The Pacific Northwest’s tech and corporate talent scene has never been short on movement, but the latest cascade of leadership changes reads less like a routine shuffle and more like a moment of recalibration. Perhaps the highest-profile move involves Dave Levy, vice president of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, who has left Amazon after more than nine years to join Google. Levy, based in Arlington, Virginia, previously spent twelve years running U.S. government sales at Apple, which made him one of the most recognizable figures in the niche but enormously consequential world of selling cloud services to public agencies. His departure was confirmed by an AWS spokesperson, while Google declined to comment, leaving the exact shape of his new role something of an open secret. The move lands at a time when government cloud computing has become a strategic battleground. Amazon first launched government-specific cloud infrastructure back in 2011, and today it supports more than 11,000 government agencies, from local municipalities to the intelligence community. In November, Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in expanding AI and advanced computing infrastructure for U.S. government agencies, including offerings for Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud workloads. That investment frames how much is at stake: Levy was not just a sales executive; he helped shepherd a business that now underpins sensitive and classified operations. In the interim, David Appel, VP of AWS Global Government, National Security and Defense, has taken over Levy’s responsibilities in an acting capacity, according to his LinkedIn profile. Levy’s last day was July 31. For anyone watching the intersection of big tech and public sector spending, this is a reminder that individual leaders can carry enormous relationships and strategic knowledge across rival companies, and that the competition for their talents is just as fierce as the competition for government contracts.
At the same time, the consumer-products world is seeing an executive return to the Pacific Northwest with a mission to steady a beloved but volatile brand. Kristin Hamilton has been named chief commercial officer for Funko, the Everett, Washington-based maker of pop-culture collectibles known for its oversized heads and encyclopedic licensing deals. Hamilton joins from Crunchyroll, the Sony Pictures Entertainment division focused on anime and Japanese pop culture, and before that she spent nearly 15 years at Hasbro, where she left as head of strategy and transformation for the consumer products division. Her career has traced the blurring boundary between physical toys and digital content, from the aisles of big-box retailers to the streaming catalogs that now define so much of youth culture. She begins her new role on Aug. 24. Her arrival comes at a delicate moment for Funko. The company has weathered considerable financial and leadership turbulence in recent years, including a rapid turnover in the CEO seat and the accumulation of significant debt. For a company that thrives on nostalgia and fandom, the business side has sometimes felt like a drama series of its own, with too many plot twists and not enough stable continuity. But there is reason for cautious optimism: this month Funko reported a strong second quarter with sales up from the same period a year earlier. The positive quarter suggests that recent cost-cutting and inventory management efforts are starting to pay off, even as the broader economy remains uncertain. Hamilton’s background in both toy strategy and digital streaming entertainment appears to be exactly the combination Funko needs as it tries to connect physical collectibles with the expanding universe of digital fandom. She will be responsible for making sure that the company’s many licensed properties—from Marvel superheroes to nostalgic cartoon characters—find their way into markets and shelves that can actually generate profit. Her experience at Crunchyroll, where she witnessed how deeply audiences connect with characters and stories across borders, should serve her well in a company whose entire business model depends on turning cultural affinity into collectible objects. If Funko can translate the energy of its second-quarter rebound into a longer arc, Hamilton may be one of the most important hires the company has made in years.
Meanwhile, in the ever-shifting world of crypto and blockchain, Seattle-based Coinme has made a compliance-minded hire that signals where the industry is heading. Laurent Reichert has been named chief compliance officer, consumer protection officer, and Bank Secrecy Act officer at Coinme, a cryptocurrency cash exchange and ATM network. Reichert, who is based in Miami, previously served as chief compliance and risk officer at Paxos, a well-regarded blockchain infrastructure company. His arrival is not just a routine executive appointment; it’s a statement. In an industry that has often treated regulation as an afterthought, Coinme is positioning itself to operate with the rigor expected of a serious financial institution. The role carries enormous responsibility: the Bank Secrecy Act officer is the person charged with making sure the company detects and reports money laundering, knows its customers, and keeps the bad actors out. Reichert praised Coinme’s currency trading platform and said he looked forward to “the next phase of growth, both domestically and as we move into new international markets alongside Polygon.” That last part is a clue to the bigger picture. In January, Coinme announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Polygon Labs, a blockchain payments company, which also planned to acquire wallet provider Sequence as part of a combined deal valued at more than $250 million. Polygon is known for its focus on scalability and lower-cost transactions, and Coinme’s network of physical cash-to-crypto kiosks gives it a bridge between the digital currency world and everyday consumers who still think in dollars and coins. Adding a compliance chief with Reichert’s pedigree—someone who has seen how the regulatory landscape works from the inside—suggests that the combined entity wants to avoid the legal and reputational problems that have plagued so many crypto ventures. For the Pacific Northwest, which has become a quiet hub of blockchain talent, this is another sign that the industry is growing up: the people being hired now are not just engineers and marketers, but the guardians of trust and legality.
