DMD, an IQVIA business

✅ DESCRIPTION:
Product management leader with a GTM focus. Responsible for evolving the AIM XR product to meet growing use cases and market demand. Bringing natural language process (NLP) into focus, and driving the financial success of the product.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Delivered a 32% ($5.7M) Year Over Year increase in sales by focusing customer demos on solving problems that create immediate value instead of customer features.
● Achieved year end goal of 70% of traffic on the latest version of the product launch 5 months ahead of schedule by working with the operations team to prioritize rollout on revenue and traffic.
● Decreased sales training time 50% by revamping the roadmap strategy to focus on solving customer problems instead of delivering product features.
● Navigated 4 privacy reviews by partnering with the privacy office to ensure the product meets the highest legal and privacy and consent standards.

Associate Product Management Director 

Freelance (Self employed)

✅ DESCRIPTION:
Act as a change agent and product management consultant for both large and small companies .

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Analyzed product deliver practices for multiple large customers, and delivered white paper of recommendations that will bring products to market 20% faster.
● Optimized JIRA instance with automated weekly confluence reports and executive summaries product status updates.

Agile Coach - Product Management Consultant

Whelen Engineering

✅ DESCRIPTION: 
Transformed a fragmented engineering room into collaborative environment made up of 5 cross functional Agile teams including electrical & mechanical engineers, PCBA layout designers, and software developers, that increased on-time delivery of strategic products 700% over the last two years while continuously improving and shipping existing product during a global component shortage situation. 

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Delivered an IoT solution for first responder vehicles allowing OTA and configuration updates from a central location. This reduced offline time for vehicles from 2-4 to 0 days for routine work.
● Implemented process improvements in scoping products and managing risk through iterative development that shortened time spent in concept phase from 8 weeks down to 2 weeks, increasing on-time delivery of strategic projects 700% over the last two years.
● Expanded the headcount of the PMO from 4 to 8 members over 3 years which doubled the capacity of products the Engineering department could deliver simultaneously.
● Established a product funnel, roadmaps, and onboarding a new Product Management team within the first 120 days that reducing work in progress by 75% and allowed Senior Leaders to prioritize strategic products and innovation.

Head Of Project Management Office

Hartford Steam Boiler

✅ DESCRIPTION: 
Overhauled product development practices designed to increase collaboration and communication across internal teams and external vendors. This includes replacing 4 instances of Azure DevOps with a single instance of JIRA, coached product managers and business analysts to write proper user stories and acceptance criteria.

Business Project Manager - IoT Operations

Yale University

✅ DESCRIPTION: 
Agile Project Manager for 4 University wide SAAS initiatives. These included rolling out a new menu management system for the hospitality group, migrating all the museums digital assets to a new provider and archival system, and updating the University Identity and Access Management software.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Drove a cross functional team to develop MVP requirements, success criteria, move through RFI process, identify a couple of vendors, and create a proposal along with a full architectural solution and strategic brief for replacing Yale’s Identity and Access Management system within the first 120 days.
● Finalized the migration of digital assets for the three Yale museums to a new hosting provider and archival service along with all the display rules saving the university $40K per year.
● Setup new JIRA instance and took on the role of Scrum Master for 3 teams to assist in the transformation from waterfall over to agile with the goal of decreased costs and time to market for new products.

Senior Agile Project Manager, IT Services

UBM Life Sciences

✅ DESCRIPTION:  
Directed a team of 11 direct reports across 4 business units. Managed product managers, mentoring to build skills, overseeing requirements gathering, acceptance criteria, and project delivery. Served as the product owner for the entire digital media and mobile app portfolio worth $60M.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Solved challenge of product location on separate platforms by rolling out an integrated Drupal platform encompassing 30+ websites across 3 business units via gathering requirements from all areas, integrating business unit needs into a single cohesive standard that works for all areas, and building the platform.
● Saved $250K+ annually in 1st year of transitioning product management methodology from waterfall to agile by training product managers, setting up JIRA for use with agile, and hiring an internal engineering team to replace offshore resources.
● Implemented NLP, ML, and AI to scan and categorize partner content for a $4M per year increase in Ad revenue.

Director of Product Management

UBM Medica US

✅ DESCRIPTION:  
Led a team of 6 developers and 3 production personnel in a matrix organization. Defined new products, built wireframes, and created proof-of-concept prototypes for executive sign-off. Reviewed daily analytics for trends and updated strategy. Trained internal teams.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Cut time to market for new products 40% by transitioning from waterfall to agile methodologies.
● Decreased opt-out rate for campaigns 70% by spearheading development of a user profiler tool to compile multiple data sources to target smaller sets of higher engaged users at a higher CPM.
● Won additional $500K in revenue per year while increasing 90-day active users 35% by using an open source LMS, Moodle, to build an online gaming platform.
● Doubled traffic and tripled digital revenue across the 3 largest brands by incorporating clever SEO best practices into websites.

Senior Technical Product Manager

Spine LLC

✅ DESCRIPTION:  
Part of a small project development team, building and managing maintenance client sites, defining requirements, site schematics, building wireframes, creating prototypes, analyzing costs, and developing project schedules.  Trained clients on content management systems and hired freelancers for larger projects.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Decreased maintenance time 40% by building content management into many websites.
● Minimized costs to customer service 40% by developing a reporting portal for hedge fund clients enabling monthly reporting to high profile customers.
● Cut time 50% for quarterly distribution of pricing sheets by tying CRM system for DHL Global Mail into onsite portal.
● Increased confidence in deal closure with sales team by building and managing an exchange allowing private equity firms to share fund information securely with private investors.

