— Deb Hall Lefevre, the longtime tech exec who was most recently CTO at Starbucks, announced her retirement on Sunday in a LinkedIn post.

Hall Lefevre resigned from Starbucks last month, according to a Sept. 26 report from Reuters, which cited a memo sent to staff about her departure.

The move came amid layoffs and various tech-related changes at the Seattle coffee giant.

“After an incredible journey leading technology and digital transformation across some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Starbucks, Circle K/Couche Tard and McDonald’s, it’s time to step into retirement,” Hall Lefevre said in her LinkedIn post.

“As I turn the page, I look forward to more time with family, continuing my tech and board work, and cheering on the next generation of leaders shaping the future,” she added.

Hall Lefevre, who was also an executive vice president, joined Starbucks in 2022. She previously spent more than 16 years at McDonald’s, where she was a corporate vice president and CIO, leading the fast food giant’s technology and digital commerce strategy. She was also EVP and CTO at Circle K Stores.

Ningyu Chen, who was senior vice president of global experience technology, is now interim chief technology officer at Starbucks.

Starbucks last month announced plans to lay off around 900 non-retail employees and close underperforming stores mainly in the U.S. and Canada. Starbucks previously cut 1,100 corporate workers in February.

Under the leadership of CEO Brian Niccol, the former Chipotle CEO who joined the company last year, Starbucks is making a bevy of technology tweaks as it tries to curb slumping sales.

— Lindo St. Angel, vice president of hardware for Amazon’s Lab126 devices group, is departing at the end of the month. Reuters first reported the news.

St. Angel joined Lab126 in 2010. The business unit, based in Silicon Valley, launched in 2004 and helped develop Amazon devices such as the Kindle Fire, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and other hardware.

— Mark Jewett joined New York City health data company Komodo Health as chief marketing officer. Jewett was previously a senior vice president at Informatica and CMO at SmartRecruiters. He also was a SVP and co-interim CMO at Tableau, and spent 15 years at Microsoft in various leadership roles.

Founded in 2014, Komodo Health reached a $3.3 billion valuation in 2021. The company helps healthcare stakeholders integrate data and generate insights related to treatment, research, and more.

— Nancy Mounir joined Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a vice president leading security programs and platforms.

Mounir previously spent more than 12 years at Microsoft, most recently as a senior director and chief of staff overseeing the company’s Secure Future Initiative.

In a LinkedIn post, Mounir said she is “looking forward to a great journey of learning, innovation and growth with the Security Platform team!”

She added: “Extremely grateful for my time at Microsoft and could not be more proud of what we accomplished together over the years!”

Mounir initially worked at Microsoft from 2012 to 2015 in supply chain, and left to spend a year at Amazon working on advertising and accounting teams. She returned to Microsoft in 2016.

— Priya Vaidyanathan took a new role at Microsoft as director of product and design for Microsoft’s AI skilling platform. Vaidyanathan returned to Microsoft in 2020 after two previous stints and was most recently a group product manager. She previously founded a mealkit startup called SnapCurry and was a senior technical product manager at Amazon.

“This next chapter is about helping people everywhere gain the skills and confidence to grow with AI, creating opportunity, resilience, and impact at every level,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

— Jim Chi was named executive director of Oregon Startup Center, which is going through a relaunch, according to Portland Business Journal. Chi is also president of Oregon Sports Angels and is a longtime product management leader.

Award-winning immunologist ​​Susan Kaech is the new executive vice president of the Allen Institute’s Immunology Moonshot, an initiative that aims to understand the immune system’s role in human health and disease.

Kaech currently leads the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and will join the Allen Institute in January.

“The appointment comes at a critical time in bioscience when the immune system is regarded as the cornerstone of all diseases and understanding its foundational principles is vital to unlocking new treatments and therapies,” the institute said in a statement.

Kaech’s research includes the investigation of how the immune system remembers infections to develop immunity, T-cell communications, and the role of metabolism in the immune system’s fight against cancer.

—  Seattle RFID company Impinj named Arthur Valdez Jr. to its board of directors.

Valdez recently left the role of executive VP of global supply chain and customer solutions at Starbucks and his career includes leadership roles at Amazon, Target and elsewhere.

