The Seattle Leafly cannabis market announced New York-based attorney Kimberly Boler as its new general counsel. She joins the company for 11 years just prior to their deal to go public through a merger with New York-based Merida Merger Corp, a special purpose acquisition company.
Boler was most recently vice president of corporate law at Patriarch Partners. She previously was an Assistant General Counsel at global insurance company AIG and General Counsel aria Energy.
“I am delighted to bring my experience as General Counsel to the table so that we can navigate a challenging regulatory environment,” Boler said in a statement.
The cannabis regulatory environment is certainly evolving, including recent changes to Apple’s App Store that allowed Leafly to accept marijuana orders on its iOS app.
Leafly CEO Yoko Miyashita previously served as the company’s general counsel. The Getty Images veteran was promoted to CEO last year.
Former CarGurus executive Martha Blue has joined the board of directors of Seattle startup Recurrent, which provides independent reports on the status of used electric car batteries.
Blue is currently a Senior Advisor on Electric Vehicle Strategy at Boston Consulting Group and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School. She spent more than eight years at CarGurus, an online automotive marketplace, as Senior Vice President of Business Development.
Recurrent, a Pioneer Square Labs spinout, launched last year and has raised $ 3.75 million in grants and seed funding to date.
– Bank of America Seattle Market President Kerri Schroeder is the new board chair of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. She has served on the Seattle Chamber’s board since 2018 and will be chair for 2021-2022.
– Seattle startup Skilljar hired Laura Wiler as VP of Finance and Operations. She spent the past seven years at Sage Intacct, a financial management software company based in San Jose, California.
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Wiler recently moved to Whidbey Island. She joins Skilljar a year after it closed a $ 33 million Series B round to grow its customer education software.
The company also added Niran Kundapur as VP of Product earlier this year. Kundapur previously worked at the San Francisco Bay Area-based talent acquisition startup Eightfold.
Madrona Venture Group will add Maria Gilfoyle to its investment team this month. With a background in fashion, Gilfoyle was most recently a venture associate at New York firm K50 Ventures. She was previously a co-founder and investor in the 4P Ventures venture community.
“I am truly fortunate to join a company with an incredible history and future ahead of it,” Gilfoyle said in a post on LinkedIn.
Last year, the 25-year-old Seattle venture firm raised $ 345 million for its eighth fund to invest in Pacific Northwest startups, as well as $ 161 million for its second post-stage fund. Recent investments include AI platform Yoodli, social platform Game Jolt, and London-based startup Troop.
– LevelTen Energy promoted Christin Camacho to Vice President of Marketing. Camacho joined the Seattle Renewable Energy Market in 2018 as a Senior Content Marketing Manager. She previously worked at Redfin and Edelman.
Auterion, which makes software for drones, hired Amazon Web Services (AWS) vet Jeff Jones as its chief revenue officer. He most recently was Head of Partner Growth at AWS.
Jones previously spent more than two decades at Microsoft in sales and business development. It is based in Seattle.
– Seattle digital health nonprofit Audere announced Dino Rech as its new CEO. Founder and former CEO Philip Su will move into an advisory role.
Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Rech was most recently director of the Aurum Institute, which focuses on the treatment and prevention of HIV and tuberculosis. He was previously a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and led the non-governmental organization CHAPS, focused on HIV and AIDS.
Founded in 2018, Audere created rapid testing software for COVID-19 last year. Beyond the pandemic, the organization is applying mobile technology, computer vision, and machine learning to global health solutions. The projects are funded by grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Justworks Spring Forward Fund.