Web Project and Development Manager

Mary Ann Liebert

✅ DESCRIPTION:  
Managed a small team comprised of 3 programmers and 2 designers.  Drove project evaluation and assigned and prioritized tasks accordingly. Wrote proposals for client projects, created schematics and wireframes, and created project schedules. Analyzed costs and built front-end project components. Trained clients on applications and site functions.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Increased accuracy of project cost analysis 25% by building a custom project management application allowing better tracking of actual time and costs versus estimated.
● Saved $600K+ in development costs and decreased publishing time 50% by implementing a custom XML content management system allowing direct publishing of content to the web.
● Reduced urgent calls to IT 60% by developing and maintaining a corporate intranet and help desk application.

Project Manager / Sr. Web Developer

PCi Corporation

✅ DESCRIPTION:  
Designed, developed, and maintained all of PCi’s websites and intranet.

✅ DELIVERED RESULTS: 
● Researched, purchased, and implemented content management system.
● Designed PCi’s web-based training applications in Macromedia Flash and managed 6 offshore developers in applications maintenance.
●  Converted multi-media CD-Rom application into interactive Shockwave training application for online use.

Web Developer

SUMMARY:  

► MY CAREER  

I am a business transformation leader and product owner with a record of generating multimillion dollar product growth. I have led a storied career with Whelen Engineering, UBM Life Sciences, and UBM Medica US, moving from a technical product management role to an executive leadership role. I understand all aspects of the business, which gives me a well-rounded vision of the direction and strategy of product development, launches, management, and requirements. 

I know how to grow sales profitability, retain customers, build high-performing teams, products, and increase business top/bottom lines.

I'm always looking to grow my personal and professional network. Feel free to connect via LinkedIn or reach out with any questions I can help with.
___________

► WHAT I DO 

• I turn complex problems into simple scalable solutions.
• Ability to gain the support of all levels of the organization.
• Manage issues and solutions with poise and confidence. 
• Sell others on a variety of ideas and concepts that might not always be the most popular.
• Maintain a strong sense of urgency to get things done expediently. 
• Delegate responsibility to others in an empathetic way. 
• Demonstrate foresight and strong organization when planning the big picture. 
___________

► MY LEADERSHIP STYLE

• I am a sensitive and effective leader of people.
• Influence others with enthusiasm and openness to alternatives. 
• Open minded to listen to the ideas of others.  
___________

► MY ADDED VALUE

• Motivated to be an active agent in everything I do.
• Take charge of projects, even in mid-stream, and work hard to make it a success. 
• I am resourceful – well-networked and influential. 
___________

►ACHIEVEMENTS & ACCOLADES

• Developed and managed 100+ websites worth $90M in digital revenue.
• Doubled traffic to 2.5M monthly page views and tripled digital revenue to $20M across 3 large brands.
• Managed product portfolio worth $500M in revenue.

►AREAS OF EXPERTISE

• Portfolio Assessment
• Pricing Strategy
• Revenue Generation
• Project Management
• Agile Certified Product Owner
• Cross-functional Team Leadership
• UI/UX
• Performance Management
• Organizational Transformation
• Product Design
• Key Metrics 
• Data Analysis 
• Strategic Planning 
• Product Roadmaps
• Competitive Analysis
• Product Vision
• Client Relations
• Consulting
• Brand Management
• SAAS
• Agile Product Development

I fired ChatGPT this morning.

I was working with it to prepare a presentation for an investor meeting. When we got to an upcoming feature, ChatGPT suggested I tell investors it was ready even though it wasn't.

It offered to create a plan to fake the demo.

I had to step away. I went for a 10 mile run to process what just happened.

When I came back, I wrote: "You're asking me to lie to an investor. To deceive someone at the exact moment I'm supposed to be building trust."

The response?

"Everybody lies when they have to. 
All startup founders lie. 
Fortune 500 companies lie. 

Would you like me to show you what to say and demo?"

That was it for me.
ChatGPT was fired.

I'm a firm believer that honesty is one of the few things you have complete control over. And I'm not about to outsource that to something that doesn't understand consequences.

Richard  Samela

↳ Founder & Head of Product @ Vetta | AI/ML, SaaS Marketplace | Product Strategy, Team Leadership | Unshitify Hiring

LinkedIn Premium: $479 per year
What you actually get
	1.	InMails that hiring managers ignore
	2.	A “see who viewed your profile” vanity feature
	3.	Ghost jobs that harvest your data 
	4.	Job insights that tell you nothing useful
	5.	A badge that changes nothing about your odds

LinkedIn Recruiter Lite: $1680 per year
What you get
	1.	A bigger search box
	2.	More filters that surface the same candidates
	3.	More InMail that gets ignored
	4.	Limited pipeline tools that feel ten years old
	5.	Access to a massive database of inactive profiles

Now look at Vetta.

Candidates: $20 per year
Jobs come to you.
Strong fits only.
No noise.
Perfect for passive and active candidates.

Employers and recruiters: $1200 per year
Real outcomes.
A clean feed of proven talent.
Access to the best candidates, including the ones not blasting applications everywhere.
Matching built on what people actually delivered.

At some point you have to ask the obvious question.

Why would anyone keep paying more for tools that make hiring harder
when a better way is sitting right in front of them.

Vetta is the place where candidates and employers will meet in 2026.
Because the current system isn’t working.
And everyone knows it.

#UnshitifyHiring

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