Syndio’s new leadership, top row from left: Erik Darby, Shonna Waters, Devin Luquist. Bottom row: Erin McClintock, Elizabeth Temples, Manuj Bahl and Meredith Conroy. (LinkedIn Photos)
— Syndio, a Seattle startup that helps companies analyze and address pay equity, announced seven new additions to its leadership team.
“This next phase of growth requires innovation and velocity,” said Maria Colacurcio, Syndio’s CEO, adding that the new hires bring “proven track records of transforming innovative enterprise solutions into industry-defining brands.”
Several of the new hires come from BetterUp, a professional coaching and training platform. The new leaders include:
- Erik Darby, president, previously co-founded Motive Software, a San Francisco Bay Area startup using AI to understand employee and customer experience that was acquired by BetterUp in 2021.
- Devin Luquist, senior vice president of product, was previously at BetterUp after holding technology and leadership roles at multiple companies.
- Erin McClintock, SVP of marketing, joined from Workhuman and was formerly at BetterUp.
- Elizabeth Temples, SVP of revenue, joined from the revenue platform Clari and was previously at BetterUp.
- Shonna Waters, SVP of executive engagement and insights, is an organizational psychologist and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and was at BetterUp.
- Manuj Bahl, VP and head of architecture, joined from Talent.com and previously held roles at Seattle-area companies Microsoft, OfferUp, Apptivate.IO and RealNetworks.
- Meredith Conroy, VP of account management, joined from Clari.
Rajeev Rajan. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Rajeev Rajan joined Stripe to serve as business lead for the payment company’s Revenue and Financial Automation (RFA) division, in which he will oversee product and engineering.
“I’ve long admired the company’s focus on engineering excellence, developer experience, and its ambition to increase the GDP of the internet,” Rajan said on LinkedIn.
Rajan began his career at Microsoft, where he spent 22 years — starting as a software design engineer in 1994 and rising to corporate VP for Office 365. He went on to serve as VP of engineering at Meta, leading the company’s Pacific Northwest engineering hub, before joining Atlassian as chief technology officer. He stepped down from that role last month amid company layoffs.
Nick Cecil. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Nick Cecil was promoted to chief technology officer for avante, a Seattle startup whose software helps companies reduce HR administrative workload and provides employees with an AI assistant for benefits guidance.
“What makes Nick unusual as an engineering leader is that he is just as obsessed with the customer as he is with the code. He spends real time understanding the pain our customers feel,” said Rohan D’Souza, avante’s CEO, on LinkedIn.
Cecil joined avante in 2023 as founding head of engineering. Previous roles include leadership positions at Salesforce, Tableau Software and Yapta.
— Levent Besik has joined SailPoint, an Austin-based cybersecurity company, as chief product officer. He comes from Microsoft, where he spent four years as VP of product management for the company’s identity authentication platform, covering both human and agentic AI users.
“With the rapid rise of AI, enterprises are urgently seeking solutions to secure, govern, and protect agents end to end,” Besik said in a statement. “The world demands an identity solution that provides AI security and governance across all clouds and platforms.”
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Besik previously held roles at Okta and Google. He also has an earlier chapter at Microsoft, having joined in 2002 as a software engineer working on Internet Explorer — a tenure that lasted nearly a decade.
Hélène Bouffard. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Hélène Bouffard has left Amazon after more than 17 years, most recently serving as HR director for the Seattle company’s new Artificial General Intelligence division.
She said on LinkedIn that it was “the privilege of a lifetime” to work for the tech giant.
Bouffard is now chief people officer at Circana, a Chicago-based market research and data analytics company. Her role will include aligning employees’ jobs and skills with Circana’s AI-driven efforts.
Chris Atkins. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Chris Atkins, director of Amazon Worldwide Operations Sustainability, has resigned after 15 years with the company. In his most recent role, Atkins helped align Amazon’s fulfillment and transportation operations with its climate goals.
“For me, my time at Amazon was truly transformative,” Atkins said on LinkedIn. “I started as a night shift frontline manager working on the ship dock and finished leading ops sustainability for the world’s largest logistics organization.”
Before joining Amazon, Atkins served as an operations manager in the U.S. Army following his graduation from West Point. He is taking a few weeks off before starting a new role, which he plans to announce at a later date.
Jake Oster. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Jake Oster, Amazon director of energy, environment and sustainability policy, has resigned after nearly a decade. Oster joined the company in 2017, with his tenure including a stint in Belgium leading policy for AWS.
“It was never dull and constantly rewarding. Every project, document, or accomplishment was the result of collaborative work with some of the smartest people that I have known,” he said on LinkedIn. Oster didn’t indicate his next career move, saying he was taking a “quick respite.”
Prior to Amazon, Oster worked at Seattle’s EnergySavvy, a startup that helped utilities manage their relationships with customers and was acquired in 2019.
Carol MacKinlay. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Carol MacKinlay is the new chief people officer for Tanium, a Kirkland, Wash.-based cybersecurity company. MacKinlay, who is based in Carmel, Calif., joins from Pebl where she served for two years.
MacKinlay has worked as a CPO and in other human resource leadership roles for more than 20 years with previous jobs at Binance, UserTesting and Matterport.
— Eric Emans is now chief financial officer for Insurity, a Connecticut startup providing software for insurance carriers and brokers. Emans joins Insurity from the Bellevue, Wash.-based workflow automation company Nintex, where he was CFO for four years. He was previously CFO for Lighthouse and A Place for Mom.
— Seattle’s Remitly appointed Adam Messinger, the former CTO of Twitter (now X), to its board of directors. The global remittance company disclosed the news in an SEC filing. Messinger left Twitter a decade ago.
Stephanie Rogers. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Paper Crane Factory, a Seattle-based creative branding agency that works exclusively with startups, has named Stephanie Rogers as head of communications and public relations. Rogers will lead the agency’s new East Coast expansion and run its operations there. She joins from DataRobot and brings more than 15 years of experience in communications and PR.
“As we continue to grow, bringing in leadership across disciplines allows us to better support founders at the earliest and most critical stages — from defining their story to scaling it in market,” said Cal McAllister, Paper Crane Factory founder and creative director, in a statement.
— Barbara Schmid is leaving Starbucks after nearly 22 years, resigning from the role of Global Coffee and Cocoa Sustainability program manager. Schmid expressed gratitude to the company and colleagues in a LinkedIn in post, adding she is grateful “most of all to the coffee and cocoa producers, without whom none of this would have been possible, and who remain the reason behind it all.”
