Marketing Services – Maverick Publishing Specialists

Martin Marlow

Principal and President

Martin Marlow is the President and Principal of Maverick Publishing Specialists. He coordinates the Associate teams alongside working as the lead analyst on a number of key assignments. With over 30 years senior management experience in publishing and electronic information, Martin specializes in strategic and operational sales and marketing; product development and management; and publisher/partner relations.

He has delivered and supported a wide range of services including e-journal and e-book aggregation platforms; cross format e-content retrieval systems and numerous online datasets and communities. His customer and market development activities have been deliberately crafted across all main content types, market sectors and steps in the supply chain.

Martin has been a frequent speaker at Industry events in Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific and is a regular reviewer and contributor in the industry press – commenting on sales, marketing and market development strategies, new product innovation and developing industry trends. He was viewed as one of 5 “key thought leaders” in the information industry in the UKSG’s E-Resources Management Handbook on the future of electronic publishing, where he was asked to provide his views and opinions

Prior to launching Maverick, Martin was Vice President of Publisher Business Development + Marketing for Ingram Digital (the digital media arm of the Ingram Content Group) where he was responsible for overseeing the worldwide sales and marketing activities of Ingram Digital solutions to publishers from all sectors, as well as conceiving and directing all their solution and corporate brand marketing. Previous to that, Martin was Vice President for Sales and Marketing for the e-content system development and hosting company, Atypon Systems Inc. Other past positions also include Director of Strategic Marketing for ProQuest Information and Learning, Director of E-Commerce for Blackwell Ltd and Sales and Marketing Director (Academic Division) for SilverPlatter Information.

Rebecca Rinehart

CEO and Head, US Operations

Rebecca is a publishing professional who has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of scientific, technical, and medical publishing—book, journals, periodicals, and online. She is the former Publisher of American Psychiatric Publishing, a division of the American Psychiatric Association, and the world’s leading publisher of books, journals, periodicals, and online resources on psychiatry, mental health, and behavioral science. In this position, she managed acquisitions and new product development, peer review, marketing, editorial, production, rights, and distribution for print and online products, most notably the international publication of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).

Previously Rebecca served as Senior Director and Publisher at The Endocrine Society overseeing the publication of its four scientific journals, three periodicals, books and CME programs, and Endocrine News. In this position she launched a book program and two new periodicals as well as an online news feature.

Rebecca started her career at Harper & Row Publishers, where she held various production, editorial, and management positions before serving as Senior Medical Editor for acquisitions. She then joined The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to develop a publishing program of books, periodicals, and consumer literature that included the journal, Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Kate Wood

Senior Associate, Head of Marketing & Market Research

Kate Wood joins Maverick with over 20 years in publishing with experience spanning academic, STM and trade as well as business-to-business magazine publishing. She has held a number of senior roles as a Director of Publicity for Robson Books, followed by positions as Group PR Director and Director of Marketing at Chrysalis Books Group. Kate was an Associate Marketing Director in STM at Wiley, where she led global teams and ran high impact campaigns resulting in product launches generating seven figure revenues, top 10 bestselling titles and high double-digit revenue growth for portfolios across digital STM products. While at Wiley, she was awarded the prestigious Pacesetter award for her work on digital product launch. After leaving Wiley, she was a finalist in the LEAP Entrepreneur of the Year award 2017. With nearly 10 years’ experience in trade and over 10 years’ experience in academic publishing, she is a true publishing all-rounder.

Her wide background in publishing began with publishing research reports in the civil service, moving to Chadwyck-Healey where she worked as an editor on some of the first digital products to go to market, this was followed by 2 years in magazine publishing and by 20 years as a publicity and marketing specialist. The skills Kate brings to Maverick range from marketing strategy and market research, competitor analysis and audits to the nuts and bolts of marketing communications such as campaign management and planning, copywriting, digital and social media marketing, content creation, PR and publicity campaigns and modern marketing methods such as email automation and CRM systems. She has considerable expertise in all sides of product marketing for a wide range of content – books, journals, references and data and workflow tools – and in product launches. At Wiley, she was a marketing specialist in chemistry, molecular life sciences, physical sciences and pharma. Her wide experience of many different parts of the industry allows her to see across discipline and from trade to academic and vice versa.

