Oct. 17, 2017: Wilke ’89 Discusses Amazon’s Whole Foods Integration; Ellsworth ’80 To Run for Pa. Governor; and More

In a recent interview, Jeff Wilke ’89, Amazon’s chief executive of worldwide consumers, describes his role in the integration of Whole Foods and his relationship with CEO Jeff Bezos ’86. — The Wall Street Journal

Pardon Makumbe ’07 and Pulo Taukobong are the co-founders of CRE Venture Capital, which aims to be the “venture-capital partner of choice” for African tech companies. — Forbes
 
Basecoin, a cryptocurrency modeled after the Federal Reserve and created by Nader Al-Naji ’13, Lawrence Diao ’14, and Josh Chen ’14, has received the backing of a handful of prominent investors. — Reuters
 
President Donald Trump nominated energy consultant and former Department of Defense official Alex Beehler ’75 to be an assistant secretary of the Army for energy, installations, and environment. — The White House
 
Spurred by the difficulty of planning her own wedding, Flora Wu Ellis ’08 set to work on a wedding-planning app called Unveil, which she says aims to keep the happy day from becoming a “big project-management nightmare.” — CentralJersey.com

Former securities lawyer and popular law blogger Bruce MacEwen ’76 discusses his work on the ABA Journal’s “Legal Rebels” podcast. — ABA Journal 

“We hear a lot about trade deficits, but repealing trade agreements will not fix the arithmetic.” 

— Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz ’42 and former Mexican Finance Secretary Pedro Aspe, who outlined proposals to revise Nafta in a recent op-ed. Read more in The New York Times

Miranda Bogen and Harlan Yu *12 of the tech-policy firm Upturn argue in an op-ed that the addition of body cameras in the St. Louis police department won’t solve accountability problems; they advocate for policies that protect the privacy of crime victims. — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 
Laura Ellsworth ’80, an attorney who ran the Pittsburgh office of Jones Day, officially entered the race for governor of Pennsylvania as a candidate in the Republican primary. — Philadelphia Daily News
 
According to campaign sources, former U.S. Senate candidate Greg Orman ’91 is planning an independent run for governor of Kansas in 2018. — The Wichita Eagle
 
Terrence Robinson ’76, a founding member of Preservation Buffalo Niagara, has entered the race for mayor of Buffalo, running as the Green Party candidate. — The Buffalo News

BrightHouse, a consulting firm owned by the Boston Consulting Group, hired Ashley Grice ’96 as its CEO. — Markets Insider

Arun Gosain ’77, the chief of the division of pediatric plastic surgery at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, was elected president of the Plastic Surgery Foundation for 2017-18. — Markets Insider
 
Daniel Mendelsohn *94’s recent memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, has been shortlisted for the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious awards for nonfiction. — The Forward
 
Vagrant Nation, a book by University of Virginia Law School Dean Risa Goluboff *03, received the American Historical Association’s 2017 Littleton-Griswold Prize. — UVA School of Law

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