Tech Moves: Former Amazon VP Brad Porter joins Scale AI as CTO; Seattle startup Ally.io adds execs; and more

Brad Porter, who was until recently the Amazon Robotics leader, will become Scale AI’s first CTO. (Scale AI Photo)

— Brad Porter, the longtime Amazon robotics leader, has surfaced as the first chief technology officer of Scale AI, a San Francisco-based company seeking to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence through its machine learning technology for labeling data.

“As our CTO, Brad will help continue to improve the efficiency and sophistication of our technologies and processes by orders of magnitude, building new tools to continue to accelerate the development of AI systems,” wrote Alexandr Wang, the company’s CEO and founder, in a post Monday morning. “He will manage our entire technology stack, with combined ownership of product direction and engineering, to turbocharge our ambitious technology roadmap.”

Porter joined Amazon in 2007, and in 2014 became a distinguished engineer, an exclusive title given to only a handful of employees. In 2017, he became VP of Amazon Robotics, managing the company’s robotic technology operations in its warehouses and with other high-tech projects.

Alexandr Wang, Scale AI’s CEO and founder, dropped out of MIT to start the company. (Scale AI Photo)

“Will Scale be the next Amazon? Well, it will be for me,” writes Porter in a LinkedIn post today. “I’m joining Alex Wang and the team at Scale as CTO to help bring this vision to reality.”

Wang, who is in his early 20s, dropped out of MIT to found Scale AI in 2016. The company has raised more than $120 million in funding, and is reportedly valued at more than $1 billion.

“In many ways, this is the unsexy part of AI,” Porter writes. “The sexy parts of AI are the fancy algorithms and powerful silicon that allow AI practitioners to build a model that attempts to match the performance of humans. But if you don’t find a way to capture the performance of humans in an accurate and computer-understandable manner, it is extremely hard to build a model that matches that performance.”

Porter’s departure from Amazon was reported by Business Insider on Aug. 14 and subsequently confirmed by the company. Since then, Porter’s former Amazon boss, Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations, was named to succeed Jeff Wilke as Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer CEO, which resulted in a reshuffling of executives in Amazon’s operations and logistics division.

— Seattle Genetics announced Ted Love has joined its board of directors and Srinivas Akkaraju has resigned after service of more than 17 years. Love currently serves as president and CEO of Global Blood Therapeutics based in San Francisco.

Based in Bothell, Wash., Seattle Genetics produces drugs to fight cancer. It currently has two products on the market, and a third drug for breast cancer treatment that was approved by the FDA in April.

— Seattle startup Ally.io hired Atul Sahai as SVP of strategy and operations and Justine Lyon as SVP of sales. Both have experience at other SaaS startups in the Seattle region.

Sahai was most recently senior director of business strategy and operations at collaborative work management platform Smartsheet. He previously worked at Microsoft, HP and Altair.

Lyon spent more than 10 years at compensation software provider PayScale, most recently as VP of sales.

Ally.io’s software helps companies track and hit their goals. The company raised $15 million last year and won Startup of the Year at the 2020 GeekWire Awards.

— Chicago, Ill.-based Nerdio appointed former Microsoft executive Andy Lees to its board. Nerdio offers solutions for managed service providers on Microsoft Azure.

Lees spent 23 at Microsoft, including a decade in the U.K. subsidiary. He relocated to the tech giant’s Redmond, Wash. headquarters as a corporate vice president overseeing field marketing, North American sales and the Windows phone division among others. At the time of his departure in 2013, he was CVP of corporate strategy.

Robert Matthews (Swiftwater Group Photo).

— Robert Matthews, former Global Head of Integrated Marketing for Xbox, has left Microsoft and launched Swiftwater Group, a strategic marketing firm for brands and nonprofits. 

Matthews spent more than 11 years at Microsoft overseeing marketing strategy for the Redmond, Wash.-company’s global gaming business. Prior to Microsoft, he was head of consumer marketing at Nintendo during the launch of the Wii.

— Aerospace industry veterans Kelly Maloney and Jay Maloney have launched OLI Communications, a new Seattle-based strategic marketing, branding and operations firms. The new venture will provide services to companies in aerospace, space, medical, marine and other industrial sectors.

Kelly Maloney previously served as president and CEO of the Aerospace Futures Alliance and the Washington State Space Coalition. Jay Maloney spent more than 17 years at Boeing, most recently as VP of fleet management. Since departing in 2017, he’s served as president of Maloney Aerospace Advisors.

Sara Gonzalez (Burke Museum Photo).

— University of Washington Associate Professor of Anthropology Sara Gonzalez has joined the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture as a curator of archaeology. She is also an adjunct professor of American Indian studies.

In this new role, Gonzalez will curate and care for the museum’s archaeology collections and collaborate with U.S. Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities on archaeological and museum practices. Located on UW’s Seattle campus, the Burke Museum completed a three-year, $99 million expansion last year.

Editor’s note: This post previously cited Dr. Ekin Yasin’s new role at the UW — her appointment was covered in an earlier Tech Moves.

