Tech Moves: T-Mobile names chief accounting officer; Plug and Play picks leaders; and more

— Daniel Drobac has been promoted to chief accounting officer at T-Mobile, effective May 1, according to a regulatory filing. Drobac has been with the Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier for almost eight years, serving as vice president, accounting and controller since August 2017. In the new role, he replaces Dara Bazzano, who is retiring but will continue to serve as the principal accounting officer through April 30. Drobac previously served as a practice fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board from 2015 to 2017 and served in various leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP from 2000 to 2015. Other key personnel changes… Read More

Apr 14, 2025 - 18:34

Tech Moves: T-Mobile names chief accounting officer; Plug and Play picks leaders; and more

— Daniel Drobac has been promoted to chief accounting officer at T-Mobile, effective May 1, according to a regulatory filing.

Drobac has been with the Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier for almost eight years, serving as vice president, accounting and controller since August 2017. In the new role, he replaces Dara Bazzano, who is retiring but will continue to serve as the principal accounting officer through April 30.

Drobac previously served as a practice fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board from 2015 to 2017 and served in various leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP from 2000 to 2015.

Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:

— Jack Callaghan has been named director of Plug and Play Seattle and Emmanuel Chan is program manager for the Silicon Valley-based innovation group which announced it was coming to the Seattle area last fall.

Callaghan previously served at senior vice president of digital technology for Enterprise Ireland, and he was a management consultant at Microsoft.

Chan spent more than three years as a program manager at Amazon and was previously at Snap Inc.

Plug and Play will run two new annual accelerator programs in the Seattle region. One will be located at the University of Washington in Seattle, in partnership with CoMotion, and the other will be north of Seattle in Everett, Wash., at a building housed by SNBL, a Japanese contract research organization for drug development and medical technology.

In addition to startup accelerators, Plug and Play runs corporate innovation programs and has an in-house venture capital fund.

— John Dickerson is the new CEO of Mozilla.ai, a division of Mozilla that launched last year as an open-source AI ecosystem.

Dickerson previously co-founded and served as chief scientist at Arthur, a New York-based AI startup, and he’s been and adjunct and associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland for more than eight years.

In a LinkedIn post, Dickerson called Mozilla.ai a “well-funded team of around 20” that is “looking to grow in the coming months.”

— Nick Nelson, a program manager for entrepreneurial climate efforts at Technology Alliance, is leaving the Washington state nonprofit after more than two years.

Nelson said on LinkedIn that he’s “moving on to a new and exciting role” still in the corporate venture capital-related world. He previously spent 6 1/2 years at Polaris, which aids victims and survivors of human trafficking.

— Kelly Cheeseman, a corporate communications and business strategy veteran, is the co-founder and managing partner of Cuore Collective, a new agency she started with longtime colleague Pia Arthur.

Cheeseman spent more than 10 years in communications and PR roles at Amazon after previously leading media relations at Walmart. She left Amazon in 2022 to join logistics giant Flexport as VP and chief of staff for a year. Arthur is also an Amazon communications vet who spent more than 12 years at the company.

— Rory Jacobson was appointed head of policy for Carbon Direct, the Seattle-based consulting and investment firm that helps businesses, including Microsoft, cut their carbon footprint.

Jacobson previously served as director of the Carbon Dioxide Removal program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

— Two Wizards of the Coast vets who have been instrumental in the success of “Dungeons and Dragons” are stepping away from the company.

“D&D” Creative Director Chris Perkins is retiring after almost 30 years with Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast, and Jeremy Crawford, director of the “D&D” design team, is leaving after more than 18 years. Both are exiting after leading the design of a new revised Fifth Edition and new core rulebooks for popular tabletop game, according to ScreenRant.