Elizabeth Rich is Senior Director of Content Solutions at a major financial organization, where she leads initiatives that position content as a core capability in product delivery. With more than 15 years of experience across corporate, consulting, start-up, and nonprofit environments, she specializes in helping organizations move from reactive content production to scalable, measurable content strategy. Her work focuses on governance, content operations, large-scale migrations, and building durable partnerships with Product and Engineering teams. Previously, she built and scaled a global content strategy practice at EPAM Systems, supporting Fortune-level organizations with accessibility, localization, and content health initiatives. Elizabeth is passionate about growing leaders, navigating complex organizations, and bringing order to content chaos. She speaks about practical ways to embed content upstream and make it essential to successful product delivery.
Not the Last Step — The First Requirement: Turning content from launch-day scramble to foundational product capability
If content strategy at your organization still shows up at the end – right before launch, during the scramble, or after problems appear – you’re not alone. Many teams are treated as polishers of interfaces or translators of already-made decisions, leading to chaos, rework, inconsistent experiences, and missed opportunities to shape the product itself. High-performing organizations do something different: they treat content as a prerequisite to building, not a finishing touch. When content strategy is positioned as a foundational input to product development, teams move faster, reduce risk, and deliver better outcomes. Learn tactics for embedding content strategy upstream, building partnerships with Product and Engineering, and framing your work in terms leaders care about. If you are ready to stop being the last call before launch and become the first requirement, this session will show you how.
In this session, attendees will learn:
Practical tactics, building durable partnerships with Product and Engineering, and reframing your team’s contributions in language that resonates with decision-makers. We’ll explore how to identify the moments where content has the greatest leverage, how to intervene earlier without becoming a bottleneck, and how to demonstrate value using metrics that matter beyond word counts and style guides.
This session shows how to move from launch-day clean-up crew to core delivery partner. Through examples, you’ll see how teams have shifted from reactive support to proactive influence — becoming essential to planning, prioritization, and successful releases. You’ll leave with ideas on how to:
- Secure earlier involvement in product initiatives
- Align content work with product goals and delivery timelines
- Build credibility with technical partners
- Measure impact in terms leaders care about
- Position content strategy as a prerequisite for successful delivery