Moving from cryptocurrency to the decidedly more analog world of freight, DAT Freight & Analytics has announced a reshaped leadership team built around technology, artificial intelligence, and customer experience. The Beaverton, Oregon-based company operates one of North America’s largest truckload freight marketplaces, connecting shippers and brokers with carriers who move goods across the country. It’s not the kind of business that makes flashy headlines, but it is essential infrastructure for the economy, and its leadership changes reflect how much the industry is being transformed by software. John Xiao has been promoted to chief technology officer, leading work on DAT’s tech platform, analytics, and AI integration. Xiao joined DAT just two years ago from Nordstrom, where he oversaw technology strategy in merchandising, supply chain, and inventory management—a background that gives him a useful perspective on the pressures that shippers and retailers actually feel. Marcus Womack, who joined DAT last year through the acquisition of his fintech startup Outgo, is now responsible for DAT’s carrier segment in addition to financial services. Womack understands the pain points of small trucking companies, having built a startup aimed at giving them better access to capital. Kary Jablonski, the former CEO of Trucker Tools, which DAT acquired in 2024, continues to lead DAT’s broker business while also picking up responsibility for marketing and customer support. The fact that all three are based in DAT’s Seattle office speaks to the company’s growing presence in the region and its desire to tap into the same talent pool that feeds Amazon, Microsoft, and a thousand startups. DAT won GeekWire’s Workplace of the Year Award in May, an acknowledgment that its culture is a reason people stay and do their best work. In an industry where margins are thin and disruptions are constant—from fuel price spikes to driver shortages to the rise of algorithmic freight matching—having a leadership team that combines retail tech, fintech, and logistics software experience is a competitive advantage. The company is essentially placing a series of bets that the future of freight belongs to those who can build better platforms, not just bigger networks.
Seattle’s startup ecosystem also saw a round of internal promotions worth noting, especially for companies working on hard scientific problems. Membrion, an industrial wastewater treatment startup that spun out of the University of Washington a decade ago, has promoted Emily Rabe to vice president of technology. Rabe has been with the company for six years, leading its intellectual property efforts and most strategic technology programs while also coordinating with external technology partners. The company’s LinkedIn post praised her with a nice line that stands out in an era of inflated job titles: “She has a remarkable ability to take on hard, ill-defined problems, learn quickly and put durable solutions in place.” That is exactly the kind of description you want for someone responsible for translating research into real-world products. Membrion makes ceramic-based membranes that can handle harsh industrial wastewater, a problem that many manufacturing and extraction industries face. The startup has raised $40 million and is ranked No. 154 on the GeekWire 200, a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups. Alongside Rabe’s promotion, the company elevated Ryan Flores to senior scientist and Michael Moreland to senior customer success engineer. Bigger executive moves continued elsewhere. Microsoft’s Jordi Ribas, who has spent 26 years at the company and currently serves as president of search and AI, has been appointed to the board of Sprinklr, a customer experience management platform that helps global brands handle social media, advertising, and marketing. Ribas’s expertise in search and AI is especially relevant as enterprises race to incorporate generative AI into their customer interactions. Seattle biotech company Omeros has also added a new director: Joseph Schocken, who founded the investment bank Broadmark Capital in 1987, now known as Tranceka Capital. Schocken’s long career in finance will bring a seasoned perspective to a company navigating the expensive and uncertain path of drug development. These appointments may lack the drama of a cloud executive defecting to a rival, but they are the quiet moves that determine whether a small company can scale, whether an enterprise software firm has the right guidance, and whether a biotech with a promising pipeline can secure the confidence of investors.
Finally, one of the most familiar faces in Seattle corporate policy circles is on the move again. Jay Carney, who served as Amazon’s senior vice president of global corporate affairs for seven years, ending in 2022, has left his position as Airbnb’s global head of policy and communications. He did not indicate what he plans to do next. Carney’s career has always straddled the line between power and narrative: he was famously a White House press secretary under President Obama before joining Amazon at a time when the company was increasingly under scrutiny for its labor practices, tax policies, and relationships with regulators. In his role at Amazon, he was tasked with explaining and defending the company’s actions to the public, politicians, and the press. Moving to Airbnb in 2022 seemed to offer a slightly different canvas, especially as cities around the world wrestled with how to regulate short-term rentals. Now, with his departure from Airbnb, the question is where a person with that résumé lands next. He could return to the corporate world, move into politics or consulting, or take a board seat. Whatever he chooses, it will be watched closely because executives in his position are often the last line of defense between a company and the regulatory storm. Taken together, the past few weeks of personnel changes paint a vivid picture of an evolving regional economy. Cloud leaders are being poached by rivals as government contracts grow more strategic. Consumer brands are bringing in seasoned executives to steady the ship. Crypto companies are hiring compliance officers as they prepare for expansion and tighter oversight. Freight tech is being rebuilt around AI and fintech. Startups are rewarding the people who solve hard problems internally. And policy veterans are floating between tech giants and platform companies. None of these moves happen in a vacuum. They reflect the shifting priorities of industries that are trying to find their footing in a fast-changing world. For the Pacific Northwest, the real story isn’t just who left and who arrived; it’s what these changes say about the kind of leadership the region’s companies believe they need for the next stage of growth.
