Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona is boosting its Silicon Valley footprint with the addition of Jeff Mills as partner and head of investor relations.
Mills most recently was managing director at San Francisco-based firm Gryphon Investors. He has more than two decades of experience in various fundraising roles at firms including Resource Capital Funds, Brooklands Capital Strategies (a division of TPG Capital), Ares Management, Oak Hill, and Probitas Partners.
Mills started his career in the U.S. Army and flew helicopters (UH-1s and CH-47s) for seven years. He has degrees from West Point and the Chicago Booth School of Business, and is also on the board of the National Childhood Apraxia of Speech, a nonprofit organization.
Madrona, one of the largest and oldest venture firms in the Pacific Northwest, opened a Silicon Valley office in 2022. Karan Mehandru, managing director, leads that office.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
— Nex, the motion-based entertainment company based in Silicon Valley, hired two Seattle-area execs: Tom Kang as president and Stephen Saiz as head of publishing. Both previously led tech initiatives at Walmart and Amazon Games.
— Amperity CEO Barry Padgett is stepping down from the Seattle startup. Chris Jones, Amperity’s customer and product officer, will take over as interim CEO. Read more.
— Stephanie Camp joined Zendesk as vice president of global demand generation. Camp previously was vice president of marketing at Seattle recruiting startup SeekOut, and held marketing leadership roles at Qualtrics, Limeade, and Microsoft.
— Craig Martell joined San Jose, Calif.-based data giant Cohesity as chief technology officer. Martell was previously chief digital and AI officer at the Department of Defense and was the former head of machine learning at Lyft and Dropbox. “I have had strong relationship with Cohesity for many years and have always been impressed by their goal of doing analytics directly on top of secondary data,” Martell wrote on LinkedIn.
— Longtime Seattle startup leader Forest Key joined Code.org as vice president of international partnerships. Key previously founded Buuteeq (acquired by Priceline), Pixvana, and Voodle. He moved to California in 2020.
— Amy Padgett, a longtime leader at SAP Concur, joined Seattle-area travel expense management startup Center as senior vice president of travel ecosystem.
— Centific, a Redmond, Wash.-based company that helps customers train and deploy AI applications, hired former Genpact and DoWhistle exec Shiva Jayaraman as chief growth officer.
— Jenna Winocur, investment analyst with Seattle firm Graham & Walker, is departing to pursue a masters degree at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
— Adam Anderson, a longtime marketing leader in the Seattle area, joined Zscaler as senior vice president of growth marketing. Anderson was previously a VP at Twilio and also worked at Zipwhip, Expedia, and Microsoft.
— Seattle biotech company Athira Pharma hired Javier San Martin as chief medical officer. San Martin previously worked at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals in the same role, and also spent time at Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Alder Biopharmaceuticals, and Amgen.
— Portland, Ore.-based children’s apparel brand Hanna Andersson hired Mike Frazzini as chief technology officer. Frazzini previously led tech efforts at FTD.
