Oct 05, 2022

Moda Health

Moda Health, founded in Portland in 1955, will begin offering medical plans in the state of Idaho. Moda Health currently serves communities in Oregon, Alaska, and Texas. In Idaho, the company will offer individual, family, medicare supplement and group medical plans. Moda Health is partnering with the Saint Alphonsus Health Alliance network; the Patient Quality Alliance network, a comprehensive network of hospitals and physicians throughout Southeast Idaho; and Minidoka Memorial Hospital, along with other local providers. Open enrollment for Moda's individual/family medical plans begins Oct. 15 and runs through Dec. 15.

Avalara

Avalara, a provider of tax compliance automation for businesses of all sizes, announced that independent proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services has recommended that shareholders vote “For” the pending transaction with Vista Equity Partners at the company's upcoming Special Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for October 14, 2022. The recommendation supports the Avalara board's unanimous recommendation that shareholders vote “For” the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by Avalara shareholders. Goldman Sachs is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Avalara, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Perkins Coie are acting as legal counsel. Headquartered in Seattle, Avalara has offices across the U.S. and around the world in Brazil, Europe, and India.

DexCare

Seattle-based DexCare has been selected to participate in Amazon Web Services' Health Equity Initiative, a $40 million, three-year commitment, supporting organizations in developing solutions to advance health equity. Through the initiative, AWS offers AWS credits and customized technical expertise to selected organizations around the world that want to use AWS services to improve health outcomes and health equity in any of the following areas: 1) increasing access to health services for underserved communities; 2) addressing social determinants of health; and 3) leveraging data to promote more equitable and inclusive systems of care. DexCare will use the grant from AWS to build customized dashboards for use by health systems across the country to measure, track, and trend progress towards increased access for medically underserved communities. The initiative is occurring in tandem with the rollout of DexCare's new Localization for Equitable Access feature. The new feature provides language translation to non-English speaking patients while booking a telehealth appointment. Incubated at Providence, DexCare is a data-driven intelligence company focused on making access to healthcare better for everyone. DexCare's core offering is a software platform, provided exclusively to health systems, that orchestrates digital demand and health system capacity across all lines of care.

Oct 04, 2022

CoreStack

Bellevue-based CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance provider, announced that Sridhar Chandrashekar will be joining the leadership team as chief digital officer. Chandrashekar is the former co-founder and CEO of Optio3, which was recently acquired by CoreStack. Optio3 is an AI-powered operations management company based in Seattle. Prior to his time at Optio3, Chandrashekar was the founding general manager and vice president of the IT Operations Management business unit at ServiceNow. Chandrashekar joined ServiceNow after 18 years at Microsoft. He has been awarded 24 patents for his work at Microsoft and ServiceNow.

Amazon

A year after its pilot launch, Amazon announced that it will roll out the Amazon Community Lending program as a long-term offering. In partnership with BSD Capital (dba Lendistry), this program will continue to support urban and rural small businesses in socially and economically distressed communities through short-term loans at competitive rates. Since its launch, the program has loaned more than $35 million to over 800 Amazon sellers, surpassing the original goal of $10 million during the pilot. Now, the program plans to loan more than $150 million in the next three years to small businesses selling in the Amazon U.S. store. Small businesses in the program can use these funds to grow their business and cover other strategic needs, such as staffing and operations costs, inventory, product development and manufacturing, and marketing efforts. Loans provided by Lendistry through this program will range from $10,000 to $250,000, with terms of up to five years. The program also provides small businesses access to supplementary resources from Lendistry, including one-on-one consulting, webinars, and on-demand educational classes.

Symetra

Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work have recognized Symetra as one of the 2022 Best Workplaces for Women. The ranking is based on analysis of confidential survey feedback representing over 7 million employees from Great Place to Work-certified organizations across the United States. The Best Workplaces for Women selects winners based on how fairly women say they're treated at their workplace. Great Place to Work measures the differences in women's survey responses with those of their peers and assesses the impact of demographics and roles on the quality and consistency of women's experiences. Led by CEO Margaret Meister and a gender-balanced senior leadership team, Symetra was certified by Great Place to Work earlier this year, with 90% of employees saying it's a great place to work. To determine the Best Workplaces for Women, Great Place to Work analyzed the survey responses of over 640,000 women who work for Great Place to Work-certified companies that employ at least 50 women. Companies must also have at least 20% of non-executive managers who are women, and at least one executive who's a woman. Symetra is a diversified financial services company based in Bellevue.

Sep 30, 2022

Emerald Communities

Jamison

Emerald Communities, a nonprofit senior housing and services organization based in Redmond, hired Diana Jamison as vice president, chief financial officer. Jamison will be responsible for the overall strategic and operational aspects of finance, accounting and information technology. She will work closely with the president and CEO of Emerald Communities, senior management, the board of directors, residents and numerous community partners to ensure Emerald Communities and its senior living properties, Heron's Key in Gig Harbor and Emerald Heights in Redmond, all meet their financial and business goals. Prior to joining Emerald Communities, Jamison had nearly two decades of experience in nonprofit senior housing organizations. She brings extensive experience in strategic leadership, financial planning and analysis, reporting, financial modeling, risk management, accounting and team leadership.

Curator

Garza

Christopher

Fletcher

Curator, a Seattle-based public relations agency specializing in lifestyle and consumer brands, announced that Elsa Fletcher has joined the firm as a Seattle-based assistant account executive. Additionally, Jessica Christopher, who works out of Bend, Oregon, and Xiamara Garza, who works near Phoenix, Arizona, have been promoted to account supervisor and account executive, respectively. All three will be responsible for the ideation and implementation of communication strategies for clients including PCC Community Markets, Gesa Credit Union, Qapital, Washington's Lottery and Ziply Fiber. Christopher joined the agency in 2021 as a senior account executive. Prior to joining Curator, she worked at Allied Global Marketing in Philadelphia. Garza joined Curator in 2021 as an assistant account executive after interning with the company during her senior year at Northern Arizona University. Fletcher is a recent graduate of the University of Oregon. Previously, she interned at an eco-friendly hair care and beauty company serving as a social media intern as well as a marketing intern at commercial real estate firm. Curator was founded in 2009.

Washington Federal

Washington Federal, parent company of Washington Federal Bank (WaFd Bank), promoted veteran commercial banker Dan LaCoste to regional president for Southern Oregon. LaCoste joined WaFd Bank three years ago as senior vice president – commercial division manager. LaCoste started his banking career in 1997. He held leadership roles, including region president during his 21 years at US Bank leading private banking, commercial, retail and operations. LaCoste is a 2010 graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School and has held board chair and board president roles at several non-profit organizations in the Eugene, Oregon region. Washington Federal Bank, a national bank with headquarters in Seattle, has more than 200 branches in eight western states.