Sep 04, 2020

Smartsheet

Smartsheet, of Bellevue, announced that Rowan Trollope has been appointed to its board of directors. Trollope currently serves as CEO of Five9, a provider of cloud contact center software. Prior to Five9, Trollope was senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Applications Group. He also served as group president sales, marketing and product development at Symantec, where he was responsible for cloud security. Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform for work execution.

ExtraHop

Seattle-based ExtraHop announced Reveal(x) has been selected as the three-time winner of the “Best AI-based Solution for CyberSecurity” award from AI Breakthrough, a market intelligence platform that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. AI Breakthrough evaluated over 2,000 nominations from companies all over the world. Reveal(x) applies cloud-based machine learning to all network traffic to provide visibility, real-time threat detection, and intelligent response. ExtraHop recently introduced the Reveal(x) 360 platform, powered by cloud-scale AI, which decrypts and analyzes all cloud and network traffic in real time.

Hohimer Wealth Management

Hohimer Wealth Management hired Mark Dederer in the newly created position of director, philanthropic services. Dederer will help individuals and businesses maximize giving strategies. Most recently, Dederer served as the executive director of the Biller Family Foundation. He previously served as senior vice president of community affairs for Wells Fargo in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, and as vice president of the Safeco Insurance Foundation. Hohimer Wealth Management is an investment advisor providing goals-based wealth management. They specialize in multi-generational wealth management for high net-worth families as well as designing and managing retirement plans for business owners.

Academy Mortgage

Producing branch manager Umar Gebril announced that Danny Meier has joined Academy Mortgage Eastlake as a producing branch manager. In this role, Meier will contribute to growth in production, recruiting and coaching of loan officers and other team members in the greater Seattle area. Meier has over 10 years of mortgage experience, and most recently, he was a loan originator for Homestreet,

BitTitan

BitTitan, the developer of MigrationWiz, has been recognized by Seattle Business magazine as a top company in the state of Washington, earning recognition in the magazine's annual 100 Best Companies to Work For awards program. The award, which published in the August issue of Seattle Business magazine, recognizes the leading companies in Washington that set the standard for work environment, rewards and recognition, benefits, communications, responsibility and decision-making, and executive leadership. BitTitan allows IT service professionals to deploy and manage cloud technologies through automation. MigrationWiz is a SaaS solution for mailbox, document, public-folder and Microsoft teams migrations. The company has offices in Seattle and Singapore.

Sep 03, 2020

Big talent exodus from Kinzer to Lee & Assoc.

Lee & Assoc. opened a Seattle office four years ago. Since then, the brokerage has gradually been gaining traction in our market. But on Tuesday, the firm announced its biggest coup to date: Stuart Williams has taken his three-person team from Kinzer Partners and over to Lee. (Williams and his team had previously been at JLL, before joining Kinzer in 2018.) Coming with the industry veteran Williams, one of the region's top brokers, are Adrienne Hunter, Alex Muir and Elizabeth Schalka. Williams said in a statement, “Legitimate and willing buyers are sizing up opportunities to invest in a market that promises to correct once the COVID-19 situation subsides.” Jim Bowles, who leads Lee's Seattle office, said, “When we first opened our office in 2016, we knew that we wanted to focus on all aspects of the commercial real estate brokerage business, including and especially the commercial investment arena.” Williams will lead its Northwest investment division.

Revel adds to senior housing team

Senior housing developer Revel Communities, which is based in Scottsdale but is active in our region, has named two new executives. Ginni Ryan is now senior VP of operations. She makes the move from Milestone Retirement Communities. Industry veteran Danette Opaczewski is now COO and executive VP of resident experience; she was previously with Sydell Group. Revel is a division of Wolff Co., whose Jay Petkunas said in a statement, “Both Danette and Ginni bring the perfect balance of experience to diversify our executive team. We have every confidence they will help us raise the bar in senior living.” Meanwhile, the company expects to open the 146-unit Revel Issaquah this fall (pictured), and another community in Kirkland next year.

KM hires new research director

Kidder Mathews announced a new director of research, Gary Baragona, who'll work out of its San Francisco office. He makes the move from CBRE. Seattle, where KM is headquartered, will of course be part of his remit. He said in a statement, “I have watched the firm rapidly expand into multiple West Coast markets, including the Bay Area and, more recently, Southern California. After I learned about the firm's extensive investment into their research and data platforms, joining Kidder Mathews became a very compelling choice for me to make.”

Alaska Airlines

The Seattle Public Schools Department of Technology Services has supplied tech devices to almost all 53,000 Seattle Public School students in order to support remote learning this fall. An additonal 12,000 devices to support K-2 students was flown from Boston to Seattle by Alaska Airlines at the request of former Gov. Christine Gregoire, CEO of Challenge Seattle. Gregoire contacted Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden, and Alaska used its transportation to get iPads from Apple's Boston warehouse to the airport, and fly the iPads to Seattle in time for instruction and the new 2020-21 school year. Challenge Seattle is committed to public-private partnerships for the benefit of the community. Purchase of the district-provided devices is funded through local education levies.

Fortive

Everett company Fortive announced its intention to separate Vontier through a spin-off of 80.1% of the outstanding shares of Vontier common stock to Fortive shareholders. When completed, the transaction will result in two independent, publicly traded companies: Fortive, an industrial growth company providing products, software, and services in field solutions, product realization, sensing and health; and Vontier, a global industrial technology company delivering market solutions to advance efficiency, safety, security, and environmental compliance for its customers in mobility infrastructure end-markets. The spin-off is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2020, subject to obtaining final approval from the Fortive Board of Directors and market, regulatory and other customary conditions.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services announced that Indeed, one of the world's largest job sites, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider. As part of the multi-year agreement, Indeed will migrate more than 30 petabytes of data to AWS, moving its customer-facing products, business-critical workloads, and legacy databases to AWS. As a result of the move, Indeed expects to reduce its global data center footprint by 40% while streamlining its overall IT operations. Indeed allows job seekers to search millions of jobs in more than 60 countries and 28 languages.