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Robert Payne becomes Chief Technology Officer at Piedmont Advantage Credit Union

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., April 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Piedmont Advantage Credit Union (PACU) is proud to announce the promotion of Robert Payne to Chief Technology Officer (CTO), marking a significant milestone in a distinguished career spanning more than 30 years in the technology field.

Payne has served as PACU’s Senior Vice President of Information Technology for over a decade, leading with a vision to ensure that technology functions and works smarter to make financial services easier, safer and more seamless for members and employees alike.

“Technology should feel effortless for the people who rely on it, our members and employees,” Payne said. “In my new role, I look forward to building on that foundation and driving strategic technology decisions that add real, measurable value.”

Payne holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Security (now called Cybersecurity) from Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky., and is certified in ISO/IEC 20000, the international standard for IT service management. His approach to leadership blends technical expertise with a deep understanding of how technology shapes member experiences and internal operations.

As CTO, Payne will align PACU’s technology infrastructure with its long-term strategic goals. His priorities include:

Fortifying cybersecurity, recognizing that trust is the foundation of all member relationships.Enhancing digital experiences to ensure members can bank anytime, anywhere seamlessly.Investing in automation and AI to increase operational efficiency and allow staff to focus more on members’ financial well-being.Ensuring resilience and scalability to support PACU’s continued growth.

“Robert has a clear vision for how technology can enable innovation and preserve the human connections that make our credit union so unique,” said PACU’s President & CEO, Dion Williams. “His leadership has been instrumental in building a technology strategy that puts our members first and empowers our employees to serve with confidence and ease. As CTO, he will continue to guide us toward a more secure, efficient and people-focused future.”

While artificial intelligence and automation are key areas of interest, Payne emphasizes that technology at PACU will always serve people, not replace them. “No technology can replicate the relationships, trust and sense of belonging that define who we are,” he said. “That’s priceless, and it will always be our priority.”

About Piedmont Advantage Credit Union
Headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., and founded in 1949 to meet the financial needs of Piedmont Aviation and Piedmont Airline employees, Piedmont Advantage Credit Union has grown to serve member-owners, who reside, work, worship, attend school or operate a business in one of the six counties it serves in North Carolina or who are employed by one of its many employer companies. These six counties are Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Iredell, Mecklenburg and Rockingham. A not-for-profit, cooperative financial institution, Piedmont Advantage still has a strong presence in aviation with its six branches and 10 ATMs throughout the service region.

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SOURCE Piedmont Advantage Credit Union

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Reason Automation Launches BASIS: A New Standard in Amazon Vendor Analytics

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SEATTLE, April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Reason Automation today announced the launch of BASIS, a powerful analytics platform designed to give Amazon Vendors the visibility, control, and insights they need to drive financial performance across their Amazon business. BASIS consolidates siloed vendor data into a single source of truth for Amazon performance and opportunities.

With Amazon’s complex systems, chargebacks, co-op agreements, and profitability metrics constantly changing, brands feel pressure to make faster decisions using incomplete or delayed data. BASIS answers this challenge by unifying retail, advertising, financial, and operational data into one intuitive platform—complete with self-serve dashboards and automated reporting workflows.

“There are so many solutions for retail media management, all competing for a share of your budget,” said Andrew Hamada, CEO of Reason Automation. “We built BASIS for finance-focused leaders—the sales and e-commerce executives responsible for managing both growth and profitability of the Amazon channel. With BASIS, they finally have a tool that’s as detailed and dynamic as the challenges they face.”

Kara Babb, Founder at HighTide Commerce, said, “My customers spend hours chasing data across a dozen Vendor accounts and regions to manage their business on Amazon. BASIS is letting me uncover the same insights in minutes, not hours. It’s the data quality obsession, ex-Amazon experience, and strong analytical models like weighted contribution to change. My clients will finally understand the “why” for business trends, whether it’s search suppressions or a broken ASIN relationship. We’re taking new actions faster than ever.”

BASIS includes prebuilt dashboards for scorecard performance, profitability analysis, advertising attribution, and custom options tailored to brand-specific workflows. Reason’s Snowflake-native approach ensures data security, scalability, and seamless integration with internal BI tools.

