— Jacob Sullivan is now chief product officer at Faculty, a London-based company that builds artificial intelligence systems.
Sullivan was previously head of product for the AI DevOps group at Amazon Web Services, where he led teams helping customers build and manage cloud-based applications. He was also a co-founder of Seattle horse surveillance startup Magic AI, which relied on computer vision and machine learning to keep an eye on horses in their stalls; the startup raised $1.2 million in seed funding but later shut down.
Sullivan also spent more than nine years at Bellevue, Wash.-based Intellectual Ventures, a global invention business, most recently as director of corporate strategy and investment. He was also founder and CEO of i3D, which enhanced the interconnectivity of web platforms with the virtual 3D world of the product Second Life, and was an engineer at Redmond, Wash.-based Data I/O.
Sullivan will work on Faculty’s decision intelligence product, Frontier, which is used by the National Health Service in Wales to help manage patient discharge planning. He will relocate from Seattle to London.
— The Washington, D.C.-based $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, launched by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, appointed Paul Bodnar to help lead programs on climate finance, industry and diplomacy. Bodnar is currently a managing director at BlackRock, where he leads sustainability policy and engagement, and will start his new job in April.
Bodnar was previously chief strategy officer at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), where he founded its Center for Climate-Aligned Finance. He also served in the Obama White House as special assistant to the president and senior director for energy and climate change and as a director at the National Security Council. Bodnar also served at the U.S. State Department as lead negotiator for climate finance.
The Earth Fund was launched by Bezos in February 2020 and issued its first grants totaling $791 million nine months later. The fund has also pledged $1 billion for sea and land conservation and $2 billion for land restoration and food production, among other efforts. The fund is led by Andrew Steer, the former head of the World Resources Institute.
— Edwin Miller was appointed CEO of Seattle-based advertising analytics company Marchex. Russell Horowitz and Michael Arends have stepped down as co-CEOs; Horowitz will remain with the company as board chairman and Arends will be vice chairman.
Miller was previously an operating executive with private equity firm Gemspring Capital. He also served as CEO of IT solutions company Astreya and of Everest Software, which was sold to Versata. Prior to that, he was CEO of InfoData Systems, which was acquired by McDonald Bradley.
Marchex chief operating officer Ryan Polley now also has the additional role of president.
— The National Academy of Engineering elected more than 100 new members, including several linked to the Pacific Northwest.
- Recently-retired Tableau technical fellow Jock Mackinlay, for computational data visualization and information visualization.
- Xuedong Huang, chief technology officer of Azure AI at Microsoft, for speech and language technologies and products including the development of cloud-based intelligent systems.
- David Huang, associate director of the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, for optical imaging technologies that changed diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases.
- Gerard Medioni, Amazon vice president and distinguished scientist, was recognized for contributions to computer vision and its consumer-facing applications. He is also a professor at the University of Southern California.
- University of British Columbia professor David Dreisinger, for hydrometallurgical processes (involving obtaining metal from ores) and their transfer to industry.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Global Health nonprofit PATH announced that Kammerle Schneider will become chief of programs and innovation. Schneider is currently leading PATH’s malaria and neglected tropical diseases program and its center for malaria control and elimination.
- Yakima, Wash.-based Buffy Alegria is stepping down from her role as managing partner of SteelSky Ventures, a venture capital firm that announced an inaugural $72 million fund last year to invest in women’s health.
- Rupert Vessey will retire as president of research and early development at Bristol Myers Squibb, which employs more than 1,400 people in the Seattle area. Vessey was previously president of research and early development at Celgene, which bought Seattle’s Juno Therapeutics and was later acquired by BMS. BMS’ research organization will report to BMS executive Robert Plenge.
- Bavan Holloway, a retired Boeing executive, notified T-Mobile that she will not stand for re-election to the company’s board of directors in 2023, and will step down from the board and its audit committee.
- DreamBox Learning, which sells software to K-12 schools, appointed Carey Wright, the former state superintendent of education for Mississippi, to its board of directors.
- Mark Groudine is becoming a professor emeritus to cap off a 40-year career at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that included several leadership roles. “He poured his life into this place,” said colleague Mark Roth in a Fred Hutch post. Fred Hutch geneticist Linda Breeden, known for her work on cell division, also became an emeritus, and statistician Ross Prentice, who led the landmark U.S.-wide Women’s Health Initiative study, retired.
- Sonya Cunningham is now director of diversity programs in engineering at Cornell University. Cunningham was previously executive director of the University of Washington’s STARS program, which supports STEM students from low-income and underserved backgrounds.
- Fusion power company Helion Energy promoted Nicholas Lima to vice president of engineering from director of engineering. Lima previously spent six years at SpaceX, most recently as manager of starship build engineering, and was also a nuclear reactor operator at MIT.
- Vancouver, Wash.-based biotech company Absci expanded its scientific advisory board with three new members: University of Oslo systems immunologist Victor Greiff; MIT professor Timothy Lu, a member of the MIT Synthetic Biology Center; and Hubert Trübel, a former Bayer executive who is currently chief medical officer and head of clinical development at anti-microbial developer AiCuris.
- E-commerce company Emplicit, which supports companies that sell goods on Amazon marketplace, hired Georgette Moe as senior director of client strategy and Sean Morris as head of international client expansion.
