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Rob Greer, CEO of ExtraHop. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Rob Greer is now CEO of Seattle cybersecurity company ExtraHop.
Greer is ExtraHop’s third CEO since Patrick Dennis took the helm in February 2022. He was followed by Greg Clark, who became chief executive in October 2023. Clark has moved to the role of executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.
ExtraHop was founded in 2007 and acquired by private equity firms Bain Capital and Crosspoint Capital Partners in a $900 million deal in June 2021. One year ago, the company announced $100 million in new funding from existing investors and appointed new chief revenue and product officers.
Greer was previously general manager of Broadcom’s Enterprise Security Group Division. Past roles at network security companies include Forescout Technologies, Hewlett-Packard and others. He is also an operating partner at Crosspoint.
Gates Foundation logo.
— Alex Reid is rejoining the Gates Foundation as its chief communications officer and part of the executive leadership team. Reid was most recently CCO for three years at Gates Ventures, the private office for Bill Gates.
Reid previously worked for the Seattle-based foundation for nearly a decade, leaving in 2019 as head of global campaigns. The role included leading the organization’s Goalkeepers campaign, which aimed to accelerate action on global goals.
“As we approach the foundation’s 25th anniversary, I am confident Alex’s experience, creativity, and energy will build upon the momentum of the division while charting a bold course into the next phase of our organization,” said Mark Suzman, Gates Foundation CEO, on LinkedIn.
This week, the foundation launched its rebranded logo that strips “Bill and Melinda” from its name — a move that follows Melinda French Gates’ decision last year to step down as chair of the organization. It also announced its largest annual budget ever: $8.74 billion.
Former CCO Susan Byrnes left the foundation earlier this month after working in communications roles at the organization for roughly 15 years.
June Yoshinari Davis, next month will become chief people officer at the Gates Foundation. (LinkedIn Photo)
— June Yoshinari Davis, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officer at the Gates Foundation, will next month become its chief people officer. The executive leadership team role combines DEI and human resources responsibilities.
Davis has been at the foundation for five years, previously serving as an HR leader at Cargill.
The foundation’s former chief HR officer, Sonia Vora, is leaving the organization, which she joined in 2019. Vora held her C-suite title for two years.
— After nearly 20 years at Amazon, Thomas George is now co-founder and executive vice president of enterprise AI at CreatorsAGI.
Joseph Sirosh, a former Microsoft VP who was most recently at Amazon leading search and Alexa efforts, launched CreatorsAGI last year. The Bellevue, Wash., startup is building technology to let creators build their own conversational AI agents.
“The pace of innovation at CreatorsAGI is exhilarating! Our team is already collaborating with a leading SaaS Enterprise client,” George enthused on LinkedIn.
George’s most recent Amazon role was a director with Amazon Ads.
— Kurt DelBene, a former Microsoft executive vice president, is leaving his post with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. For three years, DelBene served as the department’s assistant secretary for the Office of Information and Technology and CIO.
“In the past several years, we’ve ‘upped our game’ across all areas of systems development and operations, defining and embracing what it means to be world class at IT delivery,” DelBene wrote on LinkedIn.
DelBene was at Microsoft for close to three decades. He joined in 1992 and was president of the Office division for 22 years. He left the company in 2013 and served as a senior advisor with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, assisting with the role out of the Affordable Care Act’s website. He briefly was a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group, then returned to Microsoft in 2015, retiring six year later.
— Siteimprove CEO Shane Paladin left his role at the Bellevue, Wash., marketing company, effective today. The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported the news, and said Siteimprove’s board is looking for a permanent replacement. Paladin served as chief executive for more than three years. Chief Financial Officer Martin Fitzpatrick will serve as the company’s interim CEO.
— Julie Sandler, co-founder and general partner at Pioneer Square Labs, is now chair of the board of directors for the Washington Roundtable, a nonprofit organization comprised of company executives who work to impact public policy. Sandler has served on the business roundtable for nine years.
Other new board leaders include:
Vice chair Jeff Roe, president and CEO of Premera Blue Cross.
Secretary/treasurer Kerri Schroeder, JPMorganChase’s Pacific Northwest regional chair and regional manager of middle market banking.
The Washington Roundtable also announced five new board members: Brian Marlow of KeyBank; Matt Oppenheimer of Remitly; Uffe Ostergaard of Carrix/SSA Marine; Stephanie Pope of Boeing; and Heather Rosentrater of Avista.
Thanh Pham, founding engineer at Casium. (Casium Photo)
— Former Meta software engineer Thanh Pham joined Seattle startup Casium as founding engineer. Pham was at Meta for four years where he worked on ad products called Benchmarking and Attribution that help advertisers hone their campaigns and provide performance metrics.
Casium spun out of the AI2 Incubator and brings artificial intelligence to bear on immigration applications by businesses seeking to hire talented foreign workers and for founders creating startups.
— The next post for Yejin Choi — a former star professor at the University of Washington and researcher at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) in Seattle — is now known.
Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI announced that Choi is the Dieter Schwartz Foundation HAI Professor, a professor of computer science, and a Stanford HAI senior fellow. Choi, who received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” in 2022, will continue working on “Common Sense AI” and the shift from large language models to small language models. She’s also a senior director at NVIDIA.
— Vancouver, Wash., sales and marketing company ZoomInfo appointed Katie Rooney to its board of directors. Rooney is the chief financial officer for Maven Clinic and also on the board of Smartsheet.
— Maria Belousova, former CTO of Grubhub, is now the chief technologist for Daydream. Belousova’s Seattle-area connections include six years as a Microsoft lead engineer and founder of Davai, a social media management platform. Daydream bills itself as “a next-gen shopping platform” and has offices in New York and Kirkland, Wash.