To learn more about BASIS, visit: https://www.reasonautomation.com/amazon-vendor-analytics

About Reason Automation
Reason Automation builds data infrastructure and analytics solutions for the modern Amazon vendor. Reason helps brands unlock the full value of their Amazon data via self-serve dashboards to custom scorecard mechanization, Reason helps brands unlock the full value of their Amazon data, uncovering customer insights that improve financial performance.

Media Contact:
media@reasonautomation.com

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SOURCE Reason Automation

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Vuzix Acquires Advanced Waveguide R&D Facility in Silicon Valley to Strengthen Partnerships with Big Tech OEMs/ODMs

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– New facility enables state-of-the-art waveguide designs to accelerate development of AI-enabled smart glasses

ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Vuzix® Corporation (NASDAQ: VUZI), a leading supplier of smart glasses, waveguides, and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, today announced the acquisition of an advanced waveguide R&D facility in Milpitas, California. The facility, previously operated by a global technology leader known for its extensive work in software, AI, and augmented reality, will now serve as a key waveguide tools development and innovation hub for Vuzix and its ODM/OEM customers’ next-generation AI-driven smart glasses. This strategic acquisition will enable Vuzix to further innovate and scale its waveguide development capabilities, a critical component for next-generation AI/AR smart glasses.

Situated in the heart of technology-rich Silicon Valley, the new facility will serve as a hub for waveguide tools development and innovation in the area. The facility will allow Vuzix to play a stronger key role in advancing lightweight, high-performance optical solutions for AI-powered smart glasses. The new facility features state-of-the-art equipment, including an advanced ion milling machine, which offers superior precision, advanced tool development capabilities, and batch-processing. It is already enabled with custom shutter mechanisms that enable the fabrication of multiple high-quality waveguides tools on a single substrate. The facility and equipment, with future upgrades, will be capable of modern cassette-to-cassette handling for high-efficiency substrate processing for special customer needs.

By integrating these cutting-edge waveguide tool manufacturing capabilities, Vuzix is reinforcing its role as a key enabler for smart glasses as numerous new manufacturers are looking to integrate AI and AR technologies into their consumer and enterprise wearable solutions. Vuzix is now further poised to accelerate the design, development, and manufacturing of advanced waveguide solutions, catering to the needs of its growing list of ODM/OEM customers and manufacturing partners. The facility’s advanced capabilities will ensure that Vuzix can develop increasingly compact, high-performance optical components essential for next-generation wearables.

“Vuzix continues to drive innovation in waveguide optics and display technology, enabling the development of next-generation AI-powered smart glasses,” said Paul Travers, President and CEO of Vuzix. “This facility strengthens our ability to support our partners with the highest-quality waveguide solutions, ensuring they have the technology needed to bring advanced, fashion-forward smart glasses to market. AI and AR are converging rapidly, and Vuzix is positioned to lead the way in this evolution.”

The total cost of this expansion will be in the low seven figures in 2025 and is in line with Vuzix’ planned technology-driven growth strategy, ensuring that the Company continues to advance its industry leadership while maintaining disciplined financial management.

For more information, please visit www.vuzix.com.

About Vuzix Corporation

Vuzix is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of AI-powered Smart Glasses, Waveguides and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, components and products for the enterprise, medical, defense and consumer markets. The Company’s products include head-mounted smart personal display and wearable computing devices that offer users a portable high-quality viewing experience, provide solutions for mobility, wearable displays and augmented reality, as well OEM waveguide optical components and display engines. Vuzix holds more than 425 patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the fields of optics, head-mounted displays, and the augmented reality wearables field. The Company has won Consumer Electronics Show (or CES) awards for innovation for the years 2005 to 2024 and several wireless technology innovation awards among others. Founded in 1997, Vuzix is a public company (NASDAQ: VUZI) with offices in: Rochester, NY; and Kyoto and Okayama, Japan. For more information, visit the Vuzix website, Twitter and Facebook pages.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer

Certain statements contained in this news release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking statements contained in this release relate to Vuzix Smart Glasses, our waveguide design and manufacturing capabilities, future business relationships with potential ODM/OEM customers, future success of Vuzix Westcoast waveguide R&D facility, expected annual operating costs, and among other things the Company’s leadership in the Smart Glasses and AR display industry. They are generally identified by words such as “believes,” “may,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “should” and similar expressions. Readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are based upon the Company’s beliefs and assumptions as of the date of this release. The Company’s actual results could differ materially due to risk factors and other items described in more detail in the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s Annual Reports and MD&A filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and applicable Canadian securities regulators (copies of which may be obtained at www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov). Subsequent events and developments may cause these forward-looking statements to change. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation or intention to update or revise these forward-looking statements as a result of changed events or circumstances that occur after the date of this release, except as required by applicable law.

