US-based higher education technology company Ellucian has appointed Josh Rice as Chief Commercial Officer, placing the former Shopify executive in charge of global commercial operations as the company accelerates adoption of its SaaS and AI-powered platform across its network of approximately 3,000 institutional clients, as reported by Edtech Innovation Hub.

Rice reports directly to President and CEO Laura Ipsen and leads a unified commercial organisation spanning revenue operations, solutions consulting, services and customer success.

He joins from Shopify, where he most recently served as vice president of global sales, overseeing customer success, solutions engineering and sales functions. Prior roles include senior positions at Workday, Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, covering customer engineering, business development and AI and machine learning.

Ipsen said the appointment reflects the company's focus on delivering value across the full institutional customer lifecycle. "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," she said.

Rice's remit includes scaling adoption of Ellucian Student and the company's broader AI-powered platform, with particular emphasis on connecting the customer journey across sales, implementation and ongoing support.

The appointment comes as higher education providers continue transitioning to cloud-based systems and exploring AI tools for student engagement, enrolment management and institutional analytics.

Ellucian's platform is positioned around data integration and AI capabilities spanning the full student lifecycle, from recruitment and enrolment through to alumni engagement.

See the full details of Rice's appointment and Ellucian's commercial strategy in the original story.