Atomico recruits Sasha Astafyeva as consumer-focused partner, and ex-Googler Terese Hougaard as principal

More personnel moves at Atomico. The European VC firm, founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, has recruited Sasha Astafyeva as its new consumer-focused partner, and former-Googler Terese Hougaard as principal.

Sasha Astafyeva (pictured left) previously spent three years as a principal at Felix Capital. In her new role as partner, she’ll be leading “sourcing, due diligence, and management” of Atomico-backed consumer tech companies.

Prior to VC, Astafyeva, who is originally from Ukraine, held the role of Head of Business Intelligence and Strategy at Lyst, the London-based online fashion marketplace. She has also worked at VivaReal, an online real estate marketplace in Brazil, as the company’s VP of Finance and Business Intelligence. In addition, the newly recruited Atomico partner did a stint at Dafiti, the Latin American online fashion company.

“I’m very excited to join the team and help lead our consumer-focused efforts,” Astafyeva tells TechCrunch. “It is absolutely an interesting time to join as we find ourselves in a world with highly elevated levels of uncertainty, tremendous economic hardships across the world and varying, and often fast-changing, responses of countries to this new reality. I think that we are only seeing the beginning of this and time will tell what our new reality will look like”.

Meanwhile, new Atomico principal Terese Hougaard (pictured right) joins from CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund based in Mountain View. Originally from Denmark, Terese spent five years at Alphabet and partnered with companies like Stripe, Robinhood, Gusto, and UiPath.

Prior to that, she worked in London in Google’s SMB marketing organisation, in addition to holding roles in internal strategy and e-commerce business development at the London and New York offices of American Express.