Nuance engineering exec lands at Ozette; AWS exec departs; and more – GeekWire

— Amarjit Kaur Sandhu joined Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center spinout Ozette Technologies as vice president of engineering. She previously was director of software engineering at Nuance Communications, which acquired Seattle digital health startup Saykara last year. Kaur Sandhu was led a team at Saykara developing clinical AI tools as president of engineering.

“I’ve always admired her deep technical expertise and her engineering leadership,” said Ozette CEO Ali Ansary said of Kaur Sandhu, who also worked in a senior role at Twistle and as an advisor to the Technology Partner Network at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Ozette recently raised $26 million to advance its tools to quantify and characterize immune cells from massive datasets. The startup supports clinical trials and other research with its academic and biopharma partners.

Other personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:

• Rachel Thorntonvice president and chief marketing officer of global marketing for Amazon Web Services, is leaving the company after ten years for personal reasons, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.
• Michael Barrett was appointed CEO of Portland-area identity authentication startup Cozera. He previously was founder and CEO of IT services company Unosquare, which he built out to 1,000 employees.
• Jennifer Allawaypreviously at Bellevue, Wash.-based Hidden Path Entertainment, is now a senior writer at Monolith Studios, where she will work on a Wonder Woman game.
• Julia Nardin is now Destiny Universe Narrative Director at Bungiewhere she was previously senior narrative lead.
• Shahar Ronenwho formerly held senior roles in product management at SentiLink, Remitly, Sift and Microsoft, has joined San Francisco-based Plaid.