Kate is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and a fully qualified CIM marketer. She speaks four languages at various levels of fluency.

Gareth Dyke

Senior Associate

Dr Gareth Dyke is a prolific scientific author, researcher, content creator, and journal manager who has published more than 320 peer-reviewed articles over the last 25 years, as well as numerous other pieces (Scientific American) and books. His publications include articles in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy (USA) and other high-profile outlets. Gareth has worked for more than 18 years as an Editor-in-Chief at the Taylor & Francis journal Historical Biology. He led this journal from zero articles to become one of the leading titles in palaeontology, including its first impact factor (growing each year).

Gareth has a PhD in geology and biology from the University of Bristol, worked as a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and was an Associate Professor at University College Dublin (Ireland) and at the University of Southampton (UK). He is an active teacher and researcher affiliated with universities in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Kazakhstan, and China.

Gareth provides an unique overview of author-facing products and services having worked as a professional editor, as Head of Content at Charlesworth Author Services, as an Education Manager at Edanz and TopEdit, and as Director of Global Content at Research Square Company (fully acquired by Springer Nature in 2022). Gareth is also a Director at Bentham Science Publishers and ReviewerCredits, responsible for academic relationships and business development. He has well developed networks across academia and the scholarly publishing industry.

Gareth brings to Maverick his deep experience at the interface between research and publishing, helping non-native English speakers – especially in China and Central Asia where he has well developed networks – publish their work and understand scholarly publishing processes. Gareth has conducted thousands of online and face-to-face training sessions and is accredited by the UK and Irish Higher Education Authorities.

Rick Naylor

Senior Associate (USA)

Rick brings to Maverick product and brand marketing knowledge and expertise acquired from over two decades of helping companies in several industries achieve ambitious business goals by building successful marketing organizations from the ground up. With a creative flair and passion for innovative initiatives that push the creative envelope, he has held senior-level marketing roles ranging from start-ups to multibillion-dollar entities.

In Academic Publishing, he managed the marketing of hundreds of electronic, reference databases serving libraries, physicians and the legal profession.

In other sectors, his in-depth marketing expertise also includes software, financial technology, consumer apps and digital entertainment.

In the rapidly changing financial technology sector, Rick renamed and re-positioned a digital payments company, establishing them as an industry thought leader and contributing to record growth. And in digital entertainment publishing, he was responsible for managing many well-known global brands with his dynamic, integrated campaigns resulting in some of the highest grossing industry product launches of all time.

Having served on green-light committees for product development, Rick knows that research, testing, and feedback are critical to successful product marketing. His strengths in messaging, publicity, scripting, content, digital, CRM, advertising, social media and other tactics make for consistently robust and cohesive marketing plans and “high-return” campaign execution.

Nicholas Weir-Williams

Senior Associate (USA)

Nick Weir-Williams has been in publishing for over 45 years, with experience in the UK, Australia, and in the US since 1992. Most recently he was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Ingenta (formerly Vista and Publishing Technology), overseeing Sales, Marketing and Account Management. In his 18 years at Ingenta he also worked as Project Manager on major implementations at Pearson, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Thieme and Rosen Publishers; as well as with the product development team, particularly in regard to product and rights management.

Previously, Nick worked in many senior management roles including publisher at Continuum (US) and Reed Press (part of RBI); and eight years as Director and Publisher at Northwestern University Press, developing an award-winning list in Literature in Translation and Poetry (Nobel Prize and National Book Award), as well as tripling the sales and bringing the Press to break-even. In the US he also served for four years on the Board of PMA, the largest publisher trade organization in the world (now IBPA), for two years as President.

Nick started his career in the late 70’s as a sales rep and Linguistics editor for Croom Helm in the UK, subsequently opening an Australian subsidiary for them until their takeover by ABP. He was Publishing Manager for Methuen Australia, and then Thomson, where he worked on all aspects of the merger including warehouse and accounts consolidation. He was then the Academic Publishing Director of Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, including the revamping of the Everyman’s Library paperback list and publishing, among others, George Soros.

He has consulted in a wide range of areas for a number of publishers including Routledge, Gower, Columbia University, and as an editor and Rights agent.

