Avanade CEO to join Microsoft; Seattle gaming vet’s new project – GeekWire

— Pamela Maynard, the longtime CEO of IT services and consulting firms Avanade, is joining Microsoft in a new role as chief AI transformation officer for the tech giant’s Customer and Partner Solutions business.

Maynard spent the past 16 years at Seattle-based Avanade, and became CEO in 2019. The company, formed in 2000 by Accenture and Microsoft, provides various digital, cloud, and AI-related services across the Microsoft ecosystem.

“As AI continues to revolutionize how we live and work, no one is innovating like Microsoft, and I’m honoured by the confidence they’re placing in me to lead this important work in what is truly a dream role,” Maynard wrote on LinkedIn.

Rodrigo Caserta, a 9-year veteran of Avanade and currently a global technology business group lead, will replace Maynard as Avanade CEO, effective Sept. 1.

“With enterprise and mid-market expertise, and a deep understanding of our clients and commitment to our people, he is the right person to lead Avanade as we expand market share,” Avanade chair Karthik Narain said in a statement. “I thank Pam for her leadership, doubling our business and leading a cultural transformation focused on inclusion, diversity and well-being, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with her in her new role at Microsoft.” 

— Veteran Seattle-area game designer Jordan Weisman is working on a new game project.

Weisman, the co-founder of Harebrained Schemes who helped create games including BattleTech, Shadowrun, MechWarrior, and Earthdawn, is developing a new “open-world pirate CPRG” called Sea of Legends.

Weisman said in a LinkedIn post that Sea of Legends is based on his son’s board game, which raised more than $800,000 on Kickstarter. “It’s set in a wildly reimagined Caribbean, bursting with magic and mayhem,” wrote Weisman, a former Microsoft gaming leader and creative director at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Weisman’s Harebrained Schemes was acquired by Swedish firm Paradox Interactive in 2018. More recently he’s been running Endless Adventures Inc., which is working on Adventure Forge, a no-code, AI-driven toolset for game development.

— Shankha Sen joined Portland, Ore.-area RFP software company Responsive (formerly RFPIO) as its new chief financial officer. Sen previously was a vice president at PowerSchool, which was recently acquired for $5.6 billion, and spent nearly 15 years at Red Hat.

— Alex Day, a Seattle entrepreneur who previously led real estate startup Modus, joined Seattle-based customer information verification startup Authentive as co-founder and COO. “The early customer traction is undeniable, and I couldn’t be more fired up to get back to building another company,” Day wrote on LinkedIn.

— Joseph Williams, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Sector Lead for the state of Washington, was named co-chair of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Small Business Cybersecurity vendor forum.