Zillow Group announced three promotions to its senior leadership team.
- After nearly two decades with Zillow, Christopher Roberts is now chief product officer. Roberts helped build Zillow Rentals, which the company touts as the No. 1 platform among renters. His Seattle tech career started at Expedia as a senior vice president of engineering.
- Jon Lim is moving from VP of product management to SVP of Rentals Product & Business Operations. Prior to Zillow, Lim worked in technical product management roles at Amazon for more than five years.
- Marissa Brooks is now SVP of corporate affairs, having previously served as VP of communications. Brooks, who works from Scottsdale, Ariz., joined Zillow in 2017.
Earlier this month, Zillow reported its revenue grew 16% last year. Its quarterly revenue, which came in at $654 million, was at the upper end of Zillow’s guidance and slightly higher than investors’ projections.
— Jeffrey Kratz is retiring from Amazon Web Services after more than 13 years. He’s leaving the role of vice president of Worldwide Public Sector Industry international sales. Throughout his tenure at AWS, Kratz worked with public sector customers, whom he described on LinkedIn as “making the world a better place.”
Kratz previously was employed at crosstown rival Microsoft for two decades where he held a variety of leadership roles in enterprise and public sector sales.
“Now it’s time to recharge, take Luna-the-pup on leisurely walks, spend quality time with Beverly, Andrew, family, and friends,” Kratz wrote, adding that he would work on his golf swing, volunteering and “spending more time with Boards in areas I am passionate about.”
— In another Amazon departure, David Luan, who led the company’s San Francisco-based AGI Lab and oversaw one of its most important agentic AI initiatives, is leaving for an undisclosed new gig. Luan announced his exit on LinkedIn, saying he will leave at the end of the week. He joined Amazon through an acqui-hire deal targeting leaders at the startup Adept. More details are in this GeekWire story.
— Microsoft nabbed Manasa Hari from Apple to join its California-based AI Super Intelligence program as a partner.
“I’ll be supporting to build the infrastructure for human-centric AI systems that are safe, useful, and aligned with human needs. Inspired by Mustafa Suleyman’s mission to build AI that amplifies human potential, I’m excited about its broad impact on enterprise,” Hari said on LinkedIn.
Hari was previously head of product and program at Apple’s AIML Machine Learning Platform. She also serves on San Francisco State University’s Big Data Advisory Board, which provides input on course curriculum.
— Craig Cincotta has moved to chief of staff for Microsoft’s Xbox division. He previously was a general manager of communications for cloud and AI. Cincotta has been with the Redmond, Wash.-tech giant for more than 17 years over two stretches of employment.
The company last week announced that Asha Sharma is taking the helm of Xbox and Microsoft Gaming, succeeding 38-year Microsoft veteran Phil Spencer. Cincotta and Sharma previously worked together at Seattle-based Porch.
— Julie Keef is leaving her role of VP of product at Redfin, the Seattle real estate platform that was acquired nearly a year ago by Rocket Companies. Keef joined Redfin in 2016 as the first hire on what would become the company’s content marketing team. She was promoted seven times to reach her VP position in which she oversaw a team of 50.
“We grew Redfin to the 3rd most visited real estate site, and held on to that spot despite competitors outspending us 5 to 1 on tech and advertising. And we had fun doing it. Even as the housing market turned and investment was hard to come by, the rabid squirrel spirit of Redfin persisted,” Keef said on LinkedIn.
Keef did not disclose her next pursuit.
— Seattle’s DexCare named Ravi Doddivaripall as chief technology officer. Doddivaripall joins the company from XY Retail and has more than 25 years of senior platform and engineering experience. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
DexCare’s software platform helps healthcare providers manage their system’s capacity and schedule appointments. The startup launched at Providence, spinning out from the healthcare network’s digital innovation group in 2021.
“Ravi brings the architectural depth and platform experience to accelerate what we’ve built to help more health systems treat more patients with the resources they already have,” said Matt Blosl, CEO of DexCare, in a statement.
— Kelly Brooks is now VP of sales for Read AI, a Seattle startup that sells enterprise productivity software tools using generative AI. Brooks joins from HubSpot where she worked for nearly nine years.
On LinkedIn, Brooks said she was attracted to the company after using its technology.
“I saw immediate value from trialing the product, and got excited by the ways Read improves the transfer and access of information through organizations — perennial challenges I tackled as Chief of Staff at HubSpot,” Brooks wrote. “Inspired, I reached out to [CEO] David Shim to make a connection. The rest is history… or at least a story for another day :)”
— Serial entrepreneur and ShiftAI podcast host Boaz Ashkenazy is now senior director of AI infrastructure for Redapt, a Woodinville, Wash.-based IT company.
Ashkenazy is also co-founder of the legal tech startup Clause and co-founder and CEO of Augmented AI Labs, which builds and tests AI products. Ashkenazy additionally serves on the board of trustees for the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
— Jerome Johnson has a new leadership role at Amazon Web Services, serving as director of its professional services business for U.S. federal, defense and aerospace customers. Johnson, who is based in Arlington, Virginia, has been with AWS for more than 12 years. His previous role was director of solutions architecture for national security and defense customers.
“While my focus expands from architecture leadership to business and delivery leadership, the mission remains the same: Serving customers by helping them solve their hardest problems with AWS,” Johnson wrote on LinkedIn.
— Jill Angelo is the new board chair of Special Olympics Washington. Angelo is the founder and past CEO of Gennev, a company billed as the first virtual menopause care provider in the U.S. The business was acquired by Unified Women’s Healthcare, where she served as president until last year.
Angelo is also currently VP of women’s health and commercial partnerships at the wellness startup Oura.
— Frieda Chan has left her role as manager of innovation development at the University of Washington’s CoMotion, the institution’s collaborative entrepreneurial hub. Chan is now director business development at Yale Ventures.
— Yoodli shared that Tom Craven is now the enterprise sales leader for the Seattle-based AI roleplay startup.
—William Bal is now VP of growth for EdgeRunner AI, a Seattle-based defense technology company that raised $12 million last year.
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