Tech Moves: Delivery giant Gopuff adds Seattle-area execs; Wheels Up names president; and more

Clockwise from top left: Sanjay Shah, Dan Beranek, Komal Kashiramka, Mike Caulfield, Lauren Woodman and Vinayak Hegde.

Heavily funded delivery company Gopuff hired three more executives from Seattle:

• Former Beyond Meat COO Sanjay Shaha as SVP of North America Fulfillment. Previously, he was SVP of Global Energy at Tesla and VP of North American Customer Fulfillment at Amazon.
• Starbucks and Target alum Dan Beranek as Vice President Product for Fresh Food. Most recently, he was SVP of Product Management at specialist car insurance provider Hagerty and previously VP of Digital at the restaurant chain sweetgreen.
• Komal Kashiramka as Director of Engineering for Gopuff Kitchen. Most recently she was Software Engineering Manager at Facebook and previously an engineer at Microsoft.

The Philadelphia-based company also hired Tim Collins as SVP of Operations and Sharad Sundaresan as SVP of Product and Growth earlier this year, both based in the Seattle area. Gopuff was on a recruitment course following its most recent $ 1 billion financing round and multiple acquisitions. The company’s most recent valuation was $ 15 billion.

Vinayak Hegde. (Wheels up photo)

– Former Groupon and Airbnb manager Vinayak Hegde has been promoted to president of aviation company Wheels Up. Hegde joined the New York-based company in May as Chief Marketplace Officer.

Hegde is based in Seattle and previously worked for Amazon for 12 years, most recently as general manager for global marketing. He was the chief marketing officer at Groupon and Airbnb. Prior to joining Wheels Up, Hegde was President and COO of prescription startup Blink Health.

– International shipping startup FlavorCloud has hired Telved Devlet as Vice President of Customer Success and Operations. Devlet was previously VP of Client Services at Avvo legal marketplace and spent more than 12 years with Microsoft.

FlavorCloud addresses the complexity and cost of international shipping for ecommerce businesses. The four-year-old Seattle company is profitable, raising $ 6.3 million earlier this year.

Lauren Woodman. (DataKind photo)

– Lauren Woodman, a former general manager of Microsoft, is the new CEO of the global nonprofit DataKind. Most recently, she was CEO of NetHope, a consortium that helps NGOs secure funding and use technology for their missions.

Founded in 2012, DataKind connects organizations with pro bono data science and AI experts to address social issues. DataKind has offices in the UK, India, Singapore and the US. DataKind co-founder Jake Porway stepped down as Executive Director in 2020, with COO Russatta Buford serving as interim Executive Director since then.

– Boeing veterinarian Amy Bann joined Xpansiv, a marketplace for environmental / social governance (ESG) raw materials, as head of the registry network and integration. Most recently, she was director of sustainability strategy at Boeing.

In her new role, Bann will be responsible for strategy and partnerships for Xpansiv’s digital platform. She is currently a board member of the cleantech investment group E8 Angels.

Xpansiv, based in San Francisco, has 25 employees in the Seattle area. The company recently closed a $ 100 million financing round.

Mike Caulfield. (UW photo)

– The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) has appointed Mike Caulfield to lead its responsive research program that tracks the spread of misinformation on the Internet. Caulfield is a research scientist and most recently director of blended and network learning at Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington.

The appointment comes after CIP received millions in grants to support responsive research on elections and major events. Kate Starbird, director of the CIP faculty, presented some of the center’s latest disinformation research at the GeekWire summit last week.

Caulfield, a former employee of CIP and UW iSchool, taught digital literacy and developed a widely used fact-checking method called SIFT (Stop, Investigate, Find better cover and Trace Claims). It will start this month.

Andrew Baum (Screencast-O-Matic-Photo)

– Seattle-based screen capture and video editing platform Screencast-O-Matic has named Andrew Baum as chief marketing officer. Baum was previously CMO at PixelMixer and WeVideo. He was also VP of Marketing, Sales and Business Development at the online photo platform SmugMug.

– BitTitan, based in Bellevue, Washington, named Joseph Nguyen as its first director of information security.

Nguyen most recently served as Director of DevOps at Perspectium, San Diego, California-based BitTitan, which was acquired earlier this year. Previously, he was Director of Software Engineering at NBC Universal.

– Boston-based GentiBio is expanding its Seattle process development team under the direction of Director John Wesner, a former senior scientist at Juno Therapeutics. Other new additions to the young biotech company’s Seattle team, including other Juno Therapeutics alumni, include:

Andy Walker, Co-Founder and CTO of GentiBio, is also based in the Seattle area and was previously SVP of Technical Operations for Juno Therapeutics. In August, GentiBio announced a $ 157 million Series A funding round to develop its T-cell therapies.