Minty Colquhoun

Senior Associate

An award winning, service-driven and commercially minded professional, Minty holds a sound track record in producing strategic marketing initiatives which deliver value to both clients and their customers. With an emphasis on delivering clear and measurable results, maximising ROI and improving performance profitability, her areas of expertise include: Branding, Marketing Strategies, Business Plans and Feasibility Studies, Market Research, New Product Development, Copy Writing, PR and Design.

With over 25 years of professional marketing expertise, Minty assists a wide variety of national and multi-national companies as well as SME organisations in both private and public industries. Minty began her career with Blackwell’s Information Services where she earned a Spotlight award for outstanding service, before going on to gain wider experience within the Life Sciences and IT sectors. As Marketing Manager for a software start-up she successfully grew the department’s activities within two years to win Oracle’s prestigious Award for Innovation in 2009.

Until recently Minty was a long-time active committee member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing where she chaired the Hampshire & Isle of Wight regional branch.

Jenny Drey

Senior Associate

Jenny Drey comes to Maverick with 25 years’ experience of marketing within the publishing industry, from books and journals to e-publishing.

For the past 12 years Jenny has worked on a consultancy basis, providing marketing and PR expertise to a range of clients both in the publishing industry and in other industry sectors including legal and entertainment. She has carried out many market research programmes for clients in the UK and the US, reaching into Europe with her fluent French and German. Amongst her other projects she has been called upon to establish and run the marketing of a books programme for a major UK publisher, and head the PR for several scientific communities and publishers.

Jenny has extensive experience of marketing journals, newsletters, and books, both academic and professional and fiction/non-fiction. Prior to her consultancy work, Jenny was Product Development Manager for Chapman & Hall’s electronic publishing division, working across a range of subjects and platforms. This followed a marketing career with other publishers including Elsevier Science, Dorling Kindersley, and PJB Publications. Early on she spent several years at Robert Maxwell’s trade publisher Macdonald, where she marketed fiction and non-fiction books to the book trade and to the general public. Jenny is an ideas person and continues to enjoy the creative aspects of writing, research and translation, as well as generating and working on sound commercial propositions.

Megan Toogood

Senior Associate

With over 14 years’ experience in academic publishing beginning at software provider Semantico Megan specializes in strategic marketing and communications, content development, and training. A Maverick since 2011 she joined The Royal Society in 2018 for three years where she was involved with a major new platform implementation and the development of backfiles that go back over 350 years.

Her skills include messaging, copywriting in all its forms, email marketing, the production of video and audio content for e-learning, go-to-market strategy, and growth strategy. What ties these skills and interests together is an emphasis on communicating with people, be they customers, partners, colleagues or stakeholders.

A long-term interest in the life chances of disadvantaged young people led her to train as a teacher in 2021 and she now also works with teenagers developing their writing skills. As a creative writer she has had plays staged in London and is the writer and director of fiction podcast; The Grove. Megan brings a particular drive to convert communications strategies into practical brand exposure and revenue generating results.

Jen O’Shaughnessy-Beal

Senior Associate

With over 17 years in scholarly publishing at Wiley, Jen has a focus on setting up and developing successful communications, engagement, and content marketing programs. She is an audience-focused, enterprising leader with a natural ability for strategic planning, project management, and translating audience and market insights into creative, compelling cross-channel campaigns. Having held leadership positions in Wiley’s PR, Corporate Comms and Marketing, and Editor Engagement teams, she brings experience of internal and external communication and engagement strategy, event management (online and in-person), content marketing strategy, audience and brand perception research, marketing communications, change management, and training development.

Jen set the strategy, researched and negotiated with providers, and project managed the launch of several web platforms covering content marketing sites, press rooms, eLearning, and community hubs. During her time in PR, she designed and led Wiley’s global STM publicity team including personal oversight of the media outreach for The Cochrane Library and many high-profile journal brands achieving significant front-page and broadcast coverage. Jen has a track record of improving the efficiency and enjoyment of teams and improving the effectiveness of outreach. With strong analytical skills and a focus on data-driven decisions, she excels in setting objectives and creating dashboards to measure communication and marketing goals.

Jen has a degree in Broadcast Journalism and a Diploma in Public Relations and is an accredited member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

Bryan Davies

Affiliate Senior Associate

Bryan is a seasoned Senior Product, Program, Transformation and people leader with deep ‘hands on’ experience in innovation and technology, from the military as an engineering leader, to online SaaS information product and service delivery through global, matrixed, cross-functional stakeholders.

