The Biggest Moves in Tech This Week

These are the most notable hires, promotions, and departures within the US tech community in the last week. For executive news updated daily, check out The Org's People on the Move.

Tech Giants

Twitter has found the leader for its initiative to create a decentralized social network standard, called Bluesky, as Happening founder Jay Graber revealed she had accepted the role in a tweet on Monday. Her next move will be to hire a small team starting with a protocol developer and a web developer. Source | Full Story

Shopify has selected two executives, Erin Zipes and Vivek Narayanadas, to lead its legal organization. The e-commerce powerhouse has also appointed Maryam Mujica as VP of Government Affairs. She will report to Narayanadas. Source | Full Story

AWS veteran Charlie Bell has reportly decided to leave Amazon’s cloud computing unit, sparking an executive reshuffle. Source | Full Story

Intel has named its new top HR leader, Christy Pambianchi, who will take up the mantle as the tech giant’s EVP and Chief People Officer on September 7. She joins from Verizon, where she most recently worked as Chief Human Resource Officer and led an overhaul of the company’s HR practices. Source | Full Story

Google has recruited Bhanumurthy Ballapuram as Google Cloud VP of the Japan and Asia Pacific region. He formerly worked as Wipro's President and Chief Operating Officer. Source

Microsoft has hired Manik Gupta as a Corporate Vice President for Teams Consumer, Skype, and GroupMe. Gupta is an ex-Chief Product Officer at Uber and most recently co-founded CVKey, a non-profit, volunteer organization, to help communities reopen responsibly from COVID-19. Source

Imperva named Scott Lovett as Chief Revenue Officer, and Karl Triebes as Senior Vice President of Product Management and General Manager of the Application Security business unit. Lovett was previously the global sales leader for Web and Security Sales at Akamai Technologies. Triebes was previously the CTO and EVP of the Product and Technology Group at F5 Networks. Source

Growing Companies

Lordstown Motors announced Monday that automotive industry veteran Eric Purcell will join the company as VP of Global Quality. Purcell has over 25 years of industry experience and was the former Director of Manufacturing at Tesla. Source | Full Story

ForgeRock has selected Cisco’s Tschudy Smith to serve as the company’s new Chief People Officer. She joins from Cisco, where she was SVP of People and Communities and led the people operations for Cisco’s Customer Experience, Operations and Global Sales, Marketing and Partner organizations. Source | Full Story

Upwork, a platform that connects freelancers to businesses, has hired seasoned cloud, mobile and AI executive, Saty Bahadur as its CTO. Prior to joining Upwork, Bahadur was the General Manager of Alexa AI at Amazon. Source | Full Story

Heap announced new additions to the company’s C-Suite: Ahmed Quadri has joined as Chief Customer Officer, and Sean Andrew is the company's now Chief Revenue Officer. Quadri previously led the customer success division at Reltio, while Andrew was formerly the SVP of Worldwide Corporate Sales at Mongo DB. Source

GoFundMe revealed that Jeneen Minter has joined the company as its Chief Financial Officer. Most recently, she was the Chief Financial & Analytics Officer at Material Bank. Source

Rev announced Kristyn DeRaffele has joined its executive leadership team as Chief People Officer. DeRaffele joins Rev after serving as vice president of human resources at Southwest Key Programs. Source

Emerging Companies

Theator has selected its Kavi Vyas as its first Chief Commercial Offer. Vyas comes to the Theator from Viz.ai, where he served as Vice President of Marketing. Source | Full Story

Beep has picked Aubrey Vaughan to serve as its Chief Revenue Officer. Vaughan joins the company from drone and data company PrecisionHawk, where he served as an SVP. Source | Full Story

Perrone Robotics has hired Joseph Holmes as its VP of Global Business Development. He joins from another AV technology startup called EasyMile he was the Director of Sales for North America. Source | Full Story

Voodle, the asynchronous short video platform for business, appointed of Dr. Britt Andreatta, as the its Chief Science Officer. She was formerly the Chief Learning Officer for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning). Source