Avalara’s Alesia Pinney Honored with 2016 Outstanding Chief Legal Officer Award

EVP and General Counsel Recognized for Exceptional Leadership, Career, and Contributions to the Bottom Line

Alesia Pinney, executive vice president and general counsel for Avalara, Inc., has been named Outstanding Chief Legal Officer for private companies with up to $500 million in revenue by the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 2016 Corporate Counsel Awards committee. The annual award honors legal heroes in Washington state that help companies innovate, thrive, and make solid business decisions.

“The Puget Sound Business Journal is pleased to honor in-house attorneys who demonstrate above-and-beyond prowess in handling legal challenges and bringing value to the company’s bottom line,” said Becky Monk, assistant managing editor for the Puget Sound Business Journal. “Our panel of judges feels that Alesia’s stellar leadership within Avalara’s legal department and throughout the company illustrates how a strong, strategic relationship with in-house counsel leads to company growth.”

“As a member of Avalara’s executive team, Alesia delivers a consistently positive and measurable impact on virtually every area of our company,” said Scott McFarlane, Avalara CEO and co-founder. “In the last year alone, she helped improve our deal velocity by streamlining our contracts and she was instrumental in negotiating and executing multiple strategic acquisitions in lodging, fuel, and telecommunications, and a significant global compliance offering. I’m proud to speak for all Avalarians in congratulating Alesia for this well-deserved recognition.”

Pinney has a proven track record serving as an operational, accounting, and legal executive for private and publicly traded companies. Her wealth of experience includes managing public offerings and private financings, mergers, acquisitions, and company-transforming strategic transactions.

Since joining Avalara in 2013, Pinney has completely transformed the company’s legal function, moving it from a perceived growth inhibitor to an active, supportive partner to each of Avalara’s business units. Additionally, she has assisted the company in raising over $200 million from leading venture capital and private equity investors. In 2015, Pinney streamlined the sales negotiation process, which helped Avalara enter into thousands of new deals and supported the company’s 40 percent- plus year over year growth.

Previous positions include serving as general counsel and secretary for Radiant Global Logistics Inc., EVP for Legal and Operations at Talyst Inc., and general counsel for InfoSpace Inc. and drugstore.com. Before that, Pinney practiced law at Perkins Coie, LLP, and she has served as senior corporate counsel at RealNetworks. Pinney began her career as a certified public accountant at Deloitte Haskins and Sells.

About Avalara

Avalara helps businesses of all sizes achieve compliance with sales and use, excise, communications, VAT other transactional tax requirements by delivering comprehensive, automated, cloud-based solutions that are fast, accurate, and easy to use.  Avalara’s Compliance Cloud^TM platform is designed to effectively manage complicated and burdensome tax compliance obligations imposed by state, local, and other taxing authorities in the United States and internationally.

Avalara offers hundreds of pre-built connectors into leading accounting, ERP, ecommerce and other business applications. The company processes millions of tax transactions for customers and free users every day, files hundreds of thousands of transactional tax returns per year, and manages millions of exemption certificates and other compliance related documents.

A privately held company, Avalara’ s venture capital investors include Sageview Capital, Battery Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Technology Crossover Ventures, Arthur Ventures, and other institutional and individual investors. Avalara employs more than 1000 people at its headquarters in Seattle, WA and in offices across the U.S. and in London, England and Pune, India.