— Brad Anderson, a longtime Microsoft corporate vice president, has joined Qualtrics as president of products and services.
A 17-year veteran of the Redmond company, Anderson was most recently a key Microsoft 365 leader, overseeing areas including engineering and deployment of Windows for large businesses, and PC and mobile device security. He joined Microsoft in 2003 as a general manager after 12 years at Novell. He’s also the host of the video interview series, “The Shiproom.”
Anderson will be replaced at Microsoft by Harvinder (Harv) Bhela, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance, reports Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet.
He is is one of several new executives announced by Qualtrics as the company prepares to spin out from enterprise tech giant SAP through an initial public offering. Founded in Provo, Utah, Qualtrics employs more than 3,300 people and established a co-headquarters in Seattle in 2017. Businesses use its experience management platform to collect data on how customers, employees and others experience their products and services, taking action based on the results.
“Companies that are intentionally designing and optimizing the experiences they provide are pulling ahead. Leaders that use employee and customer experience data are running better businesses,” Anderson wrote on LinkedIn, announcing his new role. “An experience management platform is not just additive, it’s critical.”
Other executive hires announced by Qualtrics include:
• Stephanie Barton as managing director of the EMEA region. She was most recently a VP at VMware.
• Former AT&T SVP Abhi Ingle as COO of revenue operations, pre-sales and industry.
• Julia Anas as chief people officer. Anas was previously VP of employee experience at Adobe.
• Edward Chen as head of corporate development and strategy. He led corporate development at Twilio for the past five years.
• Gina Sheibley as chief communications officer. She was most recently SVP of corporate communications at Salesforce.
Acquired by SAP for $8 billion in 2018, Qualtrics filed to go public in December at a valuation up to $14.4 billion. Last summer, SAP said it intended to spin out Qualtrics into a public company and would continue to own 80% of the company after the IPO. Qualtrics raised the expected price range for its IPO this week, saying it will be between $22 and $26 per share, up from $20 to $24 previously.
— San Francisco-based Databricks appointed former Axiom CEO Elena Donio to its board. The former Concur executive left her role as CEO at New York City-based Axiom last year and returned to the West Coast. She continued to serve on Axiom’s board through 2020 but stepped down this month.
Donio also sits on the board of cloud communications platform Twilio. She spent more than 18 years at Concur, most recently as president.
— Former Microsoft Dynamics 365 CTO Sri Srinivasan joined Redwood, Calif.-based Zuora as chief product and engineering officer. The publicly-traded company provides cloud-based software for subscription businesses.
Srinivasan spent more than 12 years at Microsoft and is based in Redmond, Wash. He was most recently SVP and GM of the team collaboration group at Cisco, which includes Webex Meetings.
— Seattle event technology startup eventcore hired Chris Emerson as VP of sales and marketing. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Emerson was most recently a regional director for Cvent, a major player in the event management technology industry.
Founded in 1984, eventcore currently has 60 employees and provided the registration platform for the all-virtual Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
— Seattle-based investment bank Cascadia Capital promoted Scott Porter and Matthew Riendeau to managing director.
Porter was previously a vice president at Moss Adams Capital and joined Cascadia Capital in 2017. He is in the firm’s food, beverage and agriculture group. Riendeau has been with Cascadia Capital for more than a decade and is in the technology group.
— Jonah-Kai Hancock has joined caller ID startup Hiya as head of digital demand generation. Hancock was most recently head of marketing at Seattle startup Algorithmia and previously a marketing director at Tune, another Seattle startup.
“Hiya already has an impressive roster of customers and their growth has accelerated over the past several months as voice has become even more critical to how we connect to each other,” Hancock told GeekWire in an email.
Hiya spun out of Whitepages in 2016.
— Startup veteran Emily Carrion has landed at Bellevue, Wash.-based startup Esper as VP of marketing. Carrion was most recently chief marketing officer at Rubica, which shut down late last year. She previously led marketing at Seattle startups Textio, Apptentive and Mixpo.
Founded in 2018 and led by ex-Microsoft and Amazon leaders, Esper raised a $7.6 million Series A funding round led by Madrona Venture Group last year. In a post on LinkedIn, Carrion said everyone from the Rubica team has found new roles.
Other recent Tech Moves from across the Pacific Northwest:
- Seattle-based AVM Biotechnology appointed Manon Cox as its new CEO and Gary Grohmann as chief regulatory officer. Founder and former CEO Theresa Deisher will remain chairman of the board and serve as president and chief scientific officer.
- Geologist Jon Major assumed the five-year post as the scientist-in-charge of the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory, which monitors volcanoes in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
- Everett, Wash.-based crewed submersible provider OceanGate Expeditions announced experienced Irish diver Rory Golden as an expeditionary expert on its 2021 Titanic survey expedition.
- Comcast appointed Juan Key as senior director of business development in Washington, leading a new integrated team responsible for residential and commercial construction opportunities.
