Sep 30, 2021

Leafly Holdings

Krishnaswamy

Seattle-base Leafly Holdings, a cannabis discovery marketplace, hired Suresh Krishnaswamy as its new chief financial officer. Krishnaswamy brings more than 25 years of experience in leading finance and technology roles for global organizations, and is joining Leafly following the announcement that the company will go public through a business combination with Merida Merger. Most recently, Krishnaswamy served as an advisor for NextLevel Business Consulting, where he developed vision and strategy for large companies in financial services and technology. Prior to joining NextLevel, he held roles including CFO of Drift, a renewable energy marketplace, and worked with major investment banks including Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Credit Agricole and Barclays.

Downtown Seattle Association

Rolf

The Downtown Seattle Association has named Kylie Rolf as its new vice president of advocacy and economic development effective Oct. 18. Rolf joins DSA from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan's office where she has worked since 2017 as director of legislative affairs and major initiatives. She has also held positions with Sound View Strategies, a Seattle-based public affairs firm, as Sen. Maria Cantwell's King County outreach director, and with Seattle For Everyone, a pro-housing coalition of which DSA is a member. Her background includes policy work on housing in Seattle-King County, campaign field organizing, fundraising, community and small-business outreach and labor union experience. Rolf was selected through a DSA board-led process with a focus on identifying diverse candidates as part of DSA's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Established in 1958, the Downtown Seattle Association is a nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to create a healthy, vibrant downtown.

Snoqualmie Tribe

King County Executive Dow Constantine announced the Snoqualmie Tribe Vaccine Partnership as the winner of the 11th annual Executive's Award for Community Resilience for their collaborative effort to deliver tens of thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses to residents of east King County. The award is given each fall in recognition of outstanding efforts made by community organizations to prepare for and respond to emergencies, to promote safer communities and strengthen King County as a whole. The partnership was formed when the cities of Sammamish and Issaquah, Eastside Fire and Rescue, and the Snoqualmie Tribe joined efforts to ensure equitable distribution of critical COVID-19 vaccine. From April to mid-June, the Snoqualmie Tribe Vaccine Partnership delivered more than 15,000 doses of vaccine at a drive-through vaccination site at Lake Sammamish State Park. Eastside Fire and Rescue personnel also delivered nearly 6,800 vaccines at the Snoqualmie Tribal Casino and close to 1,000 doses through mobile vaccination teams and pop-up clinics, focusing on vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.

Sep 29, 2021

Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) announced the recipients of its Ron Knode Service Award, recognizing CSA members from the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA regions for their excellence in volunteerism. The honorees were selected by the CSA executive team and chosen based on their valuable contributions towards fulfilling CSA's mission of promoting best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. Ron Knode was an information security expert who passed away in May 2012. Established in 2012, the Ron Knode Service Award is awarded annually to CSA members whose contributions reflect Ron's passion for volunteerism and embody the spirit for which this award was established. This year's recipients are: Dr. Ricci Ieong, principal consultant of eWalker Consulting; Claudius Lam, marketing manager for Trend Micro; Juan-Pablo Perez-Etchegoyen, chief technology officer of Onapsis; Shawn Harris, managing principal security architect at Starbucks Coffee; Paul Rich, executive director, data management and protection for JPMorgan Chase; and Michael Roza, a risk, audit, control and compliance professional with 20-plus years of experience. The Cloud Security Alliance is headquartered in Seattle.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services announced the general availability of Amazon QuickSight Q, a new capability in Amazon QuickSight that gives anyone in an organization the ability to ask business questions using natural language and receive accurate answers with relevant visualizations that help them gain insights from the data. Amazon QuickSight Q does not depend on prebuilt dashboards or reports to deliver visualizations, which removes the need for business intelligence analysts to update a dashboard every time a new business question arises, so anyone can ask their questions and receive visual answers in seconds. Customers can refine the way Amazon QuickSight Q understands questions with an editor, which removes the need for complex data preparation before users can ask questions of data in natural language. There are no upfront commitments to use Amazon QuickSight Q, and customers only pay for the number of users or queries. Amazon QuickSight Q currently supports questions in English and is generally available today to customers running Amazon QuickSight in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), and Europe (London), with availability in additional AWS Regions coming soon.

