— Cynthia Tee has left Smartsheet, where she was chief technology officer at the work management software giant for nearly five years.
The Bellevue-based company has not publicly announced Tee’s departure or named a replacement. A spokesperson said via email: “We thank [Tee] for the many contributions and wish her well in her next opportunity.”
Tee told GeekWire she has not taken a new role elsewhere.
Early in her career, Tee was with Microsoft for two decades, joining in 1994 and working for many years on Windows technologies. Prior to Smartsheet, she was vice president of commerce technology at Nordstrom.
Tee was also executive director of Seattle’s Ada Developers Academy, a tuition-free tech bootcamp providing training for women and other underrepresented people in tech.
Smartsheet laid off an undisclosed number of workers earlier this month. Tech veteran Rajeev “Raj” Singh took over as CEO in October following the August announcement that longtime Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader was retiring.
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— Overland AI, a Seattle startup building autonomous ground vehicles used by the U.S. military, hired Mark Dewyea as head of legal. Dewyea, who is based in Virginia, joins the company from Shield AI where he was chief of staff and in-house counsel.
“Mark brings extensive experience across government, military, and defense technology sectors, including service as an active duty judge advocate in the U.S. Marine Corps and as a legal analyst at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Overland AI said on LinkedIn.
Overland AI spun out of the University of Washington in 2022 and earlier this month announced $100 million in new funding.
— Jessica Roberto is joining the Washington State Department of Commerce as Knowledge Economy Lead in the Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness.
Roberto was previously at the UW’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship where she served as associate director and manager of graduate student programs and the Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge. She was with the Buerk Center for six years and holds a PhD from the UW in pathobiology.
— Heather Redman, co-founder and managing partner of the venture firm Flying Fish, is now on the Seattle branch board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
— Seattle tech entrepreneur Anna Fuller is now working on commerce AI at Google. She was previously head of product at California’s Big Sur AI, which Google acquired at the end of last year. Fuller is also a resident expert at Seattle’s AI2 Incubator, which launched the AI House last year on the city’s waterfront.
— Alaska Airlines promoted Ben Brookman to vice president of real estate and airport affairs. Brookman has been with the airline for more than a decade over two separate periods. Past employers include Convoy and Amazon.
— Comcast named Keith Turner as senior VP of its Pacific Northwest region, which serves Xfinity and Comcast Business customers in Washington and Oregon. Turner has been with the telecom and entertainment giant for nearly two decades.
— Zillow promoted Rebecca Amos-Stuart to marketing director. Amos-Stuart, based in the Seattle area, has been with the real estate tech company for more than six years. She previously ran her own consulting business and was with Verizon for 12 years.
— Cam Caldwell, chief operating officer for Binti, is now running the software development company’s newly opened Seattle office. San Francisco-based Binti is building technology that serves the child welfare system. The new location is hiring.
— Seattle-based music licensing startup Incantio appointed Virl Hill to its board of directors. Hill is a media and technology executive whose past employers include Microsoft, RealNetworks and Disney. He previously served on Incantio’s advisory board.
— The firm Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice named Brian Maxey as senior counsel in its Seattle office. Maxey, previously COO for the Seattle Police Department, will focus on risk management planning, crisis response and strategic litigation for clients in the public sector.
— Vija Veingbergs-Rogers is now a senior software engineer at the Seattle-based AI roleplay startup Yoodli. She joins from the neurology tech company Rune Labs.
— The National Academy of Engineering, an organization conferring one of the highest professional distinctions for engineers, has elected 130 new members including for four connected to the Pacific Northwest:
- David Baker, a UW Nobel Laureate and director of UW Medicine’s Institute for Protein Design, which uses AI to create de novo proteins.
- Douglas Burger, a Microsoft Research technical fellow and corporate VP accelerating cloud-scale computing and networking infrastructures with field-programmable systems.
- James Hamilton, an Amazon SVP and distinguished engineer focused on cloud computing and data center efficiency.
- Elizabeth Lund, a retired SVP of quality for Boeing who worked on development and production of the twin-aisle commercial airplanes.
— The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network appointed five new members to its 18-person board of directors:
- Ernie Bootsma, shareholder and attorney with Buchalter LLC
- Suhail Khan, SVP at the insurance firm Marsh
- Allie Persitz (Magyar), owner of Dynamic Events and operating partner at Elevate Capital
- Melanie Strong, founding partner of the investment firm Next Ventures
- Shanbo Zhang, angel investor and venture partner at Oregon Venture Fund
