— Microsoft has named Jon Friedman as its first chief design officer. Friedman, who has been with the tech giant for more than 22 years, said the new role recognizes the challenge of innovating in an AI-dominated world where customers need products they can trust, find intuitive to use and that retain a sense of humanity.
The chief design officer role “spans boundaries, connecting design, engineering, and product to ensure that what we build comes together as a unified, human-centered experience. It exists to reduce fragmentation, increase alignment, and make innovation at scale real across the company,” Friedman wrote on LinkedIn.
The position sits within Microsoft 365, the suite of apps and services that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. Friedman will report to Ryan Roslansky, executive vice president of LinkedIn and Microsoft 365.
Friedman pointed to Microsoft’s early Copilot rollout as a cautionary tale of what happens without strong design leadership. The AI technology was added across the company’s products but “attaching it to existing experiences isn’t enough to create value,” he said, resulting in a fragmented user experience.
— Susan Loosmore has resigned from T-Mobile after more than 17 years with the Bellevue, Wash.-based telecom giant. Loosmore began her career in the wireless sector 30 years ago as a staff accountant at McCaw Cellular, the pioneering telecom acquired by AT&T. She departed T-Mobile as an executive vice president.
“A defining milestone in my career was joining the senior leadership team as a woman. It stands as a reminder that with focus, resilience, and a commitment to both hard and smart work, it can be done,” Loosmore said on LinkedIn.
Loosmore has shifted her attention to serving as a board member with Seattle Humane and National Fiduciary Trust, and is planning additional roles.
— Ian Fliflet, chief growth officer at OfferUp, is leaving the Seattle-based online marketplace after more than 12 years.
“When I started, we were a scrappy team trying to reimagine local commerce,” he said on LinkedIn, noting that the platform now has more than 20 million monthly users.
Before OfferUp, Fliflet spent more than a decade at RealNetworks, departing as director of corporate development prior to joining GameHouse. As for what’s next, he said he plans to take time with his family and “dig into an idea I’ve been excited about for a while. More to share when the time is right.”
— Seattle-based law firm Foster Garvey has made two C-suite promotions, naming Scott Flichtbeil as CEO and Andrew Randles as chief financial officer. The firm, which has additional offices on both U.S. coasts, specializes in technology, intellectual property and patents, healthcare, logistics and hospitality.
Flichtbeil previously served as chief operating officer for more than five years and as CFO before that. Randles, who is based in Portland, Ore., was previously director of finance and accounting.
— And in case you missed it, GeekWire on Friday reported on a slate of Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) researchers who recently took roles at Microsoft, joining the Superintelligence team led by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.
They include Luca Soldaini, Kyle Lo, Dirk Groeneveld, Pete Walsh, Matt Jordan and Jake Poznanski.
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