Available for Principal / Group PM Roles

Building products at the
scale of Fortune 100.

William Rice, MBA — Principal Product Manager

10+ years driving large-scale software modernization, digital transformation, and multi-product portfolio strategy across food service, logistics, media, automotive, and other highly regulated industries. Reputation built on taking on high-friction, politically loaded, trust-broken systems and creating frameworks that permanently change how the organization operates.

William Rice, MBA — Principal Product Manager
William Rice, MBA
Principal Product Manager
Available for Principal / Group PM roles
10+
Years in product leadership
5+
Major product lines led
$600M
Portfolio managed at Staples
$50B
Fortune 100 employer (Sysco)
Trusted by Fortune 100 enterprises & leading agencies — click any logo
50K  100K
Subscribers doubled at MIT Technology Review in 6 months
+30%
Quality leads at Sysco from new onboarding flow
$1M+
New revenue from unified Staples print estimation platform
30+
Cross-functional PMs, designers, and engineers led at Sysco globally
— Experience

From Fortune 100 in-house to blue-chip agency clients.

Click any role to expand the brief, the friction I found, and the impact I delivered. Each company name links out to its website so you can verify scale and context. Every engagement is one of the largest in its category — from a $50B food distributor to publications that shape global tech opinion.

SYSCO
Sysco Labs
Principal Product Manager
Sept 2022 – Present · Remote · Fortune 100 · $50B
Sysco is one of the largest food distributors in the US and globally — a Fortune 100 company supplying tens of thousands of restaurants and institutional food services. I own all digital customer touchpoints globally: web apps, mobile apps, notifications, Sysco.com, and all subsites — partnering with cross-functional teams of 30+ PMs, designers, and developers.

Shipped features were often rolled back due to internal misalignment, wasting effort and frustrating customers. I diagnosed the communication gap, drove alignment across Marketing, Engineering, and Sales, created a standardized launch system, and trained teams to use it. Rollbacks became rare, trust returned, and our new features finally drove real adoption.

A cumbersome onboarding flow with no data validation drove abandonment and low-quality leads. I set a new onboarding strategy, persuaded leadership to fund it, and led the delivery of a single-page flow with real-time validation. Quality leads jumped ~30%, disqualified leads vanished, and Sales focused on real prospects.

Slow, manual sales campaign creation constrained our go-to-market strategy. I identified the systemic problem, created a new campaign vision, and secured executive buy-in to fund it. The new Contentstack-based platform enabled rapid launches, near-zero marginal cost, faster experimentation, and significant growth in higher-margin product sales.

Product work at Sysco suffered from inconsistent planning, unclear prioritization, and limited visibility, causing missed milestones and delayed launches. I implemented standardized estimation, sprint ceremonies, forecasting models, and leadership dashboards. As a result, priorities aligned, visibility improved, launches stabilized, field readiness was prepared earlier, and teams delivered with confidence.

NTT
Launch (acquired by NTT Data)
Senior Product Manager
Mar 2021 – Sept 2022 · Remote · Digital agency · 60+ employees
Directed digital product strategy and delivery for 7 enterprise clients across media, SaaS, and retail — while directly managing a team of three product managers. The agency was acquired by NTT Data during my tenure.

MIT Technology Review faced declining subscriber retention and unclear content targeting. I led discovery to evaluate and validate Piano.io's fit, defining key use cases and experiments to personalize content and paywalls based on user behavior. The result: higher engagement, increased upgrades, and subscriber growth doubled from 50K to 100K within six months — securing the publication's future.

Mailchimp's developer documentation couldn't keep up with rapid product changes, leading to confusion and rising support requests. I led discovery, defined developer personas, prioritized high-impact updates, and established agile delivery. Documentation improved, support inquiries declined, internal teams refocused on innovation, and the contract was renewed.

Nexstar's digital platforms had inconsistent branding and news-story categorization, making it difficult for editors to organize stories so users could easily find them. I led discovery, aligned engineering, design, and architecture to brand objectives, and delivered a cohesive web and mobile experience — restoring user trust and leadership confidence.

