Alchemist Group, the parent company behind a portfolio of brands specializing in sales and leadership execution, today announced the launch of its Global Product and Technology function to strengthen how it builds, delivers, and scales learning products, intellectual property (IP), digital tools, and technology-enabled client experiences.
The function will support the brands under the Alchemist Group umbrella: RAIN Group, a sales training company; Alchemist, a leadership development company; and PCA Law, which provides leadership and business development training for legal professionals.
“The best learning businesses of the next decade will combine deep human expertise with smart, effective product and technology,” said Stuart Packham, CEO of Alchemist Group. “This function gives us the platform to innovate faster, bring greater coherence to our strategy, and create more value for clients as expectations around learning, performance, and AI evolve.”
The company also announced two key appointments to build out the function. Will Daniel joins as global vice president of product and technology and will lead the function. Tony Smith is named vice president of technical product and will report to Daniel.
Daniel brings deep experience building learning products, AI-enabled services, and global enablement systems. Most recently, he led global sales enablement at 3Pillar, where he built a portfolio of AI-led services in partnership with executive and technical leadership, and deployed agents, workflows, and AI-powered skills for revenue teams supporting major pursuits. He previously served as the company’s global head of learning and development, where he built its internal university and led AI upskilling for more than 2,500 engineers across 13 countries.
In his new role, Daniel will lead the strategy and execution of Alchemist Group’s combined product portfolio, including the learning architectures, development journeys, IP frameworks, digital products, and technology capabilities that support client delivery.
“One of the things that drew me to Alchemist Group was its focus on a challenge many organizations struggle with: closing the gap between strategy and execution,” Daniel said. “Strategy rarely fails at the top. It unravels among the people responsible for delivering it. Closing that gap requires the systems and behaviors that drive organizational and commercial performance.”
Smith was named vice president of technical product, joining the newly formed team permanently after working with the company in an interim consulting capacity for several years. Smith brings more than 25 years of software experience and more than 20 years of building EdTech and performance platforms for corporate clients. He has led technical teams inside training companies, architected performance platforms used at scale, and led the technology workstream during Alchemist’s 2024 private equity transaction.
In his new role, Smith will lead the technical product agenda behind Alchemist Group’s next generation of learning and coaching products. His work will focus on aligning product, technology, and commercial strategy, including the use of conversational and voice AI, to help ensure the company builds the right solutions, sequences them effectively, and delivers measurable business outcomes for clients.
“Clients don’t buy training for its own sake. They buy measurable change in how their people perform,” Smith said. “Technical product strategy connects those two things. It turns learning into evidence, makes coaching and enablement more consistent through AI, and keeps the offer current in a fast-moving market.”
The launch comes as organizations face growing pressure to improve performance while responding to rapid changes in AI and workforce capability. The function is designed to help clients address those challenges through integrated learning systems that combine research, human expertise, strong product design, and practical technology enablement.
“There’s brilliant work happening across our product, technology, and learning teams,” Packham said. “We’re building this function because that work deserves a stronger platform, better joined-up thinking, and the leadership to take it further. With Will leading this work, and Tony driving the technical product agenda alongside him, our group and brands couldn’t be in better hands.”
About Alchemist Group
Alchemist Group is the parent company of Alchemist, RAIN Group, and PCA Law, three brands united by a shared belief: the execution gap is fundamentally a behavior problem. With over 30 years of combined heritage, the group partners with Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 organizations to identify, change, and embed the behaviors that drive results through a practice-based, technology-enabled learning architecture that sustains performance over time. Alchemist Group serves clients globally with a footprint in the U.K., U.S., and APAC regions.