Richard Couch

Technical Product Manager | Data & Analytics Leader

Contact

Location: Berkeley, CA (Open to Bay Area / Remote) Email: organizewithrich@gmail.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richcouch

Professional Summary

Product & analytics leader with 9+ years turning messy operational data into scalable SaaS, learning, and critical-infrastructure products. Directed teams that saved a Fortune-200 utility $10M, cut incident risk 17%, and engaged 70K users. Specialized in building internal tools that bridge the gap between engineering, data science, and business operations.

Technical Skills

Product Strategy: Roadmap Ownership, MVP Definition, Stakeholder Alignment, KPI/OKR Design, ROI Analysis
Data & Analytics: Palantir Foundry, Tableau, Power BI, Predictive Modeling Oversight, Data Governance, KPI Definition
Tools & Platforms: Skilljar LMS, Zoho People, Oracle EBS, Jira, Confluence, Collibra
Methodologies: Agile/Scrum, User Journey Mapping, A/B Testing, Process Improvement

Professional Experience

Product Manager - Data & Analytics

Pacific Gas and Electric Company | Dec 2023 - Mar 2025

Directed a pod of analysts, data scientists, and engineers to modernize security risk decision-making.

Impact: Directed the roadmap for 54 time-series forecasting models that guided $10M in capital reallocations and cut Bay Area incident risk by 17%.
Product Vision: Championed a single-source executive dashboard merging incident data and Crime-Index scores, becoming the standard for monthly executive briefings.
Technical Execution: Orchestrated an API pipeline from Incident Management Systems to Palantir Foundry, reducing manual data-prep time by 60%.
Governance: Instituted Collibra-based data governance (stewards, quality rules, definitions) to ensure NERC compliance.
Strategy: Quantified ROI on physical security assets (guards, cameras), informing 75% of 2025 capital decisions.

Product Manager (Learning Platform)

LinkedIn | Feb 2020 - Aug 2022

Led the migration and modernization of global sales enablement platforms.

Scale: Spearheaded the consolidation of legacy assets into a single Skilljar Learning Center, supporting 70K+ global users.
Speed to Value: Led a 10-person cross-functional squad (UX, Eng, CS) to ship the MVP in 6 weeks, saving $300K+ in planned vendor spend.
User Experience: Rolled out a modern UI, advanced filtering, and 7-language localization, significantly boosting learner engagement.
Internal Ops: Designed role-based user flows and self-service admin tools that cut content-management effort by 40%.
Reliability: Established incident-response playbooks, maintaining 99.9% platform uptime.

IT Project Manager

DENSO (via Flex, LLC) | Apr 2019 - Sep 2019

Designed and launched an interactive Oracle EBS Order-Management training suite for 300+ end-users.
Reduced classroom training hours by 40% and accelerated go-live readiness through improved digital enablement.
Post-training assessments showed 80% gain in proficiency and a 30% drop in help-desk tickets within 60 days.

HR Systems Project Manager

FibroGen Inc | Jun 2016 - Mar 2018

Directed end-to-end rollout of a cloud HR stack (Zoho People, TINYpulse, LinkedIn Learning), replacing three legacy tools on time and budget.
Authored guides and facilitated workshops that drove 95% platform adoption within 90 days.
Cut HR support tickets by 25% through better self-service workflows.

Principal Product Consultant

RichCouch.com | Feb 2015 - Present

Internal Tooling Strategy: Conduct "build vs. buy" analysis for operational workflows, guiding clients away from legacy manual processes toward integrated SaaS solutions.
Data Maturity: Establish foundational data governance and analytics pipelines to replace spreadsheet-based reporting with automated decision intelligence.
Technical Project Rescue: Diagnose and remediate stalled software implementations, bridging the communication gap between non-technical stakeholders and engineering vendors.

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies University of California at Berkeley