T-Mobile

Bellevue-based T-Mobile announced the 25 small towns winning Hometown Grants to jumpstart community development projects to re-energize these towns and build upon what makes them unique. Hometown Grants are part of T-Mobile's commitment to bring 5G to rural America. Over the next five years, T-Mobile plans to hire 7,500 new employees in small towns and rural communities and provide $25 million in grants for community development projects. Northwest winners are: Fruitland, Idaho, purchase and install youth playground equipment in a new city park; Aumsville, OR, create space for small businesses to use for Saturday Market Days and to support park use with a community gathering space; Talent, OR, revitalize space in Depot Building to help it be a focal point of gathering, collaboration and innovation for decades to come; Toledo, OR, transform rural Toledo's Main Street through business beautifications and murals; and Moses Lake, WA, set up a creative community incubator that will have art, live music, events, a lounge and maker space to inspire creativity. T-Mobile partnered with Main Street America and Smart Growth America, two consulting partners with a combined experience of more than 60 years working to help build stronger, more prosperous small towns and rural communities. Together, they determined the grant recipients based on detail and fullness of the submission, community impact, viability of the project among other factors. Recipients are selected and awarded on a quarterly basis, so towns with populations less than 50,000 are still eligible to apply. For full details on how to submit a proposal for Hometown Grants, visit https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/hometown-grants.

Sep 28, 2021

Paway App

Paway has expanded its community and is now available in Seattle with a pet-friendly app. Paway is a free dog walking companion app that helps pet owners and dog caregivers find dog-friendly routes and get live alerts to keep dogs safe. Paway was created by professional dog walkers, and uses real-time crowd sourced data to map out a neighborhood while connecting with other dogs and humans along the way. Paway puts dog and owner safety first and includes features that allow other caretakers to follow along on walks, find lost dogs and check their pet's “report card.” Jason Meltzer is the founder of Paway and first CEO of Wag!

Johnstone Supply

Johnstone Supply's members approved a conversion agreement with Redwood Capital Investments that will provide the capital for Johnstone to convert its business structure from an Oregon cooperative into a Delaware limited liability company operating under the name Johnstone Supply LLC. Johnstone Supply will continue to operate as a wholesale distributor based in Portland, providing products and services to the former members of the Johnstone Cooperative. The 90-plus individual Johnstone business owners are expected to execute exclusive territory distribution agreements with Johnstone Supply, and will remain significant equity holders in the new entity. The conversion agreement is subject to regulatory approval and the deal is expected to close later this year. Wells Fargo Securities served as financial advisor to Johnstone, with K&L Gates as the legal advisor. Kirkland & Ellis was the legal counsel to Redwood. Johnstone Supply Cooperative is a North American HVACR brand with over $3 billion in annual sales generated by over 450 independently owned stores across the U.S. and Canada.

Petabyte Consortium

Unavets, a European platform for veterinary centers with over 43 practices across Spain and Portugal, is partnering with Bellevue-based Petabyte Technology, a veterinary software company, to join the new Petabyte Consortium, which is focused on cleaning and standardizing data to improve veterinary practices. Petabyte patient management solutions for veterinary hospitals offer a suite of software solutions, including Rhapsody, a cloud-based practice information management system; Petabyte Analytics, an enterprise-level analytics platform; and Boop, a mobile application simplifying the pet care experience for pet owners. Founded in 2019, Petabyte's mission is to give veterinary health care practitioners greater understanding and control over their business using cloud-based technology. Michael Hyman is the co-founder and CEO of Petabyte. Unavets is the third group to join the Petabyte Consortium.