Wizards of the Coast names Dan Ayoub president in Pacific NW leadership shuffle

Dan Ayoub, the former head of Dungeons & Dragons, has been named president of Wizards of the Coast & Hasbro Digital Games, anchoring a week of executive turnover across at least a dozen Pacific Northwest and West Coast employers.

Ayoub joined the Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast in 2022 and describes himself as a longtime player of D&D and Magic: The Gathering. His promotion puts a veteran operator with more than a decade at Microsoft — mostly at 343 Industries, now called Halo Studios — in charge of two of gaming's oldest brands.

"D&D is 52 years old. Magic is 33. Brands don't last that long because of any one leader; they last because generations of creators and fans keep choosing them," Ayoub said on LinkedIn. "We owe it to them to protect what makes these worlds special." The statement credits communities over leadership — a framing worth noting from an executive who now leads both franchises.

What do the other appointments signal?

Skydance has hired Farah Ali as vice president of engineering at its Bellevue, Wash., office. Ali spent a decade at Electronic Arts across two stints, most recently as VP of AI transformation and technology. She has also taught software entrepreneurship at the University of Washington, advised Madrona Venture Labs, and co-founded logistics startup FreightWeb as CTO.

Her arrival follows consolidation turmoil. Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery last month, and the combined company — now named Skydance — announced the departure of two WBD leaders from the Bellevue site, Avi Saxena and Tyler Whitworth. Ali's hire partially rebuilds engineering leadership after those exits, though the source does not say whether she replaces either executive directly.

Pulumi, a Seattle startup that automates cloud infrastructure tasks such as managing networks, optimizing costs and ensuring compliance, has named Irene Chang chief revenue officer. "We automate deployments so teams can provision resources in seconds and scale from simple apps to enterprise architectures without losing control or compliance," Chang wrote on LinkedIn. She previously held VP roles at Postman and Cloudflare.

Which public companies changed their C-suites?

General Fusion has named David Janashvili as chief financial officer, effective Nov. 30. The Vancouver, B.C.-based company develops fusion energy devices and became the first publicly traded fusion venture through a SPAC; it trades on Nasdaq as GFUZ. Janashvili joins from Surami Partners, which provides financial services for clean tech companies, and previously led climate tech investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets. A public-company CFO hire immediately after a SPAC listing is a standard signal of tightened reporting discipline — the announcement itself says nothing about why the seat opened.

POSaBIT Systems, a Seattle company providing point-of-sale and payments technology for the cannabis industry, has promoted Emily Eagon to CFO. Eagon joined last year as vice president of finance and has more than 25 years of experience in finance and accounting, including leadership at Verdigris and predictis.

Gravity Payments has appointed CEO Tammi Kroll as chairman of its board while she continues to lead the digital payments company. Kroll joined in 2015 as CTO, COO and CIO, and became CEO in 2022 after founder Dan Price resigned while facing assault and reckless driving charges; that case and a second were dropped, and Price maintained his innocence. "Her appointment as Chairman recognizes more than a decade of leadership at Gravity," the company said.

Who moved internally or returned?

Syndio, a Seattle pay equity startup ranked No. 45 on the GeekWire 200, promoted two leaders after adding seven executives in April:

• Nicole Edwards, based in London, is now VP of revenue marketing after joining in February as senior director; she previously worked at Aries Global, Clari and VMware Carbon Black.
• Emma Duisberg, based in the Denver area, moved from regional VP of sales to VP of revenue for the U.S.; she joined Syndio in 2022 from Sense.

Redfin has named Andy Swanton general manager of rentals, bringing back a leader who spent a short stint at the Seattle brokerage in 2022 as VP of properties. Swanton has also worked for Opendoor and BYD.

ExtraHop, a Seattle cybersecurity company, has appointed Rupert Clayson as head of sales for EMEA. The company reports growth in financial services and energy and sells defenses against AI-assisted security attacks; Clayson, based in London, joined from TeamViewer after a role at Fortinet. Whether the EMEA growth figures are audited is not stated.

Benjamin Mullins has returned to Amazon as head of program management for the Devices Brand Studio. He spent four years with Prime until 2019, left for Oracle, and then led product for Reality Labs at Meta.

What about departures and boards?

Debra Bouchegnies will retire from the University of Washington's CoMotion Labs at the end of the year. The associate director of marketing has been with the program since 2018, and no replacement has been named — leaving a search employers and campus partners will watch.

Aman Dhingra has joined the Technology Alliance board of directors. He has spent 17 years at McKinsey & Co. and serves as a partner there.

Taken together, the moves show internal promotion remaining viable at Syndio, Gravity and POSaBIT, while post-merger Skydance continues reshaping its Bellevue engineering bench.