Dan Ayoub. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Dan Ayoub , the past head of Dungeons & Dragons, has been named president of Wizards of the Coast & Hasbro Digital Games . Ayoub joined the Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast in 2022 and counts himself among the longtime players of D&D and Magic: The Gathering.
“D&D is 52 years old. Magic is 33. Brands don’t last that long because of any one leader; they last because generations of creators and fans keep choosing them,” Ayoub said . “We owe it to them to protect what makes these worlds special.”
Earlier in his career, Ayoub spent more than a decade at Microsoft, primarily with its 343 Industries video game studio, now called Halo Studios.
Farah Ali. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Farah Ali has joined the media company Skydance as vice president of engineering, based at its Bellevue, Wash., office. She previously spent a decade at Electronic Arts over two stints, most recently as vice president of AI transformation and technology.
Ali has also served as an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, teaching courses in software entrepreneurship, and as a technical advisor for Madrona Venture Labs. She was co-founder and chief technology officer of FreightWeb, a Seattle-based logistics technology startup.
Paramount Skydance last month completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), with the combined company taking the name Skydance. Shortly after, the company announced the departure of two WBD leaders from the Bellevue site: Avi Saxena and Tyler Whitworth .
Irene Chang. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Irene Chang has joined Pulumi as chief revenue officer. The Seattle startup automates cloud infrastructure tasks such as managing networks and databases, optimizing costs and ensuring compliance.
Chang said Pulumi’s culture and product won her over. “We automate deployments so teams can provision resources in seconds and scale from simple apps to enterprise architectures without losing control or compliance,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
Chang was previously Postman’s VP of corporate sales for the Americas and before that held VP roles at Cloudflare.
Pulumi is No. 15 on the GeekWire 200 , a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.
Travis Fairchild. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Marchex , the Seattle-based, publicly traded call and conversation analytics company, has named Travis Fairchild as president. The news was disclosed in an SEC filing . Fairchild was previously with Marchex for 18 years in strategy and business development roles.
He left in 2021 to become CEO of Archenia, a Las Vegas-based customer qualification and acquisition company, which Marchex acquired in July.
Troy Hartless , who in September 2025 added president to his role as chief revenue officer, will return to serving solely as CRO.
David Janashvili. (LinkedIn Photo)
— General Fusion has named David Janashvili as chief financial officer, effective Nov. 30. The Vancouver, B.C.-based company is developing fusion energy devices and became the first fusion venture to go public , through a SPAC. It trades on Nasdaq as GFUZ.
Janashvili joins from Surami Partners, which provides financial services for clean tech companies, and previously led climate tech investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets. Across numerous roles, he has advised boards and management teams of public and soon-to-be public companies.
Tammi Kroll. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Gravity Payments has appointed CEO Tammi Kroll as chairman of its board of directors while she continues to lead the digital payments company.
“Her appointment as Chairman recognizes more than a decade of leadership at Gravity and her role in helping the company grow while remaining focused on the independent businesses and employees it serves,” the company said.
Kroll joined the company in 2015 as CTO, chief operating officer and chief information officer. She took over as CEO in 2022 after founder Dan Price resigned while facing assault and reckless driving charges. That case and a second were dropped, and Price maintained his innocence.
— Syndio , a Seattle-based pay equity startup, has two more leadership changes following the addition of seven new executives in April:
Nicole Edwards has been promoted to VP of revenue marketing after joining the company in February as senior director. Based in London, Edwards previously worked at Aries Global, Clari and VMware Carbon Black.
Emma Duisberg has been promoted from regional VP of sales to VP of revenue for the U.S. Based in the Denver area, Duisberg joined Syndio in 2022 from Sense.
Syndio is No. 45 on the GeekWire 200 , a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.
— Seattle-based real estate brokerage Redfin has named Andy Swanton as general manager of rentals. He returns to the company after a short stint in 2022 as VP of properties. Swanton has also worked for Opendoor and BYD.
— Seattle cybersecurity company ExtraHop has appointed Rupert Clayson as head of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The company reports growth in sectors including financial services and energy, and offers defense against AI-assisted security attacks. Clayson, who is based in London, joined from TeamViewer and was previously with Fortinet.
— POSaBIT Systems , a Seattle-based company providing point-of-sale and payments technology for the cannabis industry, has named Emily Eagon as CFO. Eagon joined POSaBIT last year as vice president of finance and has more than 25 years of experience in finance and accounting roles, including leadership at Verdigris and predictis.
— Benjamin Mullins has returned to Amazon as head of program management for the Devices Brand Studio. Mullins spent four years with Prime until 2019, when he left for a role at Oracle. He then joined Meta, where he was head of product for Reality Labs.
— Debra Bouchegnies has announced she is retiring from the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs at the end of the year. Bouchegnies is CoMotion’s associate director of marketing and has been with the program since 2018. A replacement has not been named.
— Aman Dhingra has been appointed to the Technology Alliance board of directors. Dhingra has been with McKinsey & Co. for 17 years and serves as a partner.