He has successfully led large strategic change programs in various roles (product, program, operational, editorial, general management, senior management) in his 23 years at Elsevier to deliver improved customer and business outcomes by focusing on customer needs, innovation, coaching, and creating ‘psychologically safe’ organisational cultures to drive engagement, alignment, and cross-functional collaboration – at all levels of the organisation and at every stage of the program lifecycle.

Bryan brings an integrated and pragmatic, ‘system level’, data-driven and agile approach to strategy, planning, problem-solving – and technical, process, and commercial execution. As well as leading Elsevier’s online books program by transforming a print-based, transactional, books business into a $60M+ online reference business, he has delivered turnaround performance leading Elsevier’s Engineering information business as General Manager, to deliver two years of market-beating growth following 10 previous years of flat growth in a low-growth market by challenging and changing perceptions about customer value creation and focusing on operational effectiveness, Go-to-Market (GTM) execution and high-growth new use cases, digital innovation, and adjacent market opportunities. Bryan also significantly improved the team’s employee satisfaction scores over the same period.

Bryan is a passionate people leader with an authentic, transparent, collaborative, style who builds inclusive and engaging environments for individuals and teams to test, learn, grow, and deliver successful outcomes.

Will Awad

Affiliate Senior Associate

Will is a digital accessibility expert and experienced publishing professional with a background in the academic publishing, information technology and publishing services industries. He has in-depth expertise of, and advised on, digital accessibility compliance (per W3C/WCAG guidelines) for organisations of many types and market sectors. He has overseen access audits as well as remediation projects for digital documents (i.e., EPUBs and PDFs), ensuring they meet the legal requirements of both the US Disabilities Act (ADA) as well as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and PDF/UA.

He is recognised as a thought leader in the industry, and has spoken at numerous conferences, industry events, and webinars. These include the Access High Ground conference in Denver USA, addressing the “Certified Accessible eBook ecosystem from vendor to publisher to student”, and the Association of University Presses virtual event in 2023 on “Extending our reach: How making our books accessible makes them equitable”. Will also holds a master’s degree focused on international law.

John Lavender

Affiliate Senior Associate (USA)

John has over 40 years’ experience in STM publishing, mainly at senior executive level. He lives in the USA having moved from the UK in 2001. His experience of working in both major English language publishing markets and his career covering almost all the major roles in publishing gives him an unrivalled view of the industry.

His corporate experience includes senior vice president of publishing (books and journals), online development, marketing, web development and international sales with Taylor & Francis and director of marketing, international sales and business development and electronic publishing with the Thomson Corporation. John was an early adopter of electronic publishing, creating the first journal to use PDFs to distribute content in 1997 and the first virtual e-book library in 1999.

John specializes in marketing strategy and internet marketing; market research and creating advisory panels; publishing strategy for books and journals; list development; online platforms and packaging of content online; selling online products; and international sales expansion. He has a keen understanding of the financial needs of a business and how to ensure that financial goals are met. He has also had wide experience in the acquisition of both publishing companies and lists, having handled over 20 successful acquisitions during his career. He can assist with any size of acquisition at any or all stages: from planning and developing an acquisition proposal, negotiating the acquisition and valuation, through to integration once acquired.

Marie Hooper

Affiliate Senior Associate

Marie has over 20 years’ experience in academic and professional STM publishing and information analytics as well as non-profit and consulting tenure. During her time at Elsevier, she held international leadership roles across book acquisitions, project management, strategy, and operations. Most recently, as VP of Health Customer Services at Elsevier, Marie drove effective cross-matrix collaboration to implement a SaaS customer experience / customer success model.

Marie’s skills range from: customer experience / success; operations management; strategy planning; project management; change management; process, workflow and organisational analysis and redesign; data driven problem solving; continuous improvement; book acquisitions; coaching, mentoring and team leadership.

A passionate problem solver, self-starter, and “best practice” advocate, Marie has a particular keenness for data driven decision making and process improvement to deliver impact and insight. Via a “can-do”, results driven attitude combined with a collaborative approach, she specialises in improving operational efficiency and embedding a customer experience focus across organisations.

Marie is a driven and impassioned customer-focused consultant available for project level consulting and interim management. She is energised by resolving complex issues and delivering measurable impact to drive profitable service improvement and sustainable customer success.

