Tech Moves: F5 and Esper hire marketing leaders; Amperity adds chief revenue officer

— Seattle-based networking and security giant F5 hired John Maddison as chief product marketing and technology alliances officer.

Maddison was previously at California-based computer and network security company Fortinet for more than 12 years, leaving the role of chief marketing officer. Other past jobs include management positions lasting nearly a decade at Trend Micro and Nokia.

“John’s deep understanding of cybersecurity and cloud, along with his proven track record of driving growth, will be a tremendous asset as we evolve our portfolio to address the hybrid, multi-cloud, and AI-driven complexity our customers face today,” F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou said in a statement.

F5 made multiple recent changes in its C-suite this fall. The company named Cooper Werner as its new chief financial officer, and moved Kunal Anand from CTO to the position of chief innovation officer. F5 plans to hire a new CTO.

Maddison will be based out of F5’s San Jose office.

“F5 is at the forefront of the next generation of application security and delivery, and poised to play an indispensable role in the AI era,” Maddison said in a statement.

— Amperity has hired Rob Ferguson as its new chief revenue officer. The Seattle-based startup that helps companies collect and manage customer data last month announced that Tony Alika Owens has taken over as CEO.

Founded in 2016, Amperity reached a billion-dollar valuation in 2021 after raising $100 million. The company established itself as a leader in the customer data platform sector, or CDP.

Ferguson was at Salesforce for more than 11 years, leaving the role of executive vice president in 2022. Other recent roles include CRO at San Francisco Bay Area companies Virtualics and Automation Anywhere. Owens was also at Salesforce for more than a decade and overlapped with Ferguson.

“I’m incredibly excited and confident in Rob’s leadership as we enter our next phase of growth as a company,” Owens said in a statement.

— Marketing leader Bill Glenn is now senior vice president of marketing for Esper, a Bellevue, Wash., startup that helps companies with the development, deployment, and maintenance of Android devices used across multiple industries.

“Bill will be leading our global marketing and demand generation efforts as we continue to expand and innovate,” said Shiv Sundar, Esper’s co-founder and chief operations officer, on LinkedIn.

Glenn’s past roles include leadership positions at Bluebird, an employee rewards and recognition platform; ExtraHop, a cyber risk company; domain registry Rightside; data platform Socrata; and others.

— 501 Commons announced that LeeAnn Stivers will take over as executive director in January. The Seattle nonprofit provides other Pacific Northwest nonprofits with expertise in technology, database management, human resources and 30 other services.

501 Commons launched in 1989 as Executive Service Corps of Washington. Current executive director Nancy Long is retiring after 22 years in the role.

Stivers was previously a business consulting senior manager for three years at Moss Adams, a Seattle company providing accounting, consulting and wealth management solutions. Stivers worked for Girl Scouts of Western Washington for more than 13 years, leaving the role of chief membership and program officer.

“LeeAnn’s deep commitment to the nonprofit community, experience providing professional services, and alignment with 501 Commons’ values distinguished her as the ideal leader to guide the organization forward,” said Richard Starnes, chairman of 501 Commons board of directors.

— Oleria, a Bellevue-based identity security startup, announced that chief information security officers Matt Thomlinson and Oliver Newbury will serve as advisors.

Tomlinson was at Microsoft for more than 22 years ending in 2016, leaving the role of vice president of security for the company’s cloud and enterprise division. He is currently CTO for Electronic Arts and previously served as CISO for the gaming company. He holds multiple advisory board seats.

Newbury also holds additional advisory roles and previously was global CISO for the London-based banking giant Barclays.

“Oliver and Matt bring decades of leadership experience securing some of the world’s most dynamic enterprises, and their expertise will be invaluable as we continue on our mission to reimagine identity security,” said Jim Alkove, Oleria’s CEO and co-founder.

Oleria, which helps companies manage employee access to applications and data, raised $33.1 million in a Series A round last year.

— Seattle biotech startup Bonum Therapeutics appointed Dr. Samuel Blackman to its board of directors.

Blackman is the co-founder and head of research-and-development at Day One Biopharmaceuticals. In this role he helped the company land FDA approval for a treatment targeting the most common form of childhood brain tumors, low-grade glioma.

“[Blackman’s] judgment and his deep experience in the clinical development of novel immune-oncology agents will benefit Bonum and the patients Bonum is seeking to serve,” John Mulligan, Bonum’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Bonum was created in 2022 as a spinout of Good Therapeutics and is developing immunotherapy treatments that activate a person’s immune system to fight cancer. The startup this summer moved into new offices near the city’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

— Nitin Bhat, a former exec at Amazon, Microsoft and Smartsheet, has stepped down from his role as chief product officer for Workiva, a publicly traded compliance software company in Iowa.

Bhat said on LinkedIn that he has “decided to take some time to focus on personal goals and explore new opportunities.” He thanked the leadership team for its “collaboration and support” and called out the progress the organization has made.

Bhat served as CPO for nearly two years, and continues in his role as managing partner for Seattle’s Factorial Advisors, which provides advisory services in product strategy and management.

— YoungTech Seattle announced that Michaela Isaacs and Rishab Balakrishnan will be helping with the organization. YoungTech is a membership-based, online community that supports networking and in-person events to grow the next generation of tech leaders.

Isaacs is an incoming technical program manager at Microsoft and is finishing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. She will lead YoungTech’s marketing and operations.

Balakrishnan is a strategy analyst at Accenture and former executive director of DubHacks, a tech and entrepreneurship nonprofit run by UW students. He will support finance and strategy for YoungTech.

The YoungTech positions are unpaid and both will keep their professional jobs. Jacob Laes, a program manager at Techstars, is YoungTech’s CEO and founder.