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In 2006 James made the difficult decision to leave the sales world and began a role within Prudential Financial as a Sr. Product Manager.  James jumped into this role with both feet and was immediately tasked with bringing new, competitive variable annuity products into the hands of salespeople.  After a few short months in this role, James was later tasked with leading the overall merger of Allstate Variable Annuities into the Prudential Variable Annuities business.  Over the next few years, James worked to understand the operations of all business functions to determine the best path forward.  After a thorough vendor analysis, internal impact analysis, and a detailed business gap analysis, James and team made the decision to outsource this business operations and support.  This led to James being responsible in ultimately building over 100 investment products and transferring over 13B in assets in partnership with the outsourcing vendor.  After about 1.5 years the successful conversion took place and James and the team left with extremely valuable knowledge.

 

In 2009 James was asked to lead the product training within Prudential Annuities and took on the role of Director of Product Education.  With this role, he channeled his passions for training and product and traveled the country working with external sales teams to help them understand the complex inner workings of Prudential’s variable annuities.   This role soon grew as James began training the sales team on topics such as Consultative Selling, Presentation Skills, and Leadership.  While this role was one that captured James' passion, he was later asked to move back into the product world to head Prudential’s international efforts, working within Southeast Asia.  This experience was one he couldn’t refuse, and over the next two-plus years James traveled back and forth to Taiwan and Singapore to determine a business strategy and the viability of launching an annuity product within the Southeast Asia region. After almost two years of travel and hard work by James and his team, this ultimately resulted in the first variable annuity product in the Taiwanese marketplace, an accomplishment that James holds near to his heart. 

 

As much as James loved the soup dumplings and stinky tofu in Taiwan, James decided to make a big change in August of 2014, when he began his role as VP of Product Management Training and Consulting at Sequent Learning Networks.  This role allowed James to combine his love of training and consulting with his passion for product management by working with companies globally to consult and train product management organizations.  For the next seven years James consulted, advised, and trained organizations globally, helping them implement product management operations and train their product teams how to be successful.  During that timeframe, James also created and launched several programs including Product Management Essentials Online Learning Program, Product Strategy Online Learning Program, and Sequent Learning Networks Product Management Certification Program.  James also was a lead member of the Product Management Executive Board for SLN, which gathered product leaders from various businesses globally to share ideas, perspectives, and expertise with other leaders.  During this time at SLN James became recognized as a global thought leader in the areas of Product Management Structure and Operations and he continues to travel the globe helping businesses innovate, plan, launch, and manage profitable products.

 

In 2020 both James and his wife Jennifer felt the impacts of COVID on the economy and decided it was in their best interest to start their own business to help clients their own way.  Jennifer, a marketing VP, and James a Product Management VP combine more than 40 years of experience within JL2 Consulting.  Their focus is needs-driven, impactful relationships with their clients, with the goal of getting each client as close as possible to their performance peak.  At JL2 James and Jennifer work with industries of all kinds including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Technology, and Healthcare.

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Today ​James follows his passion by helping teams and individuals learn, grow, and function more effectively.   Therefore, he utilizes his vast experiences in order to take an intimate, hands-on approach with all the businesses he works with.  His trusted process starts by working to uncover needs & gaps of applicable functions or teams, he then partners with his client to implement an achievable plan of action for moving forward. Working with the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all within business he works to customize solutions and tailor them to your business's particular needs.  His work only begins there, as he helps to implement these solutions through training, coaching, or fractional leadership while also measuring the impact on you and your teams along the way.

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James and Jennifer live in beautiful Sandy Hook CT, where they raise a blended family of 5 children, and a chocolate lab named Roxy. James has been coaching kids for 20 years in baseball, softball, and basketball.  James loves cooking, golfing, and concerts and still gets up early every Sunday morning to play baseball himself.

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Contact James today to see how he or his team may be able to help build, train, grow or improve your product management & business operations