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Who will (eventually) replace Jeff Bezos? Amazon succession mystery deepens with key exec’s exit

Amazon Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke at the 2017 GeekWire Summit. (GeekWire Photo / Dan DeLong)

Jeff Wilke, the flannel-wearing CEO of Amazon’s vast consumer business, has been described as a natural business leader and the most important executive at the company over the past decade. The 53-year-old Pittsburgh native also was viewed as the logical successor to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

So when Wilke last week announced his plans to retire in the first quarter of next year — an unexpected move that caught many Amazon watchers off guard — we naturally wondered: Who is next in line?

It’s a simple question, but the answers are as complex as Amazon itself.

To get a better sense of who may lead the sprawling empire of Amazon — a company that now touches everything from advertising to entertainment to logistics and cloud computing — we chatted with half a dozen former managers, executives and insiders. Most wanted to talk off the record, echoing the intense privacy that surrounds one of the world’s largest companies. Amazon declined to comment on its succession plans.

First, a quick caveat. There’s no indication that Jeff Bezos, at age 56, is ready to hand over the reins. In fact, COVID-19 is only driving Bezos to reimagine the company he started as a tiny online bookseller in a Bellevue home in 1994.

One former insider told us that Bezos is “very engaged” in building the business, and is especially interested in expanding the company’s reach into areas like healthcare and autonomous vehicles. “I don’t expect him to step down from CEO anytime soon,” this person said.

Even so, every large publicly-traded company — especially one with a $1.7 trillion market value — needs to be prepared for a future without its founder.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy at the 2019 re:Invent conference. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

But there are some obvious choices for a successor among the company’s top executives: Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy; Senior Vice President of Worldwide Business Development Jeff Blackburn (who is on a year-long sabbatical); and Dave Clark, the senior vice president of worldwide operations, who is taking over for Wilke.

It’s also worth looking at Amazon’s recently expanded 26-person “S-team,” the leadership group that drives key decisions for the company and includes executives who oversee business lines such as fulfillment, studios, fashion and delivery. The longer Bezos remains at the company, the more likely the reins could eventually be handed to someone who’s currently a newer member of that leadership team. That’s one reason why the growing (yet still minimal) gender and racial diversity among that group is notable.

For the time being, Jassy is the likely front runner for the CEO job, overseeing the enormously profitable cloud computing business.

One former Amazon manager noted that if you were to split Jeff Bezos in half you’d find the combination of Jeff Wilke — an “incredibly talented business executive” — and Andy Jassy — a Jeff Bezos “whisperer” who is the embodiment of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles.

In fact, those principles — frugality; thinking big; insisting on high standards; etc. — are so core to the success of Amazon that it’s highly unlikely that any future CEO would come from outside the organization.

In that regard, Amazon could (reluctantly) take a page from perhaps the most successful CEO transition of the past decade.

Bill Gates, Satya Nadella and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft in 2014. (Microsoft Photo)

When Satya Nadella was named CEO of Microsoft six years ago, very few had him on the short list of candidates. He’d never served as CEO, and he came from deep within the engineering ranks of a company that needed to refocus on its expertise in enterprise software and the cloud.

The internal pick was, by many measures, the right choice for Microsoft, just as Apple successfully transitioned to operating executive Tim Cook following the untimely death of co-founder Steve Jobs. Both Apple and Microsoft — who’ve grown significantly in recent years — looked internally for their next CEOs.

Of course, Amazon is a very different beast than Apple or Microsoft. But its culture does lend itself to picking an insider.

“There’s certainly bench strength,” said Dr. Bruce Avolio, a business professor at The University of Washington who specializes in strategic leadership. “Learning the culture and how different it is would be a challenge for somebody, especially given the up tempo of Amazon.”

Executives who succeed at Amazon tend to have long tenures — Jassy is in his 23rd year; CFO Brian Olsavsky is in his 18th year; and senior vice president and general counsel David Zapolsky is in his 21st year.

Amazon’s Dave Clark, now the new CEO of the company’s consumer business, at a 2018 event unveiling the company’s Delivery Service Partners program. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Clark, who worked as a junior high school music teacher for a year after college, has spent nearly all of his adult career at Amazon. The 47-year-old joined Amazon in 1999 after graduate school, and worked his way up the ladder, implementing robotics in fulfillment centers and overseeing the electrification of the company’s ever-expanding delivery fleet. (A good profile of Clark from Fortune magazine here).

Clark will have a big flannel to fill when Wilke — who for years celebrated front line Amazon workers by wearing flannel shirts during the fourth quarter — retires.

One former Amazon executive told GeekWire that Wilke was perhaps the most important executive in the entire organization for the past decade.

“He brought lean thinking into the organization, developed the category leader model and set Amazon up for the tremendous growth over last 10 years,” the former executive said.

 One of the things that makes Wilke very unique and special is his desire to understand the human algorithm.

A former general manager at Amazon noted that Wilke possessed a “weird combination” of being data-driven plus deep understanding of what it takes to motivate people.

“One of the things that makes Wilke very unique and special is his desire to understand the human algorithm, and what does it mean to organize and lead hundreds of thousands of individuals,” he said.

That softer skill will be hard to replace at a company like Amazon. And that’s why his departure left many wondering: Why leave?

