Julie Rice

Julie Rice is an entrepreneur and brand builder best known as a co-founder of SoulCycle. She co-founded the company in 2006 with Elizabeth Cutler and Ruth Zukerman, opening the first studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Rice served as Co-CEO from 2006 to 2015, then Chief Talent and Creative Officer from 2015 to 2016, and remained on the SoulCycle board from 2010 to 2018.

Before SoulCycle, Rice worked in entertainment talent management, including at Handprint Entertainment from 1997 to 2004. She received a B.A. in English and Theater from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Her operating background is concentrated in talent development, brand voice, community design, and customer experience.

After leaving SoulCycle in 2016, Rice co-founded LifeShop LLC with Elizabeth Cutler. Public company filings describe LifeShop as an “advising and investing company,” while Culturati describes it as focused on advising, investing, and incubating ideas rooted in community and emotional intelligence. Rice joined WeWork in 2017 as Chief Brand Officer / Partner and left in 2019.

Rice later co-founded Peoplehood, a connection and wellness company that developed facilitated group conversation experiences. In August 2025, WeightWatchers appointed Rice Chief Experience Officer, a newly created role leading community and brand innovation, including the transformation of its global workshop business. WeightWatchers also announced that Peoplehood’s curriculum, technology, and learnings would be integrated into WeightWatchers.

• Invests and advises through LifeShop around “new ideas rooted in community and emotional intelligence.”
• Focuses on consumer-facing, high-growth businesses, especially where community, brand, and scale are core levers.
• Culturati describes Rice and Cutler as “active angel to later stage investors” focused on “community, brand and scale.”
• WeightWatchers describes Rice as an “advisor, mentor, and investor to a wide range of early-stage and growth companies in the wellness, consumer, and community-driven spaces.”
• Rice’s operator lens emphasizes customer experience and community. In a WeWork interview, she said the best way to understand a brand is to be “in the buildings and talk to the members,” and that durable brands need to listen to customers and continue innovating.
• In her own Fast Company writing, Rice stressed founder partnership discipline: clearly divided roles, aligned work ethic, direct communication, and investing in the founding relationship as a core company asset.