Child Life Specialist

Tech Moves: AWS data leader jumps to Oracle; Seattle Children's names new CIO; Zillow's new legal chief. by Todd Bishop on Aug 21, 2026 at 8:26 am - Mehul Shah joined Oracle as group vice president for OCI data and storage services, ending a 14-year run at Amazon and Amazon Web Services. In his last role at AWS, Shah led engineering and product for Amazon RDS for SQL Server, Oracle and Db2, and ran the launch and expansion of Oracle Database@AWS, the partnership that put Oracle's database inside Amazon's cloud. "Through that collaboration, I saw firsthand that OCI shares the same DNA that inspired me to join Amazon back in 2012," Shah said on LinkedIn, citing "deep curiosity, a passion to innovate, the courage to make bold decisions, and relentless drive to excel." Shah, who is based in Seattle, spent more than eight years at AWS, earlier leading real-time data streaming services including Amazon Data Firehose and Kinesis Data Streams, and serving as director and general manager of Amazon EMR. He started at Oracle this month. - Seattle Children's named Dr. Natalie Pageler senior vice president and chief information officer, putting her in charge of digital strategy and IT operations for the pediatric hospital system. Pageler comes from Stanford Children's Health and the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she was division chief of clinical informatics and earlier spent a decade as chief medical information officer. She is a pediatrician and clinical informaticist with more than 20 years of experience. Seattle Children's CEO Dr. Christopher Longhurst followed a similar path. He was chief medical information officer at Stanford Children's Health, the same role Pageler held, before spending a decade at UC San Diego Health, most recently as chief clinical and innovation officer. - Zillow Group named Cassandra "Sandi" Knight its first-ever chief legal and policy officer, a role the Seattle company created this month as part of a broader leadership shuffle. Reporting to CEO Jeremy Wacksman, she oversees Zillow's legal, compliance and government relations functions. Knight joins from Google, where she spent four years as a vice president leading global civil litigation and discovery. She was previously vice president and chief litigation counsel at PayPal, and spent 11 years at Morgan Stanley in senior litigation and compliance roles. She began her career as a trial lawyer at the San Diego Public Defender's Office, the firm Keker & Van Nest and the San Francisco City Attorney's office. She holds a law degree from Stanford and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She arrives at a busy moment: Zillow and Redfin are set to go to trial Aug. 24 as defendants in an antitrust case brought by the FTC and five state attorneys general over the companies' $100 million rental listings deal. Zillow has spent $26 million on the case so far this year. Two longtime Zillow leaders are heading out: * Sara Bonert, vice president of industry engagement for Zillow Group and ShowingTime+, is leaving after nearly 20 years. One of Zillow's earliest employees, she joined in the fall of 2006 as director of broker services, helped build Zillow's first platform for taking in listing data, and signed the partner agreements that took the site from zero to a million listings in four months. * Jeff Tompkins, head of corporate real estate and operations, wrapped up almost five years with the company. Tompkins, who is based in Denver, ran Zillow's workplace strategy across North America and beyond. He said he will share his next role soon. - Amir Pelleg, a veteran of companies including Amazon and Convoy, is the new chief product officer at Uber Freight. He is based in Seattle, working out of the shared Uber and Uber Freight office on Second Avenue. At Amazon, Pelleg was principal product manager for Kindle Fire, launched the Dash Button and initiated Alexa's smart home controls, then incubated and launched Amazon Shipping in India, the U.K. and the U.S. as a director and general manager in Amazon Transportation. He was a vice president on Convoy's executive team until the Seattle freight startup shut down in 2023, then spent two and a half years at dental tech company Dandy. "I've seen what works and what fails in digital freight," Pelleg said in a Q&A posted by Uber Freight. - Seattle's Frazier Healthcare Partners added Wes Wheeler to its Growth Buyout team as an executive in residence, advising on diligence and on life science logistics and infrastructure. Wheeler was most recently CEO of LabConnect, a central laboratory services company serving clinical trials, and before that president of UPS Healthcare, where he built a vertical of 10,000 employees across 35 countries. During Operation Warp Speed he was the primary industry interface to the U.S. government, overseeing distribution of more than 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to over 100 countries. - Dr. Heather Cheng was announced as the inaugural recipient of the Marty Lazarus Weiden Family Endowed Chair at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which will fund her work detecting, preventing and treating hereditary cancers. Cheng is clinical director of cancer genetics programs at Fred Hutch and directs its prostate cancer genetics clinic. In 2016 she was part of a team that found more than 10% of men with advanced prostate cancer carry inherited mutations in DNA-repair genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2. The chair is named for Marty Lazarus Weiden, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and died in 2001. The family learned only later that some of its members carry a BRCA mutation. - Microsoft corporate vice president Darryl Willis was named to the board of ONE Nuclear Energy, a natural gas and advanced nuclear developer going public this quarter through a merger with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. Willis has led Microsoft's energy and resources group since 2019. He was previously a Google Cloud vice president and a BP executive who ran the company's Deepwater Horizon claims process and testified before Congress. He will officially join the board when the merger closes, and he is expected to chair its compensation committee. - Jake Milstein was named head of healthcare solutions marketing at Zscaler, a return to healthcare cybersecurity. He joins from application security company Contrast Security and was earlier chief marketing and revenue officer at Critical Insight, the Bremerton, Wash.-based security firm acquired by Lumifi Cyber. Before moving into technology, Milstein spent a decade at Seattle's KIRO TV, including four years as news director. - Michele Mehl left Amazon Web Services after nearly two and a half years to become senior public relations manager at ALSO, arriving the same week the electric vehicle company announced a $150 million Series D round led by Prysm Capital. ALSO builds the TM-B consumer electric bike and the TM-Q commercial delivery quad, and counts Amazon and DoorDash among its commercial partners. - Richard Van Bibber was named senior vice president of research and development at Verasonics, the Kirkland, Wash.-based maker of ultrasound research platforms used in fields including biomedical ultrasound, materials science and earth sciences. Van Bibber has spent much of a 25-year medtech career in the Puget Sound region, including seven years as director of research at Kirkland's Cardiac Dimensions and five years leading clinical affairs at Bellevue-based Aortica. - Dave Cotter joined the board of Nickson, the apartment-furnishing startup led by Cameron Johnson, alongside MarcyPen Capital Partners and Larry Braithwaite. Cotter is CEO of Greenwood and has previously worked at Amazon, Nordstrom, zulily, RealNetworks and Leafly. - PCC Community Markets president and CEO Krish Srinivasan will retire effective Jan. 29, 2027. Srinivasan was chief financial officer at Remitly and vice president of finance at Lyft before joining the Seattle grocery co-op as CFO, and earlier held leadership roles at Amazon and Microsoft. - Seattle Foundation named Elizabeth Wong as chief philanthropy officer, reporting to President and CEO Alesha Washington. Wong spent more than a decade at Foundation Source and earlier worked directly with the Gates family at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And in case you missed it: - Jay Bartot, a co-founder of the airfare-prediction startup Farecast and former chief technology officer of Madrona Venture Labs, was named CTO of Lev, the Pioneer Square Labs spinout building an "AI co-founder" for entrepreneurs. Read more here. - Expedia Group is parting ways with at least eight vice presidents and senior vice presidents, and promoted five other leaders, as it reorganizes its product and technology groups around AI. Read more in this GeekWire story.

