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BANKING
• Sunwest Bank, based in Sandy, has appointed Ben Xiang as chief technology and strategy officer. Xiang will guide Sunwest’s technology roadmap. He has more than two decades of experience across entrepreneurship, enterprise technology and corporate strategy. He joins Sunwest Bank from Veritone, an enterprise AI company, where he served as senior vice president of enterprise AI and corporate development and strategy. He previously held multiple global executive roles at Ingram Micro, overseeing business units focused on the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and mixed reality, in addition to strategy and corporate development responsibilities. Sunwest Bank has operations in California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Florida.
CONSTRUCTION
• Big-D Cos., a Salt Lake City-based group of contractors, has promoted Bruce Crankshaw to executive vice president of business operations. Crankshaw’s focus will be on simplifying processes, sharing best practices and supporting Big-D’s business units to operate with greater efficiency and collaboration across the enterprise. Crankshaw’s experience includes serving as chief operating officer at Leavitt Group and later leading a distributed sales force of more than 400 executives across 110 locations as chief sales officer, and most recently serving as executive vice president at Loveland Innovations. Big-D generates more than $3 billion in annual revenue and has nearly 2,000 associates.
• Tri Pointe Homes has appointed Gavin Stephens as vice president of sales for its Utah Division. Stephens has more than two decades of sales leadership experience, most recently serving as director of sales for Richmond American Homes, overseeing the Utah market.
EDUCATION
• Weber State University has announced several changes to its Board of Trustees. Keith Titus, president and CEO of MarketStar, was elected as chair of the board. He succeeds Karla Bergeson, who had led the board since August 2023. Titus was appointed to the board in 2021 and had served as vice chair since 2023. Titus leads MarketStar, an Ogden-based company focused on outsourced sales solutions. He has more than 25 years of experience driving innovation and growth in tech and sales enablement. Titus earned a bachelor’s degree from WSU and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Utah. Weber State alum Lori Belnap Pehrson was elected as the board’s vice chair. Appointed to the board in 2023, Pehrson is an aerospace executive and board member of multiple nonprofit organizations. She has served on multiple WSU industry advisory boards and was appointed to the National Advisory Council in 2020. Two new members have also joined the WSU board. Ally Isom is chief marketing and external affairs officer for Clyde Cos. Brad Wilson is a WSU alum and former speaker of the Utah House of Representatives. Eight of the university’s 10 trustees are appointed by Utah’s governor and approved by the Utah Senate. Appointees are eligible to serve two four-year terms.
HEALTH CARE
• Sera Prognostics Inc., a Salt Lake City-based company focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker testing, has appointed Dr. Tiffany Inglis as chief medical officer. Inglis will lead Sera’s clinical operations and joins Sera following years of clinical leadership positions at Elevance Health and Carelon Health, where she focused on programs including women’s and children’s health, driving initiatives that improved access to quality care while demonstrating meaningful cost savings. An OBGYN, Inglis spent over a decade practicing throughout Ohio.
• HealthEquity Inc., a Draper-based health savings account and consumer-directed benefits administrator, has appointed Mukund Ramachandran as chief marketing officer and Garett Kitch as senior vice president of client sales and relationship management. Ramachandran will be responsible for developing and executing HealthEquity’s enterprise-wide marketing strategy. He will lead product marketing and go-to-market execution, while overseeing execution and strategies to strengthen brand reputation and engagement across both B2B and B2C audiences. Ramachandran has more than 25 years of B2B marketing and communications leadership across fintech, adtech and martech. Most recently, he served as senior vice president and head of B2B marketing for commercial and new payment flows at Mastercard. Before that, he was a senior marketing leader at Dynamic Yield (later acquired by Mastercard) and earlier held marketing and strategy positions across the media and technology sectors. Kitch will define and implement HealthEquity’s multi-year sales strategy focused on organic growth, new logo acquisition, and expansion across direct and partner-assisted channels. He will lead efforts to build executive-level relationships with key clients, brokers and strategic partners while developing differentiated engagement strategies by client segment. Kitch joins HealthEquity with two decades of experience building and leading sales teams in tech-enabled businesses, including as chief sales officer at EverQuote, in progressive leadership roles at eHealth Inc., and in senior positions at Vivint.