— Christopher Burger is now chief information security officer for F5, a Seattle-based networking and security giant. Burger will lead cybersecurity strategy, programs and governance.
“F5 has been at the forefront of application delivery and security for nearly three decades,” Burger said on LinkedIn, “and I’m honored to contribute to its mission of delivering and securing every app and API, anywhere.”
Burger is joining F5 from Slalom, where he was the first CISO for the Seattle-based tech and business consulting company. Burger has held security leadership roles for roughly two decades, working at Russell Investments, Clearwire and Corbis.
In announcing the new hire, F5 called out Burger’s “deep experience in navigating today’s complex security landscape.”
— Gopi Prashanth is chief AI and agentic scientist for Auger, a supply chain technology startup founded by former Amazon executive Dave Clark. The Bellevue, Wash.-based company announced a $100 million Series A round in December.
Prashanth is the co-founder of FutureForward, a startup launched in 2022 that’s bringing AI to the college application process. He was previously employed at Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Landing AI and others.
Prashanth said he wanted to take the job because of Auger’s “crystal clear and wildly ambitious mission: to rewire how businesses run by converting scattered supply chain data, tribal knowledge, and legacy workflows into a cohesive, agentic operating system.”
— Tom Daniel is retiring this fall from his role as president and CEO of the Washington Research Foundation (WRF). Daniel took the position in 2022, after working as a professor at the University of Washington for nearly four decades, including as chairman of the UW’s Department of Biology.
Brooks Simpson, chair of the WRF’s board of directors, praised Daniel’s contributions.
“Tom has been instrumental in guiding WRF through a transformative period, including the launch and early execution of our ambitious strategic plan aimed at strengthening and accelerating the life sciences ecosystem in Washington state,” Simpson said in statement.
Daniel has also served on the federal advisory committee for the Biological Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the board of directors for Allen Institute and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
— Bellevue City Council appointed Vishal Bhargava to serve a partial term on the council following John Stokes‘ decision to leave his seat next month.
Bhargava works for Amazon as a director of product management and has been a member of Bellevue’s Planning Commission since 2020. His other experience includes work in urban planning, community service and as co-founder of a mental health advocacy organization.
Stokes, a retired attorney, was first elected to the city council in 2011. The council selected him to serve as mayor in 2016 and 2017, and he then returned to the role of city councilman.
— Josh Vitello is the new head of GTM (go-to-market) for Yoodli, a Seattle-based software platform that analyzes speech to offer tips for improving communication skills.
“Josh brings a wealth of experience from Tableau and Salesforce, along with rare humility, authenticity, and a unique ability to laugh at his own jokes,” said Yoodli CEO Varun Puri in announcing the hire.
Vitello previously held vice president customer solutions roles at Salesforce and Tableau, working at the latter for more than 11 years.
— Caddi, a Seattle startup automating basic business operations with generative AI, announced the hire of two founding engineers: Conner Ingram and Dallas Slaughter. The company, which launched out of the AI2 Incubator, emerged from stealth last month with $5 million in seed funding.
- Ingram worked as a software engineer at AgentSync, a Denver company building software for the insurance industry. His prior jobs include engineering positions at Seattle’s Tavour, MedKeeper and Northrop Grumman.
- Slaughter was previously a DevOps engineer at AgentSync, and also worked at Tavour. He co-founded Mozaic.ai with Aditya Sastry, Caddi’s co-founder and chief technology officer.
— Steven Ashby announced that he is stepping down as director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory after 10 years of leading the U.S. Department of Energy lab. PNNL is based in Richland, Wash., and has additional offices across the region. The lab does research in clean energy, the power grid, environmental cleanup and other cutting-edge fields.
Ashby has worked in DOE roles for more than four decades. PNNL has not announced a new director.
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