Robotic surgery expands its role in pediatric care at Stanford. * Written by Zach Turner * Aug 13, 2026 Stanford Medicine Children's Health is widening its use of robotic surgery across pediatric specialties, bringing minimally invasive techniques to increasingly young patients. Stanford Medicine Children's Health is expanding its robotic surgery program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, extending minimally invasive techniques across pediatric urology, gynecology and bariatric surgery. The program represents a broader effort to adapt robotic systems, already established in many adult procedures, to the particular anatomical and clinical demands of treating children. The technology gives surgeons greater visualization and precise control of instruments while allowing procedures to be performed through smaller incisions. For pediatric patients, where operating spaces can be especially limited, that precision can reduce disruption to surrounding tissue and support shorter recovery periods. Stanford says its surgeons are now using robotic techniques for some patients as young as four months old. Urology has been an early focus of the program, including procedures addressing abnormalities involving the ureter, bladder and kidney. Pediatric urologist Erin Grantham has spent roughly a decade developing her approach to robot-assisted procedures and is also using the technology to train residents and fellows, giving trainees an opportunity to observe and participate in techniques in real time. The hospital expects the range of robotic procedures to continue growing. Pediatric surgeon Janey Pratt, who previously used robotic surgical tools for a decade at the Stanford Medicine Veterans Affairs hospital, is preparing to offer robotic sleeve gastrectomies and gallbladder removal procedures later this summer. Stanford is also working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on research and plans that could eventually extend the program into additional specialties, including ear, nose and throat surgery. The expansion illustrates both the potential and complexity of bringing robotic surgery further into pediatric medicine. The technology itself is only one part of that transition: specialized surgical experience, training and careful evaluation of which procedures and patients are appropriate remain central to its use. As Stanford adds specialties, the program offers a practical example of how robotic systems developed around minimally invasive surgery are being adapted for smaller patients and a wider range of childhood conditions.

Samsung has announced a groundbreaking research partnership with Stanford University and Stanford Medicine aimed at transforming how its Galaxy Watch devices handle sleep apnea.