— Former Expedia executive Preethi Ramani was appointed chief product officer of Peerspace, a San Francisco-based marketplace for hourly venue rentals.
Ramani was previously interim head of product at wellness and fitness services company January AI and senior vice president of product at clothing rental giant Rent the Runway.
Ramani worked at Expedia for more than seven years, most recently as vice president of product, search and discovery platform. She also was previously director of product at Seattle mobile software development company Medio and spent nine years at Microsoft as a lead program manager.
— Longtime Amazon executive Nader Kabbani joined San Francisco-based logistics giant Flexport as senior vice president for customs, regulatory compliance, trade and financial services.
Kabbani worked at Amazon for more than 18 years, most recent as vice president of network design and planning. His other roles included vice president of operations for PillPack and Amazon Pharmacy, and leading Amazon’s last mile solutions, including Lockers, Amazon Key and Flex.
Flexport appointed former Amazon executive Dave Clark last year as CEO and has hired other Amazon veterans, including Parisa Sadrzadeh as a senior vice president for small and midsize business product and technology and Teresa Carlson as president and chief commercial officer.
Founded in 2013, Flexport provides cloud-based freight forwarding and brokerage services for ocean, air, truck, and rail, among other offerings such as insurance and customs compliance. The company was valued at $8 billion after raising a $935 million Series E round in February last year. It has an office in Bellevue, Wash.
— Ross Rachey, formerly head of Amazon’s last mile fleet, was appointed chief operating officer of automotive logistics company Acertus.
At Amazon, Richey scaled fleet logistics and helped oversee vehicle development with Rivian, Amazon’s electric delivery van partner.
St. Louis-based Acertus supports vehicle “lifecycle management,” including transport, storage, maintenance and compliance services.
The industry is at an “inflection point” as it transitions to electric vehicles, said Acertus CEO Trent Broberg in a statement announcing the hire.
Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- Aikin Uslu, previously a corporate strategy lead at Amazon Web Services, joined Seattle cloud services company BlueCloud as chief delivery officer. Uslu was also a client service partner at Slalom and an executive at IT services and consulting firm Avanade.
- Neal Gutterson joined the board of directors of Trillium Ag, a Seattle bio-agriculture company developing RNA-containing nanoparticles for plant engineering and crop protection.
- Washington Research Foundation appointed Carol Dahl and Desney Tan to its board of directors.
- Mitz Banarjee is a new investor and board member at online fashion service GlamHive. Banarjee, based in Texas, is also an investor at Seattle-area space services company Xplore.
