Product Manager · Generative AI · New York

I build AI products that people actually adopt.

I am a Senior Product Manager at AWS working on generative AI for enterprises. For eight years I have turned ambitious ideas into products that ship, get used, and move real numbers. The part I care about is not the launch. It is whether anyone comes back the next day.

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John Strifas Save headshot.jpg here
A few numbers I am proud of
~$100K Annual AWS cost saved per customer with the first SaaS product launched at Mission Cloud, which I led
10,000+ Amazon employees using the agentic workflows I own today
80% At-risk enterprise customers retained after reversing an 8% churn trend
01 Three products built from nothing into shipping, adopted platforms
Selected work

Three products, one habit: prove it gets used before we scale it.

A closer look at the work behind the numbers, in my own words.

Amazon Web Services Dec 2024 – Present
Senior Product Manager, Generative AI

I own the agentic workflows behind Amazon Quick Suite, our generative AI cowork platform for enterprises. More than 10,000 Amazon employees now use the workflows I shipped. I run discovery straight with C-suite stakeholders, validate demand before we spend engineering, and treat proof-of-concept adoption as the signal for what earns a place on the roadmap. That discipline pushed prototype-to-production adoption to 70% and turned a stuck 30% portfolio win rate into 45% over two quarters.

10,000+ users 70% adoption 30% → 45% win rate $2M pipeline influenced
Mission Cloud, a CDW Company 2021 – 2024
Product Manager

I led Mission Cloud's first SaaS product from zero to one. It gave AWS enterprise customers real-time visibility into their cloud spend and automated recommendations to act on it. The optimization engine, Mission Cloud Score, cut customer AWS costs by 22% on average and lifted CSAT to a 92% rolling average. The proactive features reversed an 8% churn trend and kept 80% of at-risk customers, which is the part I am proudest of, because it meant we had built something people relied on.

~$100K saved / customer 80% retained 92% CSAT 35+ net-new opps
Amadeus Hospitality 2018 – 2021
Product Manager

Earlier, at Amadeus, I built a hotel loyalty portal from scratch and rebuilt the guest management system behind it. Wiring it into booking systems and third-party apps lifted loyalty signups 22% globally. The $30M phased UX overhaul I led pushed customer retention from 74% to 89%, and a new drag-and-drop email tool raised open rates by 41%.

+22% signups 74% → 89% retention $30M program +41% email opens

More projects on GitHub, added as I build them.

How I work

Three things I believe about building product.

01

Validate before you build

I would rather kill an idea in discovery than ship something no one asked for. Proof-of-concept adoption tells the truth long before a roadmap does.

02

Adoption is the real metric

A launched feature that goes unused is not a launch. I instrument everything and follow how people actually behave, not how we hoped they would.

03

Stay close to the craft

I build with the tools, not just about them. Working hands-on with Claude Code, MCP, and agents keeps my product judgment honest and current.

Off the clock

The through line in my work and my life is the same: patience, small adjustments, and paying attention to how things actually land.

I roast my own coffee beans, which turns out to be a full course in patience and tiny variables. A few seconds and a few degrees change everything. Product work rewards the same attention.

Most of my time outside work goes to my growing family, training, and following far too much sport. I grew up speaking Greek, studied computer and electrical engineering at Farmingdale State, and I have been building products in and around New York ever since.

Let us talk

If you are hiring a product leader for AI, I would like to hear about it.

The fastest way to get a feel for my work is the resume. The best way is a conversation. Either one is a click away.