— Stanton Jandrell, co-founder and CEO of business spend management company Fraxion, is relocating to Seattle to head up Fraxion’s new U.S headquarters office. The company on Tuesday announced its merger with eRequester and subsequent North America launch.
“Our vision is to simplify spend control globally, shifting spend management to spend enablement by offering a cost-effective, comprehensive platform to mid-market companies,” Jandrell said in a statement. “eRequester and Fraxion share a culture of excellence and personalized service, and I am confident that the combined organization will surpass the expectations of customers by delivering a much-needed solution in the US.”
Fraxion has an additional office in Cape Town, South Africa.
— San Francisco-based Bright Machines continues to grow its presence in Seattle following the opening of an office late last year. The company has hired 15 people so far and plans to grow the team to 50.
The company’s first employee in Seattle, Stephanie Drenchen, is senior director of engineering. Drenchen spent more than 16 years at Microsoft, where she was most recently principal engineering manager in the AI and research group.
“My priority over the past several months has been building our robust Seattle-based software team, with a focus on applied science disciplines. Applied science typically includes robotics, data science and computer vision — and about a third of our team here will be focused in these areas (the remainder being software engineers),” Drenchen said in a company blog post.
— Anisha Sood said goodbye to healthcare investment firm Echo Health Ventures, where she was a partner, and joined Seattle-based PPO network First Choice Health as vice president of strategy and corporate development. Prior to Echo, Sood was an assistant director and principal of strategic investments at Cambia Health Solutions.
“I’m excited to take on this new challenge that allows me to be closer to the operations of a business as well as part of the new leadership team growing the company,” Sood wrote in a note to colleagues. “I’ve truly enjoyed working with all of you and I appreciate all the support, insight and opportunities you have provided along the way.”
— Connected chip maker Impinj hired Brian Wilson as vice president of IT. Wilson was most recently director of IT and DevOps at BitTitan and was an IT executive at Quantum Corporation prior to that.
“[Impinj] is uniquely positioned with its technology, leadership, and employees to create new solutions for digital items. The team has done an excellent job building a foundation and I look forward to working with all of the team members to ensure that Impinj is leveraging technology to our advantage. It’s going to be a lot of fun!” Wilson said in an email.
Impinj recently unveiled a series of smaller, more powerful RFID tags to connect everyday items to the internet, an innovation the Seattle-based company claimed will transform the industry by making the technology applicable to more items in a variety of areas.
— Tech-focused public relations firm s2s hired Crystal Clarity as chief operating officer. Clarity was previously vice president of marketing and business development at mobile application design company Artifact Technologies. Prior to that, she led marketing efforts at the Pacific Science Center.
“Crystal delivers a rare skill set and startup experience to provide our tech clients seeking funding the clear vision to articulate their unique value to investors, potential partners, their internal team, and the media.” Eric Schudiske, s2s PR and Communications, said in an email.
— Seattle-based tech consulting firm Logic20/20 hired David Watson as regional director, based out of the company’s Bay Area office. Watson has held several senior business development roles at San Francisco companies, including Capgemini, TEKsystems and Infolob.
