Regina Mills would shop late at night, when her two sons and neighbors were not around, because she was ashamed that she needed the state’s food assistance program to pay for groceries. She had been rejected from one job after another because of a charge of possession and burglary that, though dismissed, kept showing up…

The difference between Harvard University and your local community college may not be as great as you think. It depends on your focus and interests. Just ask Sung Rhee. His Kirkland-based company, Optimal, prioritizes tuition costs and alumni salaries in ranking colleges. Unlike U.S. News & World Report — once considered the gold standard for…

Could a chatbot be more empathetic than your therapist? Could bots augment or even replace a trusted mental health professional? Those questions lit up the internet when JAMA, the influential Journal of the American Medical Association, published a study in late April concluding that ChatGPT (generative pertained transformer) responds with more empathy to patients than…

When CHI Franciscan launched its Mission Control Center, it became the first health system in Washington state and only the fifth globally to use artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to coordinate patient care across its entire system. Four years later, the NASA-inspired effort — created in collaboration with GE Healthcare — is credited with shortening…

Showcase your company’s culture and reward your employees by registering for Seattle Business magazine’s Best Companies To Work For survey. Registration deadline is June 23. Register here: https://bestcompaniesgroup.com/best-companies-to-work-for-in-washington/program-registration/ Seattle Business magazine will publish its 34th annual Best Companies issue in January 2024. An optional in-depth report from our program partner, Best Companies Group, provides rare…

If you haven’t been to the Everett waterfront in a while, you’re in for a surprise. What was once an industrial mill town with smokestacks is gradually turning into the Puget Sound region’s new go-to destination with upscale restaurants, wine bars, breweries, hip hotels, waterfront housing, and four miles of walking trails with mountain and…

Twyla Dill didn’t always want to make jewelry. She came across it by accident. After studying Arabic at Edmonds College in Lynnwood for a year, Dill made plans to move to Lebanon in 2011, making what was planned to be a brief stop in Istanbul, Turkey, to visit a friend before landing in her new…

Zillow Group made a bold move in the summer of 2020 when it announced that most of its employees would work from home at least part of the time “indefinitely.” The Seattle-based real estate tech company was one of the first in the United States to adopt a “permanently flexible” workplace. Today, the bulk of…

The workplace of the future is not just about some employees working from home while their counterparts toil in an office. It’s about rethinking the concept of an office entirely. Consider what’s happening on the 48th and 49th floors of the iconic Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle. The completely redesigned, 41,000-square-foot corporate headquarters of Seattle-based…

Contract-management company Icertis has grown into a global software-as-a-service behemoth since its launch in 2009 — with some 2,400 employees globally, including about 400 in the U.S. and 140 in Washington state. The privately held company, headed by Chairman and CEO Samir Bodas, has raised more than $400 million in financing, including securing a $150…

Seattle-based Omnidian has become a national powerhouse in clean energy since its launch in 2017. The provider of performance-assurance contracts in the solar-power arena today has some 185 employees nationwide, including 75 in Washington, plus a national network of 200 external field-service providers. “We guarantee that the (solar-power) asset is working,” says Mark Liffmann, cofounder…

Logic20/20 builds camaraderie and connection in distributed teams Like most companies, Logic20/20 has experienced major changes in the way we work over the past few years. Our transition from a primarily in-office team to a geographically dispersed organization has confirmed a truth we knew all along: When your culture is strong to begin with, it…

When you work for a service-based business, its success is the product of its employees. If you are reading this and doubting that fact, it might be a sign to seek change. One local business in Kent understands how important this is by prioritizing efforts to promote individual employee and team appreciation, leading to being…