Maverick Publishing Specialists Ltd, continues the expansion of its global network of publishing industry experts with the addition of two Senior Consultants. The newest additions to the team strengthen Maverick’s presence in Australia/New Zealand, as well as technology-focused areas, such as product strategy and development, and operations.
Rachael McDiarmid, Affiliate Senior Associate (ANZ)
Rachael McDiarmid brings over 30 years of senior management book industry experience in a variety of product, sales, marketing, content acquisition, and supply chain management roles. In her career, she has worked on both the academic publisher side, as well as library supply where she managed publisher relations for the print, digital and multimedia supply chain.
Rachael was the face of the James Bennett/Nielsen Bookdata joint venture in the mid-2000’s and has worked with Blackwell Book Services and Baker & Taylor/YBP on their retail and digital projects in the Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) region. A resident of Sydney, Australia, Rachael provides outsourced sales and marketing solutions for publishers, distributors, and library vendors, both locally and internationally. She is also the ANZ contact for publishers for ProQuest’s Ebook Central.
Ron Ragsdale, Affiliate Senior Associate, Strategy, Operations, Technology and Content
Ron brings 25 years in the global educational (ELT) publishing sector (print and digital), building and managing teams and programmes, and delivering projects across diverse functions and geographies, including roles as Managing Editor of EL Gazette magazine, and as Global Publishing Director (ELT), Director of Knowledge Management, and Director of Business Change Programmes for Cambridge University Press.
His expertise includes product strategy and development, data management and enterprise systems implementation (including SAP, WorkDay, SalesForce and MS Office 365 collaboration tools), and the creation, integration and upscaling of new operations. Ron has direct experience in India and the Middle East, West and East Europe, Zimbabwe, and China. He holds a BA in Business Management, an MA in TESOL / Applied Linguistics, and serves as an Associate Lecturer for Anglia Ruskin University’s MA Publishing programme.