A former PayPal exec joined this cannabis startup with Philly roots

Dave Peck, PayPal’s former head of social and digital media marketing, took a vote of confidence on KIND Financial, the California-based SaaS company with Philly ties that focuses on the cannabis industry, by signing on as the firm’s CMO.

According to CEO David Dinenberg, Peck will remain based out of Silicon Valley but will travel to the company’s L.A. headquarters as well as the company’s satellite offices at Pipeline in Center City at least once per month. The PR honcho was at PayPal for five years.

“In this business environment I think it’s vital for every marketing professional to stay ahead of social and technology trends,” Peck said in a press release. “I also love the idea of getting into an industry as it gains mainstream recognition. When it comes to cannabis, there’s clearly a great need for ensuring ongoing compliance with the patchwork of laws and regulations that vary based on state and region.”

(As our coverage has noted in the past, the cannabis space is blazing in Philly.)

And for some more context on KIND Financial’s Philly ties: the company received an investment from local cannabis investor Lindy Snider, the daughter of late Philadelphia sports and business figure Ed Snider. There’s an interesting back story in that, when the late Snider was battling metastatic cancer at 83, medicinal marijuana was one of the few remedies that helped combat the intense pain. Snider’s daughter also serves as advisor to KIND Financial.

Also, though CEO Dinenberg lives in the L.A. area, he’s a Penn State grad who started his career in real estate development in Philly. KIND was featured at this Greenhouse Ventures cannabis conference during Philly Tech Week 2016.

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Lauren Galanter is one of the City of Philadelphia’s digital transformation fellows focused on information architecture. If you’ll remember, Chief Data Officer Tim Wisniewski was looking for fellows to take on a short-term fellowship to work on the redesign of Phila.gov. Galanter is a UX architect and researcher at law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

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This one is a bit far removed from Philly but it’s so interesting that we wanted to share: Rick Carragher, who was the CTO of the Neat Company from 2011 to 2013, is now the director of Amazon’s Alexa Smart Home. He’s been working at Amazon in Seattle since 2014.

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Former Penn Nursing professor Nancy Hanrahan was behind many of the innovation efforts at Penn Nursing (like this healthcare and innovation lab) and now she’s the senior associate dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at Northeastern University’s School of Nursing.

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Saint-Gobain Corporation, a French materials company with its North American HQ in Malvern, Pa., announced it tapped veteran exec Tom Kinisky as CEO. Kinisky, who has been in several leadership roles throughout his 28-year-old career at Saint Gobain, was formerly the president of Saint-Gobain’s Performance Plastics division.

According to a company press release, Kinisky’s focus will be on growing the company’s North American presence. And as Philly.com’s Joseph DiStefano puts it, his job will be “making manufacturing cool and hiring the next generation.”

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Wayne Kimmel’s VC firm SeventySix Capital recently added a former Phillies MVP to its roster in Ryan Howard. The first baseman, recently released from his minor league contract with the Atlanta Braves, came aboard as partner of the Radnor, Pa.-based venture firm.

“By leveraging the full weight of our knowledge, expertise and relationships, we can make a huge impact at home in Philadelphia and around the world,” Howard said in a statement. The ballplayer’s role in the company will be focused on sourcing new investment opportunities as well as providing mentorship to the portfolio companies.

“Ryan is a proven winner on the field and off and is a true team player in every sense,” Kimmel told Technical.ly. “He shares the same values that we do. The partnership naturally came together and we are excited to have Ryan as a partner and for the future of SeventySix Capital.”

Are we noticing a trend of public figures moving to VC firms after they’ve been, as our editor in chief once put it, “booted from the pinnacle of public life”? U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty joined Militia Hill Ventures last month. Anyone interested in picking up Connor Barwin?

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King of Prussia-based Greenphire just brought on Claudine Paccio as Chief Operations Officer. Paccio comes to the fintech company with a background in senior management roles at companies like General Electric and Dell Computer as well as smaller organizations in the medtech space like BioClinica and CRF Health.