HP Names Emma Walmsley CEO; Amazon, Temporal and Augmodo Reshuffle Execs

HP has appointed Emma Walmsley, a Microsoft board member and former GSK chief executive, as its CEO effective Jan. 4 — the highest-profile move in a week of leadership changes across Amazon, Temporal, Augmodo, Neuralwatt, BuyWander, Cloudflare and the University of Washington. For talent teams, the roundup signals where experienced operators are heading next, and which skills employers are paying for.

Who is moving, and where?

Walmsley led the pharmaceutical giant GSK until December 2025 and succeeds Bruce Broussard at the PC maker. Reuters notes that her seven years on the Microsoft board "are her closest brush with the tech sector" prior to taking the top job. The appointment places a pharma veteran over a hardware business — a bet that general management skill transfers across industries.

Amitabha "Guppy" Gupta, an associate director at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, is leaving after 14 years to join Amazon. Starting Nov. 16, he will serve as strategic advisor for nonprofit research and advanced AI with AWS' Global Nonprofit Business.

Gupta said technology was often the obstacle to scientific breakthroughs at Fred Hutch. "It's the infrastructure, data, and tools standing between a scientist and an answer," he wrote on LinkedIn. In the new role, he said, "I'll work with researchers and research institutions on using cloud, high-performance computing, and AI to remove those barriers."

The lesson for employers: a 14-year incumbent left not for money but for a mission framed around removing internal friction. That framing matters in retention conversations.

What do the startup hires reveal?

Bellevue, Wash.-based Temporal, whose software keeps AI agents running reliably, named Sean Heneghan vice president of sales for the Americas. The company ranks No. 1 on the GeekWire 200 list of top Pacific Northwest startups. In September it raised $550 million, reaching a $12.55 billion valuation. Temporal is fully remote, and Heneghan joins from MongoDB while based in the Chicago area.

Seattle startup Augmodo named Capri Brixey head of retail sales. The company sells AI-powered wearable camera devices and raised $21 million in July to expand from in-store inventory tracking into automotive, warehouse and hospital settings. It ranks No. 122 on the GeekWire 200. Founder and CEO Ross Finman called Brixey "the right leader to accelerate our expansion," citing her experience selling to both retail and warehouse operations; her past roles include leadership positions at Coca-Cola and Kroger.

Neuralwatt, a Seattle startup that calculates the carbon emissions of individual AI requests in real time, named Meaghan Davison Praznik vice president of marketing. Her former employers include Clif Bar, AllTrails and Merino Energy. Because the carbon intensity of grid power varies through the day and across regions, the company says its technology helps customers run compute-heavy operations when clean energy is more abundant.

BuyWander, an auction marketplace for returned and overstocked retail items, named Chris Holm senior director of product. Holm spent nine years at Amazon, managing last-mile and same-day delivery technology before leaving in 2024; he has since consulted for carbon removal startup Lithos Carbon and served as founder-in-residence at the startup studio Foundations. BuyWander moved its headquarters from Spokane to Kent in August as its team grew to 325 people, and announced $21 million in new funding in September.

What changed inside existing teams?

Doug Heimburger, a 26-year Amazon veteran, shifted from CFO and vice president of Worldwide Operations to CFO/VP of Worldwide Stores. He said he will help improve delivery speed, reduce costs and increase growth of the Stores business. His first role at the company was data mining analyst — a reminder that internal mobility pipelines can produce senior finance leaders.

Bas Nijholt, senior staff engineer at IonQ's Seattle-area facility, resigned after three years to join an AI startup still in stealth mode. The theoretical quantum mechanics expert built MindRoom at IonQ, an open-source collaboration and knowledge-sharing platform he calls "a company brain." "With this new opportunity, I get to keep building and turbocharging MindRoom with a team of people who are just as excited about AI as I am," he said, adding that the tool will remain freely available. He spent nearly four years at Microsoft before IonQ.

T-Mobile's Kevin Lau joined the advisory board of the University of Washington's College of Engineering. Lau has been with the telecom company for 22 years over two stints and serves as VP of digital experience engineering. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the UW.

Cloudflare named Issaquah, Wash.-based Christian Smith president of revenue, overseeing worldwide go-to-market operations. He previously served as chief revenue officer for Splunk and Nintex.

The through-line is unmistakable: AI infrastructure companies are hiring sales and marketing leadership at a rapid clip, and Amazon alumni remain a preferred hiring pool across the region. Expect the competition for operators with both technical and go-to-market experience to intensify as these funded startups scale.