If there is one magical attribute of Amazon, it is the company’s ability to keep the entrepreneurial flame burning even as it tops one million employees and nears $90 billion in quarterly sales. The next leader will embody that unusual characteristic, continuing to push the company into new areas — understanding how to quickly learn from failures and experimenting when the time is right. Of course, this focus on innovation will need to happen while balancing Amazon’s new-found power in the global economy.

Amazon could decide to find a CEO with international experience, since Dr. Avolio noted that they are still a U.S.-centric company which is “unusual for an organization that large.” That said, the company recently reached a milestone with a $345 million profit in its international business in the second quarter. Amazon has long lost money in its international e-commerce segment.

Succession is more than the name of an HBO drama. It’s one of the hardest things for a company to get right. And there is added complexity with a company of Amazon’s size, reach and — shall we say — uniqueness. (Or peculiarity, as people at the company would say.) And, of course, there is also the challenge of replacing a charismatic founder in Jeff Bezos.

In that regard, companies often look for successors who can help define a new age. Tim Cook brought complementary skills to Apple, just as Satya Nadella added a different style to Microsoft from the Steve Ballmer era. Amazon may look for that complementary person for its next leader, someone who is different from Bezos.

That’s often the better strategy for companies looking at succession.

“Otherwise, you are constantly being compared to the (founder),” said Avolio. “Organizations need different leaders in different periods of time.”

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Tech Moves: Microsoft’s latest reorg; RealNetworks names new president; AWS execs depart

Panos Panay, chief product officer at Microsoft. (Microsoft Photo)

— Microsoft is bringing more of its Windows team under Chief Product Officer Panos Panay as part of another reorganization this year. ZDNet reports the company is moving part of the Windows engineering team out of the Azure group and into Panay’s Windows + Devices group. Microsoft declined to comment on the reorg.

The Redmond, Wash., tech giant created the new Windows + Devices group in February, tying the Windows UX and Surface teams together. Based on an internal memo obtained by ZDNet, the changes are intended to create an end-to-end servicing and shipping experience for Windows.

Mike Ensing (RealNetworks Photo)

— Mike Ensing was named president and COO of Seattle-based digital media pioneer RealNetworks. Ensing recently served as interim CFO and was replaced in that role by Judd Lee. He succeeds Max Pellegrini, who has been president for the past seven years and will depart in September for a new opportunity in Italy.

Prior to RealNetworks, Ensing was CFO at Savers/Value Village and Knowledge Universe. He also held several finance leadership roles during eight years at Microsoft. Ensing will report to RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser, who invested $10 million into the company earlier this year as it makes a major pivot into facial recognition technology.

“Mike did a great job as our interim CFO earlier in 2020. I’m confident that he will hit the ground running in this significantly expanded permanent role” Glaser said in a statement.

— Former Amazon Web Services executive Christine Feng joined investment firm Blackstone as senior managing director. At AWS, Feng was a director of corporate development who focused on mergers and acquisitions. Feng previously held a similar role at Microsoft for six years. She will be based in San Francisco and focus on technology investing for Blackstone.

— Mike Clayville has also departed Amazon Web Services and will join online payment powerhouse Stripe as chief revenue officer. Clayville was most recently vice president of worldwide field operations at AWS and previously held executive roles at VMware and BEA Systems.

Major Horton (left) and Jessica Johnson. (LevelTen Energy Photos)

— Clean energy marketplace LevelTen Energy appointed Major Horton as CFO and Jessica Johnson as VP of customer success. Launched in 2016, the Seattle startup’s platform lets companies fund new clean energy projects without having to navigate the world of regulated utilities and power purchase agreements.

Horton previously served as CFO for tech companies AbacusNext, Nirvanix, and Rackspace Technology. Johnson originally joined the company as director of commercial delivery and now takes on an expanded role. She previously spent 16 years at Avangrid Renewables, a renewable energy utility based in Portland, Ore.

— Ken Willner, the former CEO of Seattle mobile marketing startup Zumobi, was named chief growth officer for Canadian mobile communications app TextNow. Prior to Zumobi, Willner was vice president of advertising and media at AT&T. He led Zumobi for more than a decade and will continue to be based in Seattle.

Jim Moffatt. (Icertis Photo)

— Contract management startup Icertis added Jim Moffatt, the former CEO and vice chairman of Deloitte Consulting, to its board. Moffatt retired from Deloitte in 2018 after more than 30 years at the global consulting firm. He currently serves on several other boards including tech companies SparkCognition and Optiv.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company also appointed investor and advisor Betsy Atkins to its board last month.

— Former Edelman EVP Kent Hollenbeck has joined Amazon as the PR lead for robotics and advance technology. Hollenbeck spent more than five years at Edelman, most recently as a member of the senior leadership team for the Pacific Northwest. He previously was an executive at Matter Communications and WE Communications.

— Kelly Hostetler, director of marketing for Seattle smart commute startup Luum, received an Emerging Leader Award from the Association for Commuter Transportation. She has worked at Luum since 2018 and previously managed the University of Washington’s undergraduate Community, Environment and Planning major.

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