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GeekWire reported these three separate leadership moves on November 7, 2025: Smartsheet named Drew Garner senior vice president of engineering, former AWS vice president Baskar Sridharan joined AI startup Trase as president, and WatchGuard Technologies appointed Joe Smolarski CEO. The report does not establish whether any of the executives still held those roles as of August 2026.
Smartsheet names Drew Garner senior vice president of engineering
Garner’s appointment places him in a senior engineering role at the work-management software company. GeekWire reported that he had been chief technology officer at Accolade while Rajeev “Raj” Singh led the healthcare company, and previously held a senior-director role at Concur, which Singh co-founded. Singh had recently become Smartsheet’s CEO, according to the report.
The overlap connects Garner’s career with Singh’s leadership network, but the announcement as reported does not explain whether Garner was replacing someone, joining a newly created post, or taking part in a wider reorganization. Nor does it specify his remit. Engineering execution and product delivery are common parts of an SVP of engineering role; responsibility for AI strategy, platform reliability, or other functions cannot be inferred from the title alone.
Smartsheet was emphasizing AI and automation in its product positioning. That makes engineering leadership relevant to how the company builds and delivers software, but Garner’s appointment by itself does not establish a change in strategy. GeekWire’s November 7 report gives no effective date or detailed mandate for the hire.
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Former AWS executive Baskar Sridharan joins Trase
The “AWS exec departs” headline refers to Sridharan moving from AWS to Trase, where he was named president—not to a reported retirement. Before AWS, he spent nearly 16 years at Microsoft, including work as a principal engineer and architect on an Azure data-storage repository for large analytic workloads. He later became vice president of engineering for Google Cloud’s platform in Kirkland, then an AWS vice president overseeing AI and machine-learning services and infrastructure.
Trase was described at launch as an agentic-AI startup targeting complex, regulated fields, initially healthcare, national security, and energy. The company said it was building autonomous, turnkey agents that could operate within customers’ existing infrastructure. That describes its intended product approach; the report does not establish production deployments, customers, or revenue.
GeekWire reported that Trase had $10.5 million in pre-seed funding at launch. The startup was based in Virginia, while Sridharan was expected to remain in Seattle. Those details are from the November 2025 report, not a confirmation of the company’s present funding total or location.
Sridharan’s experience with large cloud platforms could be useful as Trase tries to build systems for organizations with demanding infrastructure and compliance needs. Whether that experience translates into customer deployments is a business question, not an outcome established by his appointment.
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WatchGuard appoints Joe Smolarski CEO
WatchGuard Technologies named Smolarski CEO after his tenure as president and chief operating officer at Kaseya, a security and IT-management software company. GeekWire credited him with helping lead a 10-fold increase in Kaseya revenue and growth to a multi-billion-dollar valuation. Those are the report’s attributed performance claims, not independently audited figures in the article.
The appointment followed an interim period: Vats Srivatsan had served as WatchGuard’s interim CEO since May 2025, after Prakash Panjwani’s departure. Srivatsan was expected to remain on WatchGuard’s board. The report does not state why Panjwani left or give Smolarski’s precise start date.
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
Smolarski’s move puts an executive with operating experience at a scaled security-management business at the head of Seattle-based WatchGuard. The report does not disclose his priorities. Channel growth, product consolidation, recurring revenue, international expansion, and operating efficiency are areas an incoming CEO might address, but none was reported as his plan.
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What the three moves show—and what they do not
The appointments were grouped in a Pacific Northwest technology-news roundup, not described as part of a coordinated transaction or shared industry event. They illustrate different kinds of executive mobility: an enterprise-software leadership connection at Smartsheet, a hyperscale-cloud veteran joining an early-stage AI company at Trase, and an operator moving between security-focused businesses at WatchGuard.
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The practical questions are company-specific: what Garner will own at Smartsheet, whether Trase can establish traction in regulated markets, and what direction Smolarski sets at WatchGuard. The November 7, 2025 report does not answer those questions or verify the executives’ status in August 2026.
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Source: GeekWire, November 7, 2025.
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