Leadership

OnBoarding Women is a program supported by business leaders in the Seattle region, spanning finance, legal, business and executive consulting sectors.  The sponsoring organizations are committed to increasing the representation of women on boards by developing a cohort of candidates and establishing a supportive network.

Hope Cochran

Hope Cochran
Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group

As Managing Director, Hope identifies and leads new investments, provides strategic and operational advice to Madrona portfolio companies, and fosters corporate and strategic business development relationships with larger companies and investors. Hope is also an active board member of three public company boards including Hasbro, New Relic and MongoDB. She shares her experience as an operating executive, investor and independent board member with the OBW participants and plays an active role in programming. Prior to joining Madrona in January of 2017, Hope held several high level executive positions with public companies. She was most recently the CFO of King Digital, the creator of Candy Crush and other successful mobile games, where she helped the company manage explosive employee and revenue growth, guided the company’s IPO and successfully completed a $5.9 billion acquisition by Activision in early 2016. Prior to King Digital, Hope was CFO at Clearwire, a telecom company that navigated the complicated world of spectrum, partnerships and competition as the modern wireless industry took shape.

Hope started her career as an entrepreneur and founder of SkillsVillage. A company she grew to 200 employees and $10 million in revenue. Hope has been named one of Fortune’s top 10 Women in Gaming, Puget Sound CFO of the Year for Public Companies, received a Top 50 Global Telecom CFO award from Global Telecom Business and has been awarded an Excellence in Finance Award from European-based Digital Masters.

Ed Thomas

Ed Thomas
Managing Partner, Deloitte

Ed is Managing Partner for the Deloitte Seattle office and serves as Lead Client Service Partner for a number of large corporations and enterprises including Nike and T-Mobile. He also leads Deloitte’s Strategic Client Program in Seattle, focusing on global client service. Ed is also the Dean of one of Deloitte’s senior leadership program, “the Art of the Story.”

Ed brings 30 years of professional leadership and experience to his clients and the marketplace.  Ed has benefited greatly from a diversity of experiences, including roles as a corporate lawyer, as a partner in Deloitte’s Merger & Acquisitions Services group, as Chief of Staff to Deloitte’s Managing Partner and subsequent Global CEO, as a regional Tax Managing Partner, and now as a global lead client service partner and marketplace leader for Seattle and Washington state.  Ed is Board Chair of the Seattle Foundation.

Lucinda Stewart

Lucinda Stewart
Consultant, Spencer Stuart

Lucinda is based in Seattle and is a member of the Technology, Media & Telecommunications, Financial Officer, Private Equity and Board practices. In addition to working with a broad range of technology clients to place high level executives, she also works on assignments for organizations bridging the technology and healthcare sectors. Lucinda has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital, business and corporate development, and operations for technology and services businesses.  Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Lucinda was a venture capitalist with OVP Venture Partners, co-leading information technology investing and where she launched the OVP advisory board and managed strategic relationships with venture firms on both costs.  While at OVP she served on more than 20 company boards.

In addition to her investment boards, Lucinda has served on nonprofit boards including Mercy Corporation’s Phoenix Fund, the University of Washington W Fund, Northwest Entrepreneur Network, Evergreen Venture Capital Association and the Evergreen School.

Lucinda has also held executive roles at Fisher Communications and been a healthcare venture investor at Frazier healthcare.

Stewart M. Landefeld

Stewart M. Landefeld
Partner, Perkins Coie

Stewart Landefeld, partner and immediate past chair of the Perkins Coie Corporate practice, has counseled corporations and board of directors for 30 years in the areas of corporate governance, securities compliance, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, private equity investments and venture capital. Stewart has provided corporate governance and other general corporate counsel to dozens of leading companies, including Microsoft Corporation, Costco Wholesale Corporation, T-Mobile, PetSmart Inc., Orbitz (Audit Committee), The Seattle Mariners, and The Seattle SuperSonics among others. Clients benefit from the valuable insight he gained after serving for nearly a year as interim Chief Legal Officer, of Washington Mutual Inc. during the financial crisis, as well as his decade of board leadership, including the Pike Place Market PDA, The Seattle Foundation, Plymouth Housing Group and the Seattle Art Museum.

 

Gillian Crossan
Managing Director, Deloitte

Gillian is a Managing Director in Seattle and serves as Lead Client Service Partner for large technology clients in the Seattle marketplace.  She spent the first part of her career in Strategy and Operations Consulting in the UK and the US focusing on large technology enabled strategic projects where she often played the critical role as the translator between the business and technical teams. For the last ten years, Gillian has been leading account teams and building strong relationships as a trusted advisor at some of Deloitte’s most important global clients. Today Gillian is responsible for the overall relationship that Deloitte has with Amazon globally and leads the account team around the world, bringing the strong resources and capabilities to help Amazon fuel growth and solve complex problems.  In the past Gillian has worked with other large global consumer business and technology clients including NIKE, Expedia, Itron and Costco.

In addition to her client roles, Gillian is the Inclusion leader for the Deloitte West Region, leading the strategy for diversity and inclusion programming with the 12 Deloitte offices in the West.  Passionate about women’s leadership, Gillian is Board Chair of the Women’s Funding Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on leadership opportunities for women and girls in the State of Washington.

Ann Watson

Ann Watson
Chief Operating Officer, Cascadia Capital

Ann Watson is the Chief Operating Officer at Cascadia Capital. In this role she oversees finance, technology, human capital, operations, legal and compliance for the firm.

Previously Ann was the Chief Financial Officer of Moss Adams LLP. Prior to that, Ann served in multiple executive leadership roles at Russell Investments over a 15-year high growth period for the global investment management firm. During her tenure there, Ann served as Chief Human Resources Officer, as a Russell/Mellon Board Member overseeing the Russell Indexes, as a member of the firm’s Management Committee, Compensation Committee, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and as a Corporate Finance group leader. Prior to joining Russell, Ann spent seven years in global banking roles with Chemical Bank/Manufacturers Hanover based in New York and abroad.

Ann is an active and engaged community leader. Ann serves on the board of Heritage Bank, an Olympia-based publicly traded bank where she chairs the Compensation Committee and is a member of the Nominations and Governance Committee. Ann serves on the Board of the Seattle Foundation, where she is Chair Emeritus. She is a member of Whitman College’s Audit and Risk Management Committee and serves as a mentor for the Onboarding Women Program. Ann was a Social Venture Partners member for nearly twenty years. In previous community service roles, Ann served as a board member of the Washington Economic Development Finance Authority, as a Finance Committee Member for Thrive by Five, as an Executive Committee Member of the China Relations Council and as a board member of the Seattle-Chongqing Sister City Association.

Ann holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics from Whitman College.