Lyfebulb lacked the resources to build the modern platform its chronic-condition communities needed, putting growth and future funding at risk. I led discovery and a full redesign, shipping disease-specific event tracking and peer-connection features. The platform regained momentum — growing users, unlocking new funding, renewing our agency partnership, and helping members feel seen and supported.

T3
T3 (acquired by Material)
Senior Product Manager
May 2020 – Mar 2021 · Austin, TX · Digital agency · 150+ employees
Established T3's Product Management practice during its transition from branding to digital software delivery, while working directly with enterprise clients including Halliburton.

T3 struggled with early digital projects because it treated product work like project management — leading to missed deadlines, unhappy clients, and low developer morale. I introduced discovery-first, iterative product practices, transforming delivery reliability, eliminating contract renegotiations, and establishing T3 as a credible digital product agency.

Halliburton's website was confusing, outdated, and difficult to maintain — frustrating users and overloading support teams. I led discovery, implemented Adobe Experience Manager, redesigned the information architecture, optimized SEO, and trained Halliburton's teams on how to use their new site. Users found content easily, support calls dropped, traffic grew, and leadership gained confidence in managing the site.

PNI
PNI Media (acquired by Staples)
Product Manager
Mar 2017 – May 2020 · Austin, TX · $600M e-commerce portfolio
Managed a $600M portfolio of e-commerce-related products and projects for Staples — partnering with multiple development and design teams to ship complex commercial print fulfillment systems.

I was a key team member in our agile transformation, enabling us to deliver higher-quality, complex commercial print fulfillment systems faster.

Staples' fragmented tools made print estimates slow, error-prone, and dependent on specialists, putting revenue at risk. I defined a vision for a unified, easy-to-use estimation platform, secured alignment, and drove delivery. Estimation speed and accuracy improved, win rates increased, and we delivered $1M+ in new revenue.

vA
vAuto (Cox Automotive) & CDK Global
Business Analyst, Product & Delivery
2012 – 2017 · Austin, TX · Multi-billion dollar automotive tech
Supported agile delivery and process optimization initiatives for vAuto and CDK Global — both multi-billion dollar automotive technology companies that power the world's largest auto retailers and OEMs.

As a Business Analyst at vAuto, I owned product roadmaps and led discovery for a portfolio of mobile and web applications that delivered vehicle pricing models for new, used, and auction inventory — guiding teams as Product Manager and Scrum Master.

As a Client Technical Analyst at CDK Global, I owned the vehicle data pipeline from external integrations through downstream usage — improving data quality and compliance so dealers could confidently run e-commerce, advertising, and customer-facing experiences.

— Client gallery

Brands I've shaped, products I've shipped.

From a Fortune 100 food distributor to one of the world's most influential tech publications. Every card is a clickable link — open in a new tab to see the company behind the work.

— Core competencies

What I bring to a Principal PM role.

Reputation built on taking on high-friction, politically loaded, trust-broken systems and creating frameworks that permanently change how the organization operates.

Strategy & Vision

Product Strategy Portfolio Management Digital Transformation GTM Execution AI & Data-Driven Innovation

Leadership & Coaching

Cross-Functional Leadership Stakeholder Management Product Coaching & Mentorship Agile / SAFe

Tools & Platforms

Salesforce JIRA Confluence Figma Visio Miro Clubhouse Airtable Trello Microsoft Suite Co-Pilot ChatGPT Contentstack Adobe Experience Manager Piano.io
— Education & Development

Continuous learning, applied at scale.

Education

Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Concordia University · Austin, TX · 2014
B.S. Computer Information Management & Business Administration
Life University · Marietta, GA · 2011 (Double Major)

Recent Certifications

AI for Product Management
Pendi.io · 2025
Product Discovery Micro-Certification (PDC)™
Product School · 2025
Product Experimentation Micro-Certification (PEC)™
Product School · 2025
Mobile App Product Management Certification
UXCam · 2025
Effective Facilitation
University of Texas at Austin · 2015

Let's build something at scale.

Open to Principal & Group Product Manager roles. Strongest in high-friction transformations, Fortune 100 environments, and multi-product portfolios where the work is part product, part organizational design.

wtrice89@gmail.com LinkedIn (912) 492-0491