Tech Moves: Icertis hires new CMO; Expedia Group board member steps down; and more

Gretchen Eischen. (Icertis photo)

– Icertis has hired long-time SAP executive Gretchen Eischen as the new Chief Marketing Officer. Most recently, she was Global Vice President and Head of Marketing for SAP Procurement Solutions and is based in Pennsylvania.

Seth Nesbitt, CMO since 2016, has been named Global Leader, Purpose, Values ​​and Culture. In the newly created leadership role, he will be responsible for building and expanding the corporate culture at Icertis.

The Bellevue, Washington-based contract management startup was valued at $ 2.8 billion earlier this year after completing a new $ 80 million investment round. Icertis employs 1,400 people worldwide, including around 200 in the Seattle region.

– David Sambur, Co-Lead Partner of Apollo Global Management, has stepped down from the Expedia Group’s board of directors.

He joined the board of directors of the Seattle-based travel company a year ago after investing $ 1 billion in private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Silver Lake. According to an SEC filing, Apollo is not authorized to name a replacement.

Greg Mondre, Co-CEO of Silver Lake, who also joined the board at this point, will remain on the board. The 13-person board currently includes Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, Chelsea Clinton, vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation, and Dara Khosrowshahi, former CEO of Expedia, who was named CEO of Uber in 2017. The Expedia Group Chairman and Senior Executive is Barry Diller.

After a brutal year for the travel industry worldwide, Expedia Group is preparing for “post-pandemic” opportunities by refreshing its flagship brand Expedia and selling its corporate travel business in Egencia.

Vishal Ghotge. (Photo from a distance)

– Seattle Digital Remittance startup Remhally has named Vishal Ghotge as executive vice president of North America. He will be responsible for the product vision and roadmap for the region and will report to Remitly CEO Matt Oppenheimer.

“As an immigrant myself, Remitly’s mission to make financial services more accessible to underserved communities is very popular with me,” said Ghotge.

Ghotge was most recently Chief Product Officer at PayScale, a Seattle-based compensation and data technology company. Previously, he was an executive at Groupon and worked at Microsoft for more than a decade.

Chetna Mahajan (ZoomInfo Photo)

– ZoomInfo, of Vancouver, Washington, hired Chetna Mahajan as chief information officer. Most recently, she was vice president of business systems and analytics at Conga, a SaaS company based in San Mateo, California.

ZoomInfo uses machine learning to help customers manage sales and marketing programs and went public last year.

Jagadeesh Kunda, former head of product management for Microsoft and AWS, has been named chief product officer of Colorado startup JumpCloud. Most recently, he was Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce and is based in the Seattle area.

JumpCloud is a cloud-based platform that enables companies to connect employees to various IT resources via the JumpCloud directory.

– SurveyMonkey President Tom Hale serves on the RocketReach board of directors in Bellevue, Washington. Founded in 2016, RocketReach provides customers with contact and company information from other sales, marketing and recruiting professionals.

Former DreamBox Learning Marketing SVP for Marketing, Jamie Gier, joined Ceros in New York, a design platform for marketers and designers, as Chief Marketing Officer. Based in the Seattle area, Gier was previously CMO at SCI Solutions and Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Edifecs.

Portland-based Sparrow Pharmaceuticals named Robert Jacks President and CEO after closing a $ 50 million Series A funding round led by healthcare investment firm OrbiMed. Jacks is a former Entreprenuer-in-Residence at OrbiMed and the past President and CEO of Indalo Therapuetics.

Sparrow Pharmaceuticals is developing a treatment that will reduce the serious side effects of steroids, which are commonly used to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The biopharmaceutical company will use the funds to initiate phase 2 clinical trials and the development of its oral treatment. RiverVest Venture Partners and US Venture Partners also participated in the financing round.

– Ossia, a wireless power startup, added Jim Cottrell as senior director of regulatory compliance. Cottrell was a long-time manager at Hewlett Packard including managing regulatory certifications and wireless compliance activities.

The Redmond, Washington-based company received FCC certification for its technology last year and also received an investment from Toyota Group subsidiary Toyoda Gosei.

Brian McGowan. (APS photo)

– Greater Seattle Partners, a regional trading and investment organization, announced the resignation of CEO Brian McGowan and Chris Mefford as interim CEO.

McGowan joined Greater Seattle Partners in 2018 as the founding CEO of Atlanta. He returns to Georgia and joins Centennial Yards as President, a mixed-use development in Atlanta.

Mefford is President and CEO of Community Attributes Inc., a data and strategic planning consultancy specializing in business development. The public-private partnership plans to find its next CEO.

– Villette Nolon, entrepreneur and former board member of the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), is now president and chief executive officer of the Bellevue Police Foundation.

The Bellevue Police Foundation, established in 2007, collects donations to provide the Bellevue Police Department with training and equipment. Nolon was previously the founder and CEO of HomeSavvi, a home remodeling platform. Most recently, she was CEO of Imagine Housing, a non-profit organization for affordable housing.

– – Seattle-based healthcare company First Choice Health announced Troy Williams as vice president of Health System Partnerships. He was previously an executive at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and GE Healthcare.

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