Ellucian Appoints Josh Rice as Chief Commercial Officer

Innovative global leader to accelerate SaaS adoption 
and enhance customer experience

RESTON, Va., April 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ellucian, the leading higher education technology solutions provider, today announced the appointment of Josh Rice as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Rice will play a key role in advancing the company's next phase of growth, including scaling adoption of Ellucian Student and Ellucian's broader AI-powered platform across higher education.

Reporting directly to President and CEO Laura Ipsen, Rice will lead the unified commercial organization bringing together revenue operations, solutions consulting, services solutions, and customer success. The team will focus on a connected customer journey, ensuring institutions unlock the benefits of Ellucian's AI-powered platform and achieve stronger outcomes for students, faculty, and staff.

"Josh brings a powerful combination of global experience, operational excellence, and a deep understanding of how to align teams around customer outcomes," said Laura Ipsen, President and CEO, Ellucian. "As institutions accelerate their transition to SaaS and reimagine how they serve students, Josh's leadership will help us move with speed to deliver value across the full customer lifecycle."

Rice has a strong track record of building and scaling integrated, customer-facing teams, combined with his expertise in leveraging AI to drive transformation. He brings extensive experience leading high-performing global sales, pre-sales, technology and customer success organizations. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Global Sales at Shopify, where he led Customer Success, Solutions Engineering, and Global Sales. Prior to Shopify, Rice held leadership roles at Workday, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services, including Director of Customer Engineering and Head of Business Development and AI/Machine Learning.

WHAT IS ELLUCIAN

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrolment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

Greg Giangrande, Chief Communications Officer
[email protected]

Lindsay Stanley, VP, Corporate Communications & PR
[email protected]

SOURCE Ellucian