— Marketing vet Brian Hall has left Google for a new, undisclosed position.
Hall, who made headlines after he was sued by Amazon when he joined Google five years ago, shared hints about his new role on LinkedIn.
“I’ll be working in AI — directly or helping build the platforms to take advantage of it,” he wrote. “This is so fun right now there is no way I’m getting out of the excitement!”
Hall worked at Amazon Web Services as vice president of product marketing for less than two years before joining Google Cloud in 2020 in a similar role.
Amazon filed suit against Hall, alleging that his new job violated his non-compete agreement and risked exposing competitive information to a rival. Hall countered that Amazon executives assured him the company would not enforce the non-compete provision of its confidentiality agreement. The two sides ultimately reached a confidential legal settlement.
Hall began his tech career at Microsoft in 1995 as a product manager for Windows and Internet Explorer. He stuck with the company for about 20 years, leaving as corporate vice president of hardware and devices.
— T-Mobile is making big changes in its leadership roles, as disclosed in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing by the Bellevue, Wash.-based telecommunications giant.
John Saw, the company’s chief technologist, will take on the expanded role of president of technology, which puts him in charge of “all aspects of the company’s network team,” according to the filing. Saw was with Sprint for nearly seven years when T-Mobile acquired the company in 2020. Prior to Sprint, he was CTO at Bellevue’s Clearwire for a decade.
Saw is succeeding Ulf Ewaldsson, who joined T-Mobile in 2019 and was president of technology for more than two years. He was previously with Ericsson for 12 years, leaving the role of CEO advisor at the Stockholm-based company.
Callie Field, T-Mobile’s business group president, is stepping down after more than two decades with the company. Her resignation is effective on Sept. 30, and she will remain as a strategic advisor for six months. Field started her career with the company as a sales representative.
“21 years ago I put on an Elf costume for my first day selling mobile phones at a temporary T-Mobile kiosk in Barton Creek Mall, Austin, Texas,” Field said in announcing her departure.
Board member André Almeida will become president of growth and emerging businesses on Sept. 1, overseeing T-Mobile’s broadband, advertising, financial services, enterprise and government businesses. Almeida was previously with Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of the T-Mobile brand, for more than seven years.
— Warren Barkley, a past general manager for Microsoft, has taken a role at Nvidia as vice president of product management. He joins the company from Google, where he was head of product for multiple AI initiatives based in Seattle.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to join a company pushing the frontiers of AI and empowering an ecosystem of builders to realize their boldest dreams,” Barkley said on LinkedIn.
Barkley’s career began as a Microsoft manager in 1996. He stuck with the company for 16 years before becoming the chief technologist at Seattle’s SMART Technologies. Barkley held other leadership roles for Amazon Web Services, Clearwater Analytics and as a professor with Europe’s BIMM University.
— Longtime Seattle leader Julie Averill has left her role as chief information officer at lululemon. Averill previously held technology leadership roles at Seattle retailers REI and Nordstrom, serving at the latter for more than a decade. She did not announce her next move.
“When I joined as CIO eight years ago, we were a $2B company bursting with potential,” she wrote on LinkedIn. “Leading the technology transformation that helped scale us to $10.6B taught me something I’ll carry forever: sustainable transformation happens through people, amplified by technology, rooted in culture that outlasts any individual leader.”
The company announced that Ranju Das is joining as its first chief AI and technology officer.
— Modern Hydrogen co-founder Max Mankin is now chief operating officer at Elve, a company providing faster internet connections. Mankin helped launch his startup, originally called Modern Electron, out of Seattle’s Intellectual Ventures more than a decade ago. The company later pivoted its focus from heat-to-electricity generating devices to producing hydrogen fuel.
— Maveron’s Anarghya Vardhana is moving from partner to venture partner at the Seattle-based investment firm, and has also taken the title of investor-in-residence at Vanta, a San Francisco startup tackling corporate compliance, security, privacy and transparency.
Vanta is “shaping how the next generation of technology earns and keeps trust. As an investor, a technologist, a mom, and a human being, this is where I need to be,” Vardhana said on LinkedIn.
— Daniel Narváez Zavala is the Washington State Department of Commerce’s new chief operating officer. Zavala was previously executive director of Building Changes, a nonprofit organization serving youth and families experiencing homelessness in the Washington. Zavala, who holds a law degree from the University of Washington, worked on legal issues at Amazon for two years early in his career.
“[Zavala’s] leadership will directly support our commitment to strengthen communities and grow Washington’s economy. He will energize our executive leadership team and help the whole agency navigate tremendous national and statewide changes,” said Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn in announcing his appointment.
— Chetan Kapoor is stepping down as chief product officer of Seattle cloud infrastructure company CoreWeave. Kapoor was at Amazon Web Services for nearly 12 years before taking his role at CoreWeave last year. At AWS, he worked in multiple product manager roles.
— Patrick Ryan and Chris Kane joined Seattle-based industrial wastewater treatment startup Membrion. Ryan, vice president of sales, is a veteran water executive who was previously CEO at Hyperion Water Technologies. Kane, senior product manager, spent a decade at W. L. Gore & Associates.
— Guillermo Sandoval was named executive director at Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon (MESO), Portland-based nonprofit that helps under-resourced and excluded entrepreneurs. Sandoval was previously a community relationship manager at Native American Bank and a director at Umpqua Bank. He replaces Cobi Lewis, who is now COO at 1803 Foundation.
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