David Saracco

Affiliate Senior Associate (USA)

David started his career in publishing as the first hire at Harcourt Health Sciences (now Elsevier) to help W.B Saunders, Churchill Livingstone, and Mosby medical publishing imprints to strategize and implement their transformation from a print-centric to an electronically focused publishing group. David worked with editors and authors to conceptualize, design, and implement electronic programs including shepherding them through production. At Elsevier, David built a team of 40 producers, product managers, and technologists who were responsible for the global development of over 500 new electronic publishing products per year across all main segments including medicine, medical research, nursing, and allied health. These products included all types of electronic assessment programs, educational interactive CD/DVD ROM programs, websites, custom portals and platforms, Learning Management Systems courseware, PDA and eBooks, PowerPoint presentations, and a multitude of custom-built programs.

After Elsevier, David switched sides of the table to focus on the vendor side of publishing. David joined a start-up company, Impelsys, which helped publishers outsource their electronic development to a group of engineers, content experts, and production teams based in Bangalore, India. David was responsible for global publishing relationships, strategy, sales, and client services to publishers across the entire publishing industry including STM, Trade, PreK-12, Higher Education, and Reference.

Through the years David has set company and product strategy, helped develop and sell a multitude of electronic platforms including Artificial Intelligence for Publishers, white-labelled, SaaS eBook platforms, Digital Asset Management and Distribution systems and Component Content Management Systems for publishers. David has held senior and vice president positions with such publishing vendor companies as Impelsys, CodeMantra, RSI Publishing Solutions, and Vantage Labs AI. Prior to starting his publishing career, David was co-owner of a successful multimedia start-up called Target Media, Inc. Target Media built electronic profiles of high technology companies such as Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, Cognos and more and distributed those creative CD-ROM programs throughout the Big Six consulting firms of Anderson Consulting, PriceWaterhouse, Deloitte Touche, etc.

Maria Machado, PhD

Affiliate Senior Associate

Maria Machado is a writer, reviewer, analyst, and blogger. Throughout her scientific career, she published on microcirculation and vascular physiology. At Bio-protocol, she edited papers, produced research article templates, and streamlined peer review processes. Now, she specializes in reviewing scientific papers (over 400), FAIR research design, and science communication. She can be regularly seen volunteering in events such as Pint of Science or European Researcher’s Night, attempting to bring scientists and society closer via clear communication (https://stories4sci.blogspot.com/). She hopes to standardize peer review practices through training, and is the co-chair of Peer Review Week 2024. Her passion for multiculturalism and open science is rooted in her experience as a nomadic scientist living and working in many different places. She advocates for transparent practices, equity, and effective training.

Steve O’Connor

Affiliate Senior Associate

Steve is a seasoned international speaker, workshop presenter, editor, writer, consultant, and, of course, librarian. He wrote the book on scenario planning for libraries and other information organizations (“Imagining Your Library’s Future” [Chandos], which has also been published in the Chinese language by the National Library of China). He has also written “Library Management in Disruptive Times [published by Facet] and “Repositories for Print: Strategies for Access, Preservation and Democracy” [De Gruyter]. Steve is a long-standing journal editor (Library Management) and the author of over 70 articles. He is also a frequent presenter at international conferences and workshops and taught at Chiang Mai University.

Most recently, he has been engaged developing on a Masters for Information Leadership at Charles Sturt University where he is an Adjunct Professor. Steve’s passion is to foster creative and dynamic imaginative communities, that deliver positive and measurable results for their Library’s customers. His key strength is understanding that there are many paths to the Future, thus allowing us to pause, reflect, and to really think differently rather than have our futures determined for us.

Rachael McDiarmid

Affiliate Senior Associate (ANZ)

Rachael McDiarmid has been in the book industry for over 30 years in a variety of product, sales, marketing and senior management roles. She has spent time on both sides of the fence — working primarily in academic and professional publishing, as well as a long stint in library supply where she managed publisher relations for the print, digital and multimedia supply chain as well as a trade distribution business. Rachael was the face of the James Bennett/Nielsen Bookdata joint venture for many years in the mid-2000s and has worked with Blackwell Book Services and Baker & Taylor/YBP on their retail and digital projects in the ANZ region.

