Tech Moves: USAFacts picks Microsoft and Amazon vet as CTO; Zillow CMO departs; and more

— Tanuja Korlepra, a previous Amazon and Microsoft item administration leader, has been named chief know-how officer of USAFacts, the Bellevue, Wash.-primarily based nonpartisan civic details initiative established by previous Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Korlepra has above 20 years of working experience in software package engineering. She is included with Worldwide Fund for Gals and the Anita Borg Institute for Females in Technological know-how. In her new part, Korlepra oversees a staff of 15, and will lead the creation of methods to evaluate and ingest information.

USAFacts is a non-profit founded in 2017, fully commited to working with technologies to make nonpartisan info far more available to the US community and generate factual discussion. USAFacts gained the 2020 Webby Award for Governing administration & Civil Innovation.

“USAFacts is empowering Us residents with nonpartisan and unbiased facts, which I believe that is very meaningful in informing actuality-based mostly, facts-pushed debates,” Korlepra stated.

— Zillow Main Promoting Officer Aimee Johnson is leaving the firm immediately after 3 many years to commit time with her family and re-assess her following profession transfer. Prior to Zillow, Johnson served in a variety of management and government roles at Starbucks for 14 many years. Zillow laid off a quarter of its staff members in late 2021 following shutting down its homebuying division.

“What’s upcoming? Most straight away, taking personalized time immediately after 25+ many years of work to re-energize, travel, and invest quality family members, buddy, and me time,” Johnson wrote on a LinkedIn post. “Then, on to my upcoming experience due to the fact, as Arianna Huffington said, this is not the wonderful resignation, it’s the good re-evaluation.”

GeekWire reached out to Zillow for a remark.

— Yves Leurquin is the new CEO of Redmond, Wash.-dependent vaccine business Inventprise.

Leurquin was earlier an government in Takeda and Janssen’s vaccine courses. He takes over from prior CEO and Inventprise founder Subhash Kapre. Kapre is now executive chairman. Leurquin is retaining his seat on Inventprise’s board, which included two new members: Stewart Parker, former CEO of Seattle’s Infectious Condition Study Institute (now the Access to Health Institute) and Donna Ambrosino, who has held various biopharma management positions, together with as CEO of nonprofit vaccine company MassBiologics.

Inventprise just lately also received $30 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the initial tranche of up to $90 million pledged to aid clinical progress of the company’s vaccine prospect for pediatric pneumococcal disorder.
— Michael Cooley, former normal manager for company IoT at Kajeet, was appointed as president for KONTXT, messaging and telecom at RealNetworks.

Cooley has a lot more than 20 a long time in ecommerce management expertise at Fortune 500 companies these types of as Dash and Deloitte and startups. He will be becoming a member of in a new role to control KONTXT, a program option that works by using machine studying-dependent purely natural language processing to detect and block fraudulent text, pictures, and cell phone phone calls.

RealNetworks is a Seattle-centered engineering firm that works by using AI and laptop or computer eyesight to offer a wide range of media and telecommunications remedies. RealNetworks experienced a 2021 profits of $58.2 million with 14{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} expansion in its AI-based organization, KONTXT.

“In just a several shorter years, KONTXT has grow to be a person of the most commonly utilized NLP platforms in the U.S. Telecom field, blocking thousands and thousands of pernicious spam and phishing text messages each individual day,” said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO at RealNetworks, in a news release saying Cooley’s appointment.

Other staff variations across the Pacific Northwest tech marketplace:

• Phil Greenberg, a Fred Hutch investigator, was elected president of the American Affiliation for Cancer Study. Greenberg will serve in this posture beginning in April.
• Jeff Ross, style and design supervisor at NetherRealm Studios (component of WB Game titles), joined Crystal Dynamics, a Bellevue, Clean.-based video game business, as layout director.
• Karen Akinsanya, Schrödinger President of R&D for Therapeutics, joined Seattle-centered Nautilus Biotechnology‘s board of administrators.
• Maddie Clayton, former program engineer at Microsoft and Meta, is joining Proxi, a Bellevue, Wash.-primarily based map application, as director of engineering.
• Laurel Buckner, formerly running director at Seattle-dependent enterprise-debt and equity business, WestRiver Group, joined Riverstone Holdings, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based mostly asset administration business.
• Mark Vasconi, director of regulatory solutions at Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, was appointed to serve as the director of Washington Point out Broadband Business

GeekWire reporter Charlotte Schubert contributed to this tale.