Conduo

I work with leaders to create environments that support high performing, collaborative Lean/Agile teams. Through coaching, training and workshops, I work with teams at every level of the organization to focus on their most important goals, identify measurable outcomes and then develop the mindset and practices that lead to continuous improvement and lasting change. I have deep experience in the public sector and a wide range of experience in private sector industries, with expertise in Enterprise Business Agility, Lean/Agile leadership, organizational design and strategy, product management and performance management.

Outcome-Driven Planning gets everyone in your organization on the same page, starting with providing clarity on the problem you are trying to solve and a focus on what is most important. Then, you develop a strategy, agree on what to try first, deliver incrementally and validate whether you are on the right track. This approach energizes and motivates your project teams by providing them the clarity, alignment and focus they need to deliver results.

Outcome-Driven Planning:
* Focuses on outcomes over activities
* Applies Agile, Lean and Design-Thinking, using the Mobius Innovation Framework
* Encourages collaboration
* Incorporates short planning and delivery cycles focused on learning

Business Agility Coach

Agile Transformation Inc.

I'm a certified Enterprise Business Agility Strategist and AgilityHealth Coach and Facilitator, specializing in leadership, enterprise strategy and transformations using the Enterprise Business Agility framework. I provide coaching and training in Agile leadership, effective facilitation, product management, planning and continuous improvement and growth for individuals, teams and organizations. 

Training and Coaching for AgilityHealth: 
* AgilityHealth Facilitator Certification Training
* Coaching leaders and coaches on Continuous Improvement Processes, Measurement and Developing Growth Plans 

Training Courses:
* Advanced Scrum Master 
* Advanced Product Owner
* Agile Overview 
* Servant Leadership  
* Effective Facilitation and Collaboration 
* Developing Measurable Business Outcomes
* Writing Effective Outcomes and Features 
* Leading High-Performing Teams 
* Enterprise Business Agility Strategy

For private sector organizations from small start-ups to Fortune 500 Companies across multiple industries, as well as Government Agencies

Enterprise Agile Coach and Trainer

State of Idaho, Department of Health and Welfare

Lead the business side of software development, quality assurance and production support for the Division of Welfare portfolio, providing leadership to Agile teams using the Scaled Agile Framework to predictably deliver value.

Work with the executive business and IT leadership teams to align product management strategies and Agile team design with organizational goals and priorities. Develop the product vision and roadmap. Facilitate portfolio planning activities. Coach, mentor, and lead the product management team, including product managers, product owners, user experience design and business architects, in applying Lean/Agile product management methodology and practices.

Partner with IT managers to develop the architectural roadmap to support long-term business needs, plan for the architectural runway, strategize on technical options, and ensure that development teams have the tools and standards in place to create effective designs and quality products. Support and design plans toward DevOps culture and practices.

Support end users through leading a production support team responsible for monitoring production system performance, triaging and responding to reported issues, and gathering and reporting metrics.

Deliver quality products on schedule that meet user needs, providing vision, leadership and direction for release management and business testing teams.

Bureau Chief, Agile Program Leader

Created the product vision and roadmap for the project to replace the Department’s legacy benefits case management system. Supervised a team of product owners. Partnered with the operational and policy program managers to ensure system design would meet program requirements and support end users. Played a lead role in rolling out the new system and managing subsequent releases. Designed the workflow and reporting tools and processes.

Outcomes
¥	Transferred and customized a large and complex Welfare Eligibility System from another State, significantly reducing development costs and time lines while delivering a robust and effective application.

¥	Converted active programs and clients from the legacy to replacement system, with benefit program payments and health coverage transitioning and continuing without disruption; this required creative strategies, extensive data analysis and coordination and testing with multiple interfaces and partners.

¥	Established a data warehouse for the new eligibility system, supporting federal, management and field operational reporting requirements; designed a reporting strategy to support workload management and performance reporting with the launch of the new system, allowing for a smooth transition for operational managers.

¥	Implemented workflow and workload management tools in alignment with new processes and organizational structures, so that the system effectively supported the business design.

Product Manager

Legislative Services Office, Idaho

Advised legislators in setting the annual state budget and creating related legislation, providing expertise on the organizational structure, functions, performance, policies, budgets and statutory requirements of assigned state agencies.    
 
Completed analysis of agency expenditure data to determine compliance with legislative intent, use of efficient management practices, and trends across state government. Reviewed agency budget requests, gathered supporting information, and created content for annual legislative budget publications. Presented agency budget requests to the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee.

Budget and Policy Analyst

I'm a Business Agility Coach and co-founder of Conduo. I work with Agile leaders in regulated industries and the public sector who want to be more strategic and outcome-driven. Your teams are busy, but are they working on the right things? Are you making progress toward your most important goals?     

There's nothing I love more than to bring a group together and facilitate a collaborative and visual process, to sort through complexity and find a clear path forward. It comes down to people having good conversations to develop common understanding and trust. Once that is in place, we can develop an effective and repeatable process for Outcome-Driven Planning.  

Here's a little about my background, and what led me to what I do today: 

I got started as a Product Owner in 2007, and I fell in love with the Agile way of working. It just made sense to identify the most important things to work on, get them done quickly and make changes to stay on track with delivering value. It was rewarding to work as a team and see things go from idea to reality. 

I took on increasing levels of responsibility, eventually leading a team of product owners and managing the portfolio. 

Working with Agile coaches (including my current business partner) inspired me to further my knowledge and skills, and in 2016 I started to work as an Agile coach and trainer. This was an exciting leap and sparked a lot of personal and professional growth. 

For several years, I worked with leaders at large organizations to develop a continuous improvement strategy using the AgilityHealth platform. This deepened my understanding of the common patterns and challenges of leading Agile across multiple teams. 

During this time, I also developed and delivered Agile leadership training on Adaptive Leadership, Enterprise Business Agility, Defining Measurable Outcomes, and Effective Facilitation and Collaboration. 

The past several years have been focused on working with my business partner Ryan Fullmer to  take our experiences and focus on where we think we can make the greatest impact. Outcome-Driven Planning is our answer to this. 

We developed Outcome-Driven Planning as a series of workshops that you can learn to run with your teams to get better results from the way you plan and deliver. 

Outcome-Driven Planning incorporates the Mobius Innovative Framework developed by Gabrielle Benefield and includes five steps:

1 - Discover Why
2 - Identify Options 
3 - Decide What to Do
4 - Deliver Incrementally
5 - Continuously Improve

Julie Springer

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

Richard Samela

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

taplio

The Battle

Julie Springer

Richard Samela

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taplio

The Battle

Julie Springer

Richard Samela

Followers

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Richard Samela's LinkedIn Performance

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