Power Moves: 4 shifts in the force across town and beyond

Althought the past few days have felt like an Amazonfest, a lot has been happening in Philly tech lately that has nothing to do with Seattle.

But mind you, everything is connected. The national process to bid on Amazon’s sprawling corporate campus will necessarily take into account the existence and mobility of a highly-skilled workforce. The Inquirer’s Inga Saffron mentioned this in her open letter to the West Coast tech giant:

We’ve got millennials and makers coming out of the woodwork, which ensures a deep pool of talent to staff your headquarters. To be honest, we’re not turning out quite as many software engineers as some of our competition, such as Pittsburgh. Historically, we’ve been more of a medical research and pharmaceutical town. But our marquee tech company, Comcast, hasn’t had any trouble pulling in engineers or executives.

And, as luck would have it, Technical.ly’s long-standing Power Moves column has chronicled the mobility of this coveted workforce. Let’s take a look at a few recent shifts in the force.

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This summer, Old City’s Weblinc brought aboard Linda Bustos for a newly created role, Director of Merchant Strategy.

Bustos, formerly the cofounder of Vancouver-based ecommerce firm Edgacent, said the move allowed her to “apply the merchant strategy I advocate for directly to the customers of a technology that supports it.”

Weblinc rebranded its SaaS legacy platform as Workarea earlier this year to gain more clarity with customers.

“Linda’s experience is an excellent fit for the retailers and brands that Workarea was custom-built for,” said Weblinc CEO Darren Hill. “She understands the distinct needs of our growing customer base who must outpace their competitors by setting the right priorities with the best technology. ”

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We spy a Philly startup on the inaugural cohort of John Hopkins’ M-1 Ventures accelerator.

RoundTrip, an online platform that connects hospitals and patients with non-emergency medical transportation, was tapped for the Baltimore-based program that connects companies with funding and resources.

We last checked in on the company when it secured a national ridesharing partnership with Lyft.

“The Baltimore area has incredible voices in health innovation, and we at RoundTrip can’t wait to be a part of it,” said Angela Damiano, corporate administrator of RoundTrip.

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West Chester, Pa.-based Fischer Block, a provider of internet-of-things solutions for the energy industry, announced it named a new CEO in David Westrom, a former executive in Exton, Pa.-based ThingWorx.

“The initial acceptance of our solution offering and patented IoT Edge device is driving us to accelerate our growth plans,” said founder Greg Wolfe. “This requires a dedicated CEO which will allow me to focus on further enhancement of our device and application software offerings along with ensuring the continued success of our customer solution deployments.”

The company secured a six-figure backing from investor group Broad Street Angels to work on its technology offering.

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Here are two new recent hires from of Blue Bell, Pa.-based digital strategy firm Anexinet: Al Sporer as Executive Vice President of the new Digital and Analytics Services Business Unit and Joti Balani as Vice President of Marketing.