Tech Moves: Avanade AI chief steps down; Amazon vet joins Shipium; Tanium names CMO

— Florin Rotar is leaving Avanade after a 25-year career at the Seattle-area IT services and consulting firm. Rotar joined Avanade in 2000 as its first employee in Europe.

“I look back on this journey helping to grow a company from 0 to 10.000’s of people and how much change I’ve personally and professionally been through, I must start by simply saying thank you to my Avanade family, past and present, to every client who trusted us with their hardest problems, to every partner who journeyed with us,” Rotar wrote on LinkedIn.

Rotar held several leadership roles at the company, most recently as is chief AI officer. He was previously CTO at Avanade, which provides various digital, cloud and AI-related services across the Microsoft ecosystem.

In his LinkedIn post, Rotar shared lessons learned from his journey. Among them: “The most complex challenges are rarely technical; they are human;” “most overnight successes are the result of a thousand nights of thankless preparation;” and “if you’re going to live on the U.S. west coast and work in a global company, invest in a good coffeemaker.”

— Seattle supply chain optimization startup Shipium announced Pratik Sharma as senior vice president of product delivery and experience.

Sharma joins the company from Amazon, where he worked for more than a decade, leaving the role of general manager for product management for supply chain services.

“[I]t is inspiring to see Shipium setting new industry standards by transforming traditional operations into tech-forward supply chains through its domain-specialized AI and effective automation,” Sharma said on LinkedIn.

In a statement from the company, Shipium CEO and co-founder Jason Murray praised Sharma’s “proven track record of connecting virtual solutions to physical outcomes.”

Founded in 2019 by former Amazon leaders, Shipium helps e-commerce companies improve their supply chain capabilities by reducing cost and speeding up deliveries.

The company hired promoted Geoff Tamman to chief financial officer earlier this year.

— Tanium named Tara Ryan as its chief marketing officer. Ryan comes to the position from Saviynt, where she also served as CMO. Her past experience includes roles at businesses in cloud platforms, cybersecurity and enterprise software.

“Tara is a transformational marketing leader with a unique blend of creativity, strategic acumen, and operational rigor,” said Dan Streetman, CEO of Tanium, in a statement.

Ryan will be based at Tanium’s office in Emeryville, Calif. The cybersecurity’s HQ is in Kirkland, Wash.

— Seattle’s Brian Delahunty is now vice president of engineering in Cloud AI at Google. Delahunty comes to the role from Anthropic, where he helped launch the Claude 3 AI model. He has held engineering roles at Seattle-area companies including Microsoft and Stripe, and was a co-founder of Barn2Door.

— Tom Leung, former co-founder and CEO of Seattle startups Poachable and Seattle Condo Review, is vice president of product management at Strava. Leung, now based in California, said on LinkedIn that he first tried the Strava app at his son’s prompting to help him fulfill a New Year’s resolution to get fit and run a 5K.

— Francis Wilson joined the go-to-market strategy team at Anthropic’s Seattle office where he’ll partner with the company’s applied AI group. Wilson was previously at Amplitude.

“Very excited about the opportunity to get powerful, safe AI into the hands of professionals everywhere,” he said on LinkedIn, adding that the tech will fundamentally change how he does his own work.

— Sarah Bowman is now a partner in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie, joining the firm’s private client services practice. Bowman works on estate planning, estate and trust administration, and family office structuring for high-net-worth families. She was previously with K&L Gates.

— Jessica Kamada, managing partner of Swizzle Ventures, joined the board of directors for the YMCA of Greater Seattle. Swizzle funds startups focused on serving women.

“The Y is deeply aligned with our mission at Swizzle Ventures to fill health, caregiving & financial gaps for women, children & families,” Kamada posted on LinkedIn. “I’m excited to focus this mission locally to make a positive impact in our Seattle community.”

— Avinash Belur is co-founder and CEO of LoftxAI, a Seattle-area startup offering AI agents to assist real estate rental operators and property managers.

Belur previously spent more than a decade at Microsoft and has worked for Expedia Group, Facebook and Flexport. He left a role as product manager for Google Cloud Platform to launch LoftxAI.

— The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions announced that its director of banks, Roberta Hollinshead, is leaving after 24 years with the agency. When Hollinshead took the leadership role nine years ago, she was one of only 17 female banks’ directors in the U.S.

— Andrew Coté, senior vice president of Forterra, joined the board of advisors of the U.S. National Drone Association. Coté recently left Brinc, a Seattle startup building drones and related technologies for emergency response agencies, to take the job at Forterra.