Rachael now provides outsourcing solutions for publishers (predominantly in sales and marketing), as well as consulting services for publishers (including university presses, small presses and multinational organisations), distributors and library vendors locally and internationally. Through her business, she is also the ANZ contact for publishers for ProQuest’s Ebook Central.

Angela Keil-Zippermayr

Affiliate Associate, SEO, ONIX & Metadata

Angela boasts an extensive professional background as the Head of Publisher and Supplier Data for Australia’s largest book retailer: Booktopia, where she has excelled in this role for over 13 years. In her capacity overseeing importer systems, managing diverse inbound data feeds, and ensuring the quality and strategic alignment of product data presented on the retailer’s platform, Angela has concurrently served as a consultant for trade and academic publishers and wholesalers. Her expertise spans all facets of print, e-book and audiobook bibliographic data, along with addressing ONIX feeds-related challenges.

Committed to remaining informed about industry developments, Angela remains current with ONIX updates, BIC, THEMA, and BISAC classification schemas. She maintains active communication channels with key industry players such as Editeur and collaborates with renowned book data aggregators like Nielsen, Titlepage and Thorpe-Bowker, facilitating a continuous exchange of ideas and insights.

Before assuming her role as a data quality specialist in the book industry, Angela contributed her skills as an SEO and SEM consultant across diverse sectors, ranging from online learning course providers to rental car companies. Armed with a profound understanding of the pivotal role that targeted keywords and strategic data placement play in the ecommerce landscape, Angela seamlessly integrates her SEO and SEM mindset into her overarching data and business strategies, ensuring a comprehensive and cohesive approach to her work.

Matthew Salter

Affiliate Senior Associate

Matthew Salter is the founder and CEO of Akabana Consulting LLC and is a multi-lingual publishing executive with over 20 years of experience in scholarly publishing and research communications. Following a successful career in academic research at leading institutions in the UK and Japan, he transitioned into STEM publishing and science communication and has worked in senior roles at leading commercial and learned society publishers. These include NPG Nature Asia-Pacific (now part of SpringerNature) where he headed up MacMillan Science Communication, the custom-publishing arm of Nature Publishing Group, and IOP Publishing where he led partner publishing and business development in the Asia-Pacific region and managed the Tokyo and Beijing offices. In 2016, Matthew moved from Japan to the east coast of the US as the first ever Publisher of the American Physical Society (APS), a position he held until the end of 2021. On leaving APS, Matthew founded Akabana Consulting to deliver strategic scholarly publishing editorial and language services to the international research community.

Matthew’s work is driven by a passion for research and scholarship, and a focus on delivering innovative and client-focused publishing and research dissemination solutions with compelling value propositions. His experience spans publishing and business strategy, new journal launches and portfolio design, editorial services, and content creation, as well as marketing and social media strategy.

In his publishing career Matthew has launched multiple journals and has a proven track record of creating innovative science communication tools, growing high-quality journal content, driving open access and open science, and increasing publishing revenues. He also has extensive experience working with non-profit organizations and is a former Board member of STM and CHORUS.

Matthew holds a BSc and PhD in chemistry (Imperial College). He is a former Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellow (Tohoku University), Lecturer in Organic chemistry (King’s College London) and a JST ERATO staff member at the University of Tokyo. He is fluent in Japanese, proficient in Mandarin Chinese, and has extensive experience of Asian business cultures.

Katharine Szamuely

Affiliate Senior Associate

Katharine is a senior finance business partner and CIMA qualified accountant with 20 years’ experience providing commercial financial support and working with Board-level management in academic publishing, financial information services and media. Most recently she spent 10 years at Springer Nature covering institutional subscriptions, open access, trade sales and eCommerce across journals, books, databases and author services. She has developed strong skills in modelling, analysis, planning and communicating, comfortably moving from detailed financials to broader management and strategy.

Her area of particular focus is open access publishing, including fully open access journals, Transformative Agreements and hybrid journals, and strategic planning for the transition to open access. Her work on fully open access journals has included enhancing understanding of the growth drivers of open access journals, improving forecasting and decision making, developing criteria for starting and developing journals, improving pipeline management for large journals and portfolios, and supporting Managing Directors in P&L management of these high growth businesses.

