— Boeing Employees Credit Union appointed Rick Eiel as its executive vice president and first chief data and analytics officer.
Eiel, who has more than 30 years of experience in the consumer financial industry, was previously head of product and analytics at Equifax. He also held executive roles at Wells Fargo and spent 16 years at JPMorgan Chase, most recently as director of marketing channel analytics.
Eiel’s hire comes on the heels of BECU’s appointment of former Equifax executive Beverly Anderson as CEO in November. BECU is the largest not-for-profit credit union in Washington state.
— Todd Weatherby, the former head of Amazon’s ProServe cloud unit, is leaving the tech giant at the end of January, according to a report by Insider.
His departure comes in the wake of a high-profile lawsuit by a former ProServe leader who alleged she was fired after raising gender discrimination issues within the unit. A later investigation into the unit found no evidence of “systemwide, discriminatory practices,” according to internal emails viewed by Insider. Amazon moved Weatherby into an “advisory role” last year, said Insider.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Weatherby’s most recent role was vice president within AWS Sustainability. He is “exploring new opportunities in a variety of industries, business models and roles.”
— Seattle non-invasive diagnostics company Know Labs named its founder and chairman, Ron Erickson, as CEO. He replaces Phil Bosua, who led the company since 2018. Bosua is also stepping down from the board but will remain as a technical advisor to the public company, previously known as Visualant. Erickson, a former executive at early Seattle tech software sales company Egghead Software, founded Know Labs in 2003.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Julie Park is now chair of the oncology department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She was previously chief medical officer at Seattle Children’s Therapeutics, where she helped design some of the first clinical trials testing CAR T cell therapy in the pediatric population. Park will also serve as associate director of translational research at St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Cancer.
- Sarah Lopez, an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, is now chief medical officer of Seattle virtual care Zócalo Health, which is focused on providing primary care to the Latino population.
- Praveen Seshadri left Google as a distinguished software engineer. He previously co-founded AppSheet, which was bought by Google, where he stayed for three years after the acquisition.
- Kate Nelson was promoted to executive director, life sciences, at JPMorgan Chase in Seattle.
- Seattle Bank named Howie Wu as head of product and general manager of CD Valet, a tech platform that shows rates for certificates of deposit. Wu was previously head of digital strategy, research and innovation at First Republic Bank.
- Luis Ceze, a professor at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, is now a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, placing him among the top 1% of ACM members. Ceze is also a partner at Madrona Venture Group and is co-founder and CEO of Seattle startup OctoML.
- UW Professor David Baker will split the $400,000 Frontiers of Knowledge award from the BBVA Foundation with two researchers from DeepMind, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. The researchers won the award for their work on software tools to predict the folding of proteins, showcased in papers in the journals Nature and Science.
- The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Allen Institute for Brain Science director Hongkui Zeng the 2023 Pradel Research Award for her research on the cell types and connections in the human brain and for leading the development of neuroscience tools and open resources. The $50,000 award is presented to mid-career researchers whose work makes major contributions towards understanding the nervous system.
