Tech Moves: Microsoft names exec; Remitly CPO/CTO departs; AWS veteran to head Synthesia in Seattle

— Mike Jackson has been promoted to chief digital safety officer at Microsoft, a role within the company’s Trusted Technology Group that includes oversight of children’s safety, tech responsibility and international regulatory work. In a LinkedIn post, he called the work “critical, urgent, and inspiring.”

Jackson has been with Microsoft since 2020 and previously served as associate general counsel and head of legal and AI governance. Prior roles include legal counsel for Target, McDonald’s and other corporations.

“Mike has built his career at the intersection of law, technology, and responsible AI. He brings a rare combination of deep policy and legal expertise, genuine servant leadership, and a curiosity that makes everyone around him sharper,” said Jenny Lay-Flurrie, head of the Trusted Technology Group.

— Ankur Sinha has resigned as chief product and technology officer at Remitly, where he served for more than four years. The Seattle-based company facilitates international money transfers.

“Remitly has meant a lot to me — more than I think I fully realized until I started trying to put this note together. This has been a place where the work mattered, where the mission was real, and where I got to build alongside people who cared deeply,” Sinha said in a message shared with colleagues and posted on LinkedIn.

Before Remitly, Sinha was an engineering director at Google and spent more than a decade at Microsoft, working primarily on Xbox. He did not indicate his next role.

— Brett Taylor has taken the role of director of engineering for Synthesia and will lead the company’s West Coast team from its new Seattle office.

Taylor comes to the London-based company from Amazon, where he spent 17 years in roles including director with Amazon Web Services and senior manager at Amazon. Last year, Peter Hill, a former AWS vice president, became Synthesia’s CTO.

Taylor shared his excitement for joining Synthesia, which he described as having “an incredible team building interactive video agents that let employees ask questions, role-play scenarios, and get real-time answers.” He added that his office is recruiting AI video engineers for product, infrastructure and systems roles.

— Chigusa Sansen is, in her words, “graduating” from Microsoft after more than 25 years — a transition she has been planning for some time.

“Retirement implies stopping. Fading out. Calling it done. That is not what this is. This is a pivot. Into the life I have been building alongside my career, not instead of it,” she said on LinkedIn.

Sansen’s last day is July 1. She is departing as principal product manager, where she focused on making human-AI interactions more natural and intuitive. Sansen also owns Healing Communications, a business launched in 2017 that helps guide people and animals toward holistic well-being and calm.

— Aseem Datar, chief product officer and corporate vice president at Microsoft, has joined the board of Heidrick & Struggles, a Chicago firm specializing in executive search, corporate culture and leadership consulting. Datar has been with Microsoft for more than 20 years, with a brief departure to serve as a partner at Madrona Venture Group.

— Longtime University of Washington political science professor Aseem Prakash has left for a role at Georgetown University. During his 23 years at the UW, Prakash frequently published research and commentary on the environmental impacts of tech companies including Amazon and Microsoft.

— Koki Sato is stepping down as program manager of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) after more than five years with the organization. He is moving to a new role as ecosystem development coordinator at Quantum Australia.