Five years after being named director of digital experience enhancement for residents, businesses, and visitors, one of California’s most important local government technologists is stepping down.

In a tweet on Monday night, Carrie Bishop, who was named San Francisco’s first chief digital services officer nearly five years ago, announced her resignation.

“After five exciting years with the city and district of SF as the first Chief Digital Services Officer, I will move on in March. It’s been a roller coaster ride and I’m so proud of what the team has achieved. Stay tuned because they’re just getting started, ”Bishop said on Twitter. Her last day in San Francisco will be March 4th, Techwire emailed us

“There are few teams with such talent, and we achieved some important things – during COVID-19, we led the city’s digital response, helping thousands of people book tests, get vaccinated, and get critical information “Said Bishop, noting the team enabled more than 2,500 companies to get the grants and permits they needed to keep their doors open during the pandemic. She said she has “something planned for the summer that I will share publicly in due course,” but she will be “taking a few months off to recover from a few hectic years!”

Bishop’s public sector career began in the London City Council in the Borough of Barnet and continued as the founder of FutureGov, which has developed solutions to help UK local governments improve online services. Government Digital Service was one of their UK clients. As a panelist at events like the California Public Sector CIO Academy 2020, her comments on govtech have appeared in Techwire. San Francisco announced her appointment on February 17, 2017 and the creation of the position – Bishop’s first US position – as “Part of San Francisco’s Recently Adopted Digital Services Strategy,” added: “Ms. Bishop’s focus will be on improving the experience of San Francisco residents, businesses and visitors when they access the city council for information and services. “

Her friends and former colleagues offered congratulations on social media. “A great and impressive run! You have built a great team in SF. Look forward to seeing what you do next, ”said Michael Wilkening, senior advisor on technology and deployment to the US Department of Health ¯ and former special advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom on innovation and digital services ¯ on Twitter. “Thank you for all of your contributions, not just for SF but for the movement,” tweeted Luke Norris, vice president of platform strategy and digital transformation at Granicus and former senior vice president of government relations and growth at OpenCities.

“Impressive !!! This is news. I’m really excited to hear where we’re headed and what the team has in store,” said Angelica “Angie” Quirarte, federal director of partnerships for the Tech Talent Project and former assistant program director for the California office for digital innovation, on Twitter. The two met in 2019, she told Techwire, just before Quirarte – then assistant secretary for digital engagement for the California Government Operations Agency – and her group in the state began work on the Alpha project.

“I think that as a leader in this area you have to learn to say no, and she’s been really good at focusing the team on projects that are reinventing services,” Quirarte said. She brought her colleagues to meet Bishop’s team, she said, “and they were able to provide coaching and advice on their experience creating and leading a digital services team in the context of a city government.” Named after alpha.ca.gov, the initiative focused on redesigning the state’s website. Quirarte stayed in contact with Bishop to offer support and to have a sounding board on Alpha, but also on government work on permits and cannabis licenses.

“It was great to build a relationship with Carrie and her team and cheer each other on while we worked on our projects,” she added.

Theo Douglas is Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Techwire.net and prior to that at Government Technology. His reporting experience includes reporting on local, county, and state governments, business, and breaking news. He holds a BA in Newspaper Journalism and a Masters in History, both from California State University at Long Beach.

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Scott Porad. (Dolly photo)

Former Rover CTO Scott Porad joined the peer-to-peer moving company Dolly as chief technology officer. The Seattle startup runs an app that connects individuals and businesses with trucks and equipment with moving companies.

“I really enjoy this time in a startup company when it is on the verge of tremendous growth,” said Porad. The role is a return to the gig economy for Porad, who spent seven years building Rover’s pet care marketplace.

As a longtime technical director at Rover, he left the pet care startup last year and was vice president of engineering at 98point6 virtual healthcare startup for less than a year. Prior to joining Rover in 2013, Porad was the CTO of Cheezburger and held several director positions at Drugstore.com in Bellevue, Washington.

Dolly currently has 40 full-time employees and plans to double the number of employees and sales in the coming year. The moving service is currently available in 36 major subway areas and works with retail partners such as Costco, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Purple and Mattress Warehouse.

Dolly was founded in 2014 and is led by Co-Founder and CEO Mike Howell. Other co-founders like Kelby Hawn, Jason Norris and Chad Wittman are no longer with the company.

Regi Vengalil. (Metromile photo)

– Regi Vengalil, CFO of the business travel division of Expedia Group Egencia, will leave in May to join the pay-per-mile auto insurer Metromile as CFO. Vengalil is also currently on the Porch board of directors in Seattle.

In a statement, Vengalil said he has been a Metromile customer for six years and is eager to expand the mass appeal of the digital insurance platform. San Francisco-based Metromile is a publicly traded company that was founded in 2011. The company not only offers its own auto insurance policies, but also licenses its cloud-based technology to other insurers.

– Fuse Venture Partners added Bay Area investor Brendan Wales as a third founding partner. The Seattle-based venture capital firm spun off from Ignition Partners last year. Read the story.

– The RFID manufacturer Impinj announced Brian Wong as Chief Product Officer in May. Wong is the former CEO of TriLumina, a semiconductor company, and battery maker Enevate. He lives in California.

From left: Tom Staples and Patti Brooke. (Headlight photos)

– Seattle-based startup HeadLight has appointed Personify CEO Norbert Orth to its board of directors and added Patti Brooke and Tom Staples to its management team. HeadLight, formerly known as Pavia Systems, has been spun off from the University of Washington and makes photo-based inspection software for the construction industry.

Brooke is Vice President of Marketing and most recently was Director of Innovation at Premera Blue Cross. Previously, she led marketing and business development for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s Proton Therapy Center.

Staples is vice president of sales and joins the company from solar energy startup Omnidian, where he was vice president of strategic alliances. Previously, Staples was Director of Sales and Business Development at Clean Power Research and co-founder of Cooler Planet, both startups in the renewable energy sector.

– Makara, a cryptocurrency robo-advisor that emerged from Strix Leviathan, has hired Nick White as VP of Growth. Most recently, he was Vice President of Marketing at Austin-based startup Osano.

White previously spent five years at Wealthsimple, a Canadian automated investment and savings platform that recently sold its US business.

– The University of Washington has launched a new GeoHazards initiative and appointed Harold Tobin to the Paros Endowed Chair in Seismology and Geohazards. Tobin is also the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

The initiative will study earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and volcanoes to improve methods of detecting and managing these seismic hazards. Hobin will initially focus on land and underwater sensor systems and collaborate with other researchers at the UW, including in oceanography and the applied physics laboratory.

Cybersecurity startup veteran Justin Baker joined Deep Instinct in New York as Vice President of Digital and Demand Marketing. The company applies deep learning, a subset of machine learning, to its cybersecurity technology and recently closed a $ 100 million Series D funding round.

Baker was most recently Global Director of Cloud Marketing at the Cisco subsidiary AppDynamics. Previously, he held senior marketing positions at Versive, Splunk and ExtraHop. He lives in Seattle.

– Longtime Seattle-based journalist and editor Phyllis Fletcher is now Senior Editor, Audio for the New York Times. Most recently, she was Senior Editor at American Public Media Group and previously held executive editorial positions at NPR, Northwest News Network and KUOW Public Radio.

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