“Arthur’s expertise transforming and optimizing strategic supply chain and logistics networks for large consumer-facing companies will be invaluable as we continue to advance our vision of connecting every thing,” said Impinj CEO Chris Diorio in a statement.

— Jason Bennett has taken a new role at Amazon Web Services, shifting from VP of U.S. enterprise to VP of worldwide startups and venture capital. Bennett has been with the company for more than 17 years.

On LinkedIn Bennett shared his fondness for working with startups and said he was eager to return to a position serving that community.

“I’m energized by the opportunity to work alongside our teams to support a thriving startup ecosystem — from founders and VCs, to accelerators, and the broader innovation community,” he said, adding that the work “has a lasting impact on the direction of industries and the future of AI.”

— NuScale Power named James Canafax as chief legal officer and corporate secretary. The Tigard, Ore.-based nuclear energy company is developing small modular reactors.

Canafax has decades of legal experience and joins NuScale from Maritime Partners. Past positions include executive leadership at BWX Technologies, which supplies nuclear components and services.

“[Canafax’s] extensive experience in the nuclear industry, deep familiarity with the regulatory environment and track record of guiding organizations through key growth periods make him uniquely suited to support NuScale at this important moment for our company,” CEO John Hopkins said in statement.

— Seattle entrepreneur Elvis Dieguez is now VP of data science, analytics and platforms for the healthcare startup hims & hers. Diegeuz joins the company from symphonie, a Seattle e-commerce marketing platform where he was CEO and co-founder. He was previously at Amazon for more than four years working in business analytics and as a senior manager.

Hims & hers offers a telehealth platform for conditions including sexual health, hair loss, mental health, skincare and weight loss.

“I look forward to leading and working with a ~70 person team who’ve been working hard to make the #healthcare system work for all Americans,” Dieguez said on LinkedIn.

— Biotech startup Synthesize Bio named Ariel Brumbaugh as senior director of business development. In the role, Brumbaugh will help the company partner with biopharma companies interested in using Synthesize’s AI-based research platform to accelerate and de-risk drug development.

Seattle’s Synthesize Bio was founded by leaders from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Last month it announced $10 million in funding from Madrona.

Brumbaugh joined the startup from the San Francisco biotech company Gladstone Institutes.

— Sophie Brougham is director of philanthropic operations for the recently launched Clean Economy Project. Nicknamed CleanEcon, the effort includes past employees of the Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy and is a policy and advocacy platform promoting clean power.

Prior to Breakthrough, Brougham was with the Paul Allen holding company Vulcan (now known as Vale Group) for more than a decade, where she was a senior manager and led programs including philanthropic and grants management.

— Seattle’s Jake Laes is now executive director of AI Tinkerers, a global network of AI engineers and builders. Laes joined the group from Deel, where he helped facilitate partnerships between investors and accelerator programs. Laes is the founder of YoungTech Seattle, and his background includes mentoring and leadership roles at the University of Washington’s CoMotion and Techstars.

— Pranam Kolari, VP of search and recommendations at Coupang, is resigning from his role next month. Coupang is South Korea’s largest e-commerce platform and is headquartered in Seattle. Kolari, based in San Jose, Calif., was previously at Walmart Labs for nearly a decade where his roles included vice president of engineering for search.

— Datavault AI appointed Pete Scobell as VP of global security. The Beaverton, Ore.-based company helps businesses monetize their data and create digital twins of physical objects. Scobell is a decorated U.S. Navy SEAL veteran and will oversee Datavault AI’s security operations, risk management and asset logistics.

— Erin McHugh Saif, a former Massachusetts-based Microsoft executive, is CEO of an as-yet unnamed data and AI venture to serve “place-based partnerships,” which are networks of nonprofits, government agencies, and educational entities that aim to address education, jobs and housing needs.

“With better access to data, these organizations will leap ahead in this moment of AI transformation, gaining faster insight into which programs deliver the greatest improvement to significantly scale their impact,” Saif said on LinkedIn.

The effort has the support of the Ballmer Group, a philanthropic organization co-founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie, and the nonprofit TechSoup.

— Karen Ng was promoted to executive VP of product at HubSpot. Ng has been with the company since 2022, joining as senior VP of product and partnerships. Past employers include Common Room, Google and Microsoft, where she was chief of staff across the company’s developer tools business. Ng is based in the Seattle area.