— Pamela Bhattacharya has left her role as senior director of AI at Microsoft to join OpenAI as a member of its technical staff, where she is leading AI safety work with a focus on child safety. Bhattacharya spent nearly nine years at Microsoft as a principal applied scientist and manager before leaving in 2021, worked at Meta and Lacework, then rejoined Microsoft in 2024.
The computer scientist holds more than 30 patents and is an expert in machine learning and human-in-the-loop systems. “I’m especially energized by problems where getting it wrong has real consequences — and by developing the next generation of AI leaders who can navigate that complexity,” she said in her LinkedIn profile.
— Aniruddha Kembhavi, a former senior director at the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), has joined Meta‘s AI Research team in London. Kembhavi spent nearly a decade at the Seattle-based institute before leaving in December 2024, then joined autonomous vehicle company Wayve as a director. He is also an affiliate associate professor at the University of Washington.
After just a couple of weeks at Meta, Kembhavi said on LinkedIn that he was already “incredibly impressed by the caliber of the people, the energy, and the ambition of what’s being built.”
— Diego Panama is taking over as CEO of LogicGate in July, succeeding co-founder Matt Kunkel. Panama joined the Chicago-based risk management software company last year as chief operating officer, having previously served as chief revenue officer at Olo, a Bellevue-based SaaS company.
Although LogicGate is headquartered in Chicago, it has been operating out of a Bellevue co-working space since January and plans to move into a permanent office there this summer, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. Chief Marketing Officer Michael Schultz and about four other employees are also based in the Seattle area. The company expects to grow its Bellevue headcount to 20 by year’s end.
— Public relations veterans Kent Hollenbeck and Erik Moser have co-founded Resonant Advisory Group, a Portland-based PR firm focused on crisis preparedness, issues management and communications strategy for clients in technology, healthcare, retail and AI.
Hollenbeck previously spent nearly six years at Amazon as its marketing and brand lead for robotics and fulfillment technologies. Moser most recently served as a managing director at Global Gateway Advisors. The two previously overlapped at Edelman, where both held executive roles in the Pacific Northwest.
—Chris Blais has joined Riviera Partners, an executive recruiting firm specializing in technology, product and design leaders. Blais comes from Seattle-based Herd Freed Hartz, where he spent 12 years focused on tech talent.
— Nora Hawkins has been promoted to energy policy director at the Washington State Department of Commerce, where she has worked for four years.
— Adam Dimopoulos, a former senior program manager in cloud security at Microsoft, has been named chief information security officer at Entrust. He joins the Minneapolis-based software company from Synchrony.
— Kostas Mallios, a former Microsoft GM and past VP at Intellectual Ventures, joined the board of directors for the Greek nonprofit Panathenea. Mallios is currently a corporate VP for Applied Materials.
