Benjamin Dorr is the new CEO at Seattle-area AI voice technology startup WellSaid Labs. Dorr, who joined the company last year as CFO, replaces Brian Cook, who was CEO since January 2024.
“We’re going to continue to work toward AI voice technology that empowers people and protects intellectual property,” Dorr said on LinkedIn. “There’s so much growth ahead.”
Dorr previously was COO at enterprise marketing company Cordial.
Originally spun out of Seattle’s AI2 Incubator, WellSaid raised a $10 million Series A round in 2021. The company focuses on the enterprise AI voice market.
— Jennifer Weitzel joined Microsoft as corporate vice president of engineering, procurement, and construction.
“Jen brings a wealth of experience and a bold vision for the future to grow our Cloud and AI datacenter infrastructure,” Noelle Walsh, president of Microsoft Cloud Operations + Innovation, said on LinkedIn.
Weitzel was previously president at Bellevue-based data center company Ada Infrastructure. She worked at Microsoft from 2016 to 2022 in various cloud infrastructure-related roles.
— Jason Ing joined Typeface as its first CMO. Ing, based in Seattle, was previously CMO at Gusto, and held marketing leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft.
“AI is fundamentally reshaping the marketing craft and I couldn’t be more energized to help lead that transformation,” Ing wrote on LinkedIn.
San Francisco-based Typeface last year opened an office in Seattle. The company sells marketing software and raised $65 million in 2023 from investors including Microsoft’s M12 and Seattle venture capitalist S. “Soma” Somasegar, a former Microsoft executive and current managing director at Madrona.
— Tina Walha was named CEO of U.S. Digital Response, a nonprofit that helps governments with various tech and data-related projects. Walha, based in Seattle, joined the organization in 2021 and was most recently chief partnerships officer. She also was interim CEO for four months.
“For my colleagues and friends in state and local government, we’re doubling down on our commitment to supporting you with technical expertise so you can deliver for your residents,” Walha wrote on LinkedIn.
Walha previously worked for the City of Seattle on innovation teams and was a senior manager at Accenture.
USDR has worked on several Washington state projects, including a ballot drop box security initiative with Stevens County and a prototype chatbot assistant for Sound Transit.
— Hilik Kotler joined Seattle travel giant Expedia Group as senior vice president, chief information security officer. Kotler spent the past four years as CISO at SoFi.
“I’m inspired by the mission to help travelers create wonderful memories and excited to roll up my sleeves to help shape what’s next and transform the industry,” Kotler wrote on LinkedIn.
Kotler will work under Ramana Thumu, who joined as CTO in December.
Kotler previously held CISO roles at FICO and Amdocs.
— Saurabh Giri joined San Francisco machine learning infrastructure company Voltage Park as chief product and technology officer.
Giri, based in the Seattle region, spent nearly a decade at Amazon Web Services, where he led teams that built and operated Amazon Bedrock, the company’s development platform for generative AI.
Giri is also joining Voltage Park’s board as an executive director. Voltage Park is connected to a nonprofit called The Navigation Fund backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb that bought up Nvidia GPUs in 2023.
— Tyler Akidau joined Redpanda Data as CTO. Akidau, based in Seattle, was a distinguished software engineer at Snowflake and spent 12 years at Google. San Francisco-based Redpanda develops software for real-time streaming data and raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation last month.
— Darrell Cavens, a longtime Seattle tech leader who was CEO of Zulily and CTO at Blue Nile, joined the board at Match Group. The dating giant recently tapped former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff as its new leader.
— Michael Ulin is leaving Paxton, the Bend, Ore.-based legal tech startup he helped launch in 2023. He’s now working on a stealth AI startup, his “third venture focused on harnessing the power of AI to solve significant industry problems,” he told Silicon Florist.
— John Craft joined Docker as a solutions engineer. Craft co-founded Seattle data security startup Privacy Dynamics and was a director at Thomson Reuters. Docker, a San Francisco app development company, recently hired Seattle-based tech exec Don Johnson as CEO.
— Thomas Brown joined Seattle oncology startup Sygnomics as chief medical officer. Brown was previously chief medical officer at Syapse, and was an executive director at Swedish Cancer Institute.
— Yoko Miyashita, CEO at Seattle-based Leafly, joined the board of Cannabis Media Council, a New York nonprofit that promotes positive experiences with cannabis.
— Tom Phillips, a PR veteran who spent 18 years at Microsoft, launched his own consultancy, Upstream Communications. “Upstream’s model is designed to provide quick-turn, high quality, and hands-on service without the heavy machinery and costs involved in engaging a large firm,” Phillips wrote on LinkedIn.
— Masao Koyama moved to Seattle for a new role as senior vice president, head of Seattle at Mitsubishi Corporation. “I am responsible for driving new business development in various industries, with a focus on AI, Data Centers, and Clean Tech,” Koyama wrote on LinkedIn. “I lead cross-functional teams to develop innovative solutions and forge strategic partnerships to drive our business expansion in US.”
— Paul Schultz joined Seattle-based surgical hardware startup Proprio as senior vice president of business development and strategy. Schultz was previously a business development leader at Bionaut Labs and co-founded medical tech startup Nurep in 2012. “At Proprio, we are building the world’s first end-to-end surgical operating system, a breakthrough that captures and unlocks new data across the entire surgical continuum,” Schultz wrote on LinkedIn.
— Subhadeep Chatterjee was named global accelerator and incubator engagement manager at Google. He joined Google in 2019 after selling Downticket, a campaign tech startup he founded in 2016 that was acquired by Politiscope.
— Killian Farrell and Jake Precht joined Onyx Platform, a new Seattle-area startup led by former leaders at Assurance, the insurance company acquired by Prudential that shut down last year. Farrell and Precht were engineers at Assurance; Onyx was co-founded by former Assurance CEO Alison Arzeno.
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