection co-founder.
— Hillsboro, Ore.-based hardware company MTI promoted Allen Auchenpaugh to CEO, from VP of global services. Before joining MTI, Auchenpaugh held leadership roles at Samsung, Lynx Innovation, Apple and Beats by Dr. Dre. Mary Jesse stepped down after almost three years as CEO and is now chairman of the board.
— Rob Wilk, previously global head of advertising at Microsoft, joined Snapchat parent company Snap. At Snap, Wilk will serve as first president of Americas, heading sales across the U.S., Canada and Latin America, Variety reported. Wilk also was formerly vice president of sales at location data company Foursquare. He also worked at Yahoo and Chacha Mobile.
— Seattle marketing software company Banzai hired Inman Breaux as CEO for Hyros, an Austin-based marketing optimization startup it is acquiring. Breaux was previously CEO of AirNow media and co-founded Airpush, a mobile advertising technology company acquired by Appscatter in 2020.
Banzai struck a deal to acquire Hyros for $110 million as part of Banzai’s merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), announced in December. After the merger is complete, the combined public company will have a post-deal enterprise value of $380 million.
— Catherine Buell is stepping down as director of Amazon’s housing equity fund, the Washington Business Journal reported.
Buell has worked for Amazon for close to three years, leading its efforts to support moderate- to low-income housing with loans and grants in the Seattle area, Washington, D.C. and Nashville. She was previously vice president of policy and programs at the Washington, D.C. nonprofit Greater Washington Partnership, and president and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority.
Senthil Sankaran, a principal for Amazon’s housing equity fund, will serve as interim head of the Amazon program.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Seattle startup Glue, previously known as Mystery, hired former Lattice senior manager Riki Newton as head of sales.
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory promoted Joel Duling to associate laboratory director for operational systems, where he will guide PNNL’s $1.2 billion campus development plan and its effort to achieve net-zero emissions.
- Carter Rabasa is joining San Francisco-based notification management platform Courier as head of developer relations. Rabasa is an angel investor and former product manager at Twilio.
- Christopher Bond was promoted to chief scientific officer of Notch Therapeutics, which is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. and has a location in Seattle.
- Bill pay software startup Doxo hired Michael Smith as vice president of provider payment services. He moves from business spend management platform Coupa Software.
