— After more than 20 years at the tech giant, Steve Rabuchin has retired from Amazon, leaving the role of vice president of Project Kuiper, the internet-providing satellite project that was recently rebranded as Amazon Leo.
Rabuchin’s career at the company included serving as general manager for Kindle, vice president of Amazon Appstore, VP of Alexa, and a stint with AWS, among other roles.
Amazon this week laid off 16,000 workers from corporate roles, but Rabuchin made clear in a LinkedIn post that his departure was voluntary.
“So, what’s next? I am going to spend a significant amount of my time working on my fitness, health and longevity — which will definitely include golf + pickleball + family time! I also have plans for a new venture but will save those details for later,” Rabuchin wrote.
— Jon Turow left his role as a partner at Seattle investment firm Madrona to join the technical staff at Anthropic as a “builder.”
“After four years as a VC investor at Madrona, I’ve decided to jump back onto the field,” Turow said on LinkedIn. “I’m incredibly grateful to the founders I was honored to support and to the Madrona team — I learned so much from both.”
Prior to Madrona, Turow was at Amazon Web Services for nearly a decade, serving as head of product for computer vision and as a technical lead for Greengrass, which extends AWS functionality to local devices. Turow will remain a venture partner at Madrona.
— Hrvoje Benko, former director of research science at Meta Reality Labs Research, was among those recently let go in a round of layoffs affecting 331 employees in Washington state. Benko was with the company for eight years and remains an affiliate professor at the University of Washington.
“I am leaving full of pride and gratitude for I was fortunate to have a chance to build and lead an amazing AI and HCI research effort from scratch, see it grow and accomplish so much, build many generations of innovative XR and AI wearables, change the company roadmap on multiple occasions, and learn a ton from many amazing colleagues in the process,” he said on LinkedIn.
Prior to Meta, Benko was with Microsoft for more than a decade, working as a principal researcher.
— Global fintech company Convera named Meaghan Riley as chief commercial officer. Riley joined the Seattle-based business from Google Cloud North America where she was chief operating officer. Past positions include senior leadership roles at DocuSign, SAP and others.
“Meaghan’s leadership will be instrumental in delivering on our commitment to make global business payments simpler and smarter — serving our customers with excellence while building a high performing, aligned organization,” Convera CEO Patrick Gauthier said in a statement.
— Greater Seattle Partners, a public-private economic development organization, named two new members to its team:
- Annie Pardo is now executive administrator and operations manager, having previously served as EA to C-suite leaders at Woodland Park Zoo.
- Jacob Pavlik is economic development manager, joining from Colliers International where he was a research manager.
— BJ Fox is now chief technology officer for Metrc, a Florida company with technology to track and trace cannabis products from “seed to sale.” Fox has been based in the Seattle area most of his career, working in C-suite and other leadership roles at companies including Swiftly, SimpleID, Thunder, Glympse, GetJar and others.
— Seattle investment firm Flying Fish Ventures appointed Malyun Abdullahi as chief of staff. Abdullahi previously worked at Columbia Hospitality and graduated in 2024 from the University of Washington with a degree in business administration.
— Bonnie Frye Hemphill has joined the board of CleanTech Alliance, a Washington trade group. Hemphill is also director of policy and partnerships at UMC, a company helping clients plan, build, and manage their buildings, facilities or construction projects.
