Anna Chen is joining Madrona’s Bay Area office as the longtime Seattle investment firm strengthens its presence in Silicon Valley.
Chen is taking the role of investor and focusing on early growth and acceleration-stage investments in enterprise software, AI and consumer subscription companies.
Madrona opened its office in the Bay Area two years ago, marking its first foray out of the Pacific Northwest.
For the past two years, Chen has worked at General Atlantic in New York City, where she helped lead investments in companies including Flo Health and RunwayML. Chen began her career at JP Morgan in San Francisco in its mergers and acquisitions group.
Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley. While a college freshman, she cold-emailed the founders of Fivetran, landing the startup’s first internship. The opportunity gave her “deep level of admiration and respect for the entrepreneurial journey and founders,” according to Madrona.
Other key personnel changes and awards across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
— Alexandra Tibbets is returning to Microsoft as chief of staff in experiences and devices. She was previously at YouTube for 11 years, most recently as the global head of responsibility verticals, which includes news, learning and youth.
Tibbets has deep roots in Pacific Northwest, working for tech giants Microsoft and Amazon. She worked at Microsoft for more than nine years, including a role of head of product management for Bing Mobile. Before that, she was at Amazon for three years.
Tibbets is also board president of the board of trustees for the Horizon House retirement community.
— Niraj Tolia has taken the role of chief technology officer for Veeam Software. Veeam recently acquired Alcion, an AI-supported data management startup that Tolia co-founded and led. Vaibhav Kamra, Alcion’s co-founder and past CTO, is now vice president of technology for Veeam.
Tolia and Kamra previously launched Kasten, which back in 2020 was also acquired by Veeam.
Veeam recently relocated its headquarters to the Seattle region.
— Alex Katzman has joined climate tech startup ChargeScape as vice president of business development. ChargeScape is a software platform integrating electric vehicles into the power grid and was launched as a joint venture of BMW, Ford and Honda. Katzman is based in Seattle.
— Amy Sellers, Rad Power Bikes‘ former vice president of marketing and ecommerce, was let go as part of the Seattle company’s most recent layoffs. The e-bike startup has had six rounds of layoffs since 2021. Sellers was previously chief marketing officer for TomboyX.
— Eric Hoffert, former leader in video and connected TV and advertising strategist for Microsoft, has joined New York’s Kargo as chief technologist.
— Evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center is participating in the newly created National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases research program. Bloom joins a team led by Washington University, St. Louis, to study viruses in an effort to prepare for potential pandemics.
— Fred Hutch post-doctoral researchers Adrianne Wallace-Povirk and Anderson Frank are receiving early career training awards from the National Institutes of Health. Wallace-Povirk is focused on developing drugs for an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, and Frank is studying cell division.
