Bill Pearce

Bill Pearce is a continuing professional faculty member in the Marketing Group and the Institute for Business Innovation.

Pearce is a senior executive with an outstanding track record of profitable business-building based on exceptional strategic, analytic, and financial disciplines. He has broad marketing and general management experience in both the consumer products and consumer service sectors. Bill has functional expertise in both sales and marketing, and is recognized as an inspirational leader who builds strong teams of direct reports and cross functional teamwork.

Pearce ascended the marketing ranks at consumer goods companies including Procter & Gamble, Taco Bell and Del Monte, the latter two as Chief Marketing Officer. He built general management skills as P&L owner at every stop along the way in his marketing career with emphasis on driving Topline and bottom line growth.

Pearce earned his undergraduate degree from Syracuse and then spent six years in sales at Miller Brewing and Coca-Cola USA. Desiring a career in general management, Bill earned his MBA from Cornell University. He began his marketing/GM career with Procter & Gamble, where he spent 11 years. Desiring additional responsibility, he became VP Marketing of the Food Division at Campbell Soup Company. He first advanced to the C-suite with Taco Bell as CMO. There, Bill led the business to consistent same-store sales growth and steered the brand through an E. coli scare with no long-term impact to the brand.

As Chief Marketing Officer for consumer brand marketer Del Monte Foods, Pearce led a turnaround of that company’s complex portfolio of over 30+ brands by upgrading analytic, strategic, and planning practices to drive improvements in portfolio management, marketing productivity, and new product development. The result was a tripling of the market capitalization value and the subsequent purchase of Del Monte by a Private Equity consortium led by KKR.

Most recently, Pearce became Lead Board Director at Ooma (NYSE) and Chairman of VC-backed RichRelevance.