Vuzix Waveguide and ODM/OEM Sales:

Warren Russell, Senior Director ODM/OEM Partnerships,
Vuzix Corporation – Milpitas Office
warren_russell@vuzix.com
Tel: (585) 359-5996

Vuzix Media and Investor Relations Contact:

Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations,
Vuzix Corporation
ed_mcgregor@vuzix.com  
Tel: (585) 359-5985

Vuzix Corporation, 25 Hendrix Road, West Henrietta, NY 14586 USA,
Investor Information – IR@vuzix.com  www.vuzix.com

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SOURCE Vuzix Corporation

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ClassDojo Names Three New Executives to its Leadership Team

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Educational Technology Industry Veterans Dr. Chad A. Stevens, Michael Bell and Jeff Buening Bring Tech and Sales Expertise to Communications and Engagement Company

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — ClassDojo, the flagship communications and engagement app beloved by tens of millions of schools, teachers and families, today announced three new additions to its leadership team. The company has named Michael Bell as Head of Enterprise Sales for ClassDojo for Districts, Jeff Buening as General Manager for ClassDojo’s B2B business, and Chad A. Stevens, Ph.D. in the newly-created role of Head of K-12 Engagement.

Bell has held senior leadership roles at leading education and technology companies. Before joining ClassDojo, he served as Regional Vice President of Sales at a live online learning platform, where he quickly accelerated pipeline development. Prior to that, Bell was Vice President of Sales at Follett School Solutions where he led North American sales strategy and consistently exceeded revenue targets. Bell also served as the Global Head of Sales for the cloud-based audio recording studio Soundtrap for Education where he significantly expanded the company’s recurring revenue. Bell holds a master’s in teaching from Loyola Marymount University and has spoken at ISTE, BETT and ASU+GSV.

Buening brings deep industry experience across media, education and vertical SAAS to his current position. Prior to ClassDojo, he served as COO and board member for the dual enrollment course platform Outlier. He led the launch of dozens of college courses and associate degree programs, and he spearheaded the sale of Outlier to Savvas Learning Company in 2024.  Before that, Buening was a founding executive at childcare management software provider Brightwheel and also spent several years at Chegg. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis.

Before joining ClassDojo, Stevens served as the CEO of TinkRworks. Prior to that, he served as chief strategy and marketing officer at ParentSquare and before that, he was at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where he was the leader for K-12 education and its inaugural K-12 employee. Before AWS, he was at CDW-G as its first chief education strategist. Stevens served on the board of CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) from 2019- 2025 and was inducted into its Volunteer Hall of Fame. He holds a B.S. degree from Tarleton State University, a M.S. in Educational Management from the University of Houston – Clear Lake and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from Texas A&M University.

“We’re excited to have Chad, Jeff and Michael on the ClassDojo team. We chose these three because their depth of experience make them very well suited to advance our mission to provide every child with an education they love,” said ClassDojo Co-Founder & CEO, Sam Chaudhary. “Michael has spent his career building and leading high-performing sales teams. Jeff built Brightwheel’s business functions from the ground up, enabling that company to serve thousands of childcare center clients around the world. Chad was recognized as EdTech Chronicle’s 2023 Best C-Level Officer in Education/EdTech and as a Top 100 EdTech Influencer by EdTech Digest. The repertoire of expertise and skills that these three bring to the table will make an exponential impact here at ClassDojo.”

About ClassDojo
ClassDojo’s mission is to give every child on earth an education they love. Its flagship app is the #1 communication platform globally for teachers, families, and kids to stay connected and to share photos, videos, messages, and classroom activities. Today, over 45 million children across 180 countries use ClassDojo to build positive learning experiences, all with student safety and privacy at the heart of it. The company has been recognized by Forbes, Inc. and Fast Company for innovation and is a top 100 Y Combinator company. To learn more, visit classdojo.com, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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SOURCE ClassDojo

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