Her work on Transformative Agreements began in Europe with the first agreements over 8 years ago. This has included many deals, moving from Europe to the US, Asia and the rest of the world, e.g. analysing publication patterns, developing the ongoing methodology to support sales pitches, reporting to existing customers, providing financial and strategic guidance for new deals and renewals. It has also included strategic analysis, e.g. financial modelling of the long-term impact of the growth of Transformative Agreements and of Plan S proposals and evaluating scenarios and developing new business models for the ongoing transition to open access.

Clare Wratten

Affiliate Associate, Marketing and Communications

Clare Wratten is an industry professional with over 25 years’ experience in marketing and communications. She approaches projects with a combination of curiosity, confidence, and creativity while still retaining a can-do attitude and a practical approach. Her expertise covers the following areas: strategic planning and tactical delivery of marketing campaigns; PR – all aspects; content creation and writing; project and account management; events (a huge area this one); and ideas generation.

Through her extensive work experience, Clare has delivered projects for a diverse client-base including advertising agencies, local authorities, global commercial enterprises, and publishing companies. Her work in these areas has covered projects ranging from international events through to award-winning PR campaigns via television ads and theatre productions. She is currently managing the marketing and social media for several clients.

Outside of work, Clare is involved with several local charities, including a mental health charity providing counselling to primary and secondary school-age children. For this charity, Clare has devised their communications strategy and the corporate donations programme. On a personal level, Clare is currently in her final year of a Humanities degree, specializing in Literature.

Jane Anderson

Affiliate Senior Associate

Jane’s experience has been built on a strong production and operational background, with a reputation, focus and drive to ‘make things happen’.

Before joining Maverick, Jane was Operations Director at Group GTI, an Ed-Tech based group of companies delivering products and service solutions that currently connect over 1.6 million students and recent graduates, 80 higher education institutions and 100,000 employers across the UK and Ireland. Whist there, she was involved in the planning and launch of numerous new products and services across the Group, working closely with a variety of teams including product, content, design, commercial, marketing, events and research. Her areas of expertise include cross-functional team development, managing change, and embedding new technologies and workflow ‘best practice’ to improve efficiency and quality control. Jane was instrumental in the development of GTI during rapid growth, European expansion and transition to become a leader in the ‘Ed-Tech’ sector.

Jane also has background and experience in tackling complex brand hierarchy strategy / guideline creation and execution; Corporate and product level messaging, positioning and ‘Go To Market’ planning and channel choice; and target customer / end user persona research and tone of voice development. She is adept at providing guidelines, tools, frameworks and strategy for consistent brand and market recognition across all touch points.

Working in the early careers sector has given Jane an in-depth knowledge of the UK and Irish higher education sector(s) and has worked with many professional bodies on bespoke contract projects.

Joe Schick

Affiliate Senior Associate

Joe is a business development and marketing executive in the global publishing and educational technology industries. He specializes in turning complex initiatives into successful partnerships and complicated ideas into straightforward messages and content.

Joe began his publishing career in 2001 at Pearson, where he managed a rights-acquisition team before moving into business development. There, he managed digital content licensing partnerships and negotiated new relationships with retail and library platforms in the nascent world of eBooks and digital audiobooks. In 2008, Joe moved to the Ingram Content Group, where he worked primarily with educational publishers who were beginning to create digital textbooks. He then successfully acquired multilingual eBook and audiobook content from the major trade and academic publishers in the UK, Europe, Canada, ANZ, and beyond for Baker & Taylor. He expanded his work into product development at library technology provider Bibliotheca, where he led the design and launch of the Opus eBook lending platform.

Since 2016, Joe has been working as an independent consultant to technology companies and nonprofits, including Stockholm-based Plotagon, where he launched and ran their animation software product for corporate and academic e-learning. Today, he is the Principal & Co-Founder of Schick Creative, a boutique marketing agency for businesses and nonprofits, where he combines his business development experience with creative content creation. Joe holds a B.A. in History from Brandeis University and lives in the Boston area.

Sarah Bartlett

Affiliate Senior Associate

Sarah is self-employed and works in the areas of content strategy, copywriting and proofreading. She specialises in libraries and technology, but offers experience across a range of business-to-business sectors.

Sarah produces full content strategies as well as standalone recommendations in areas such as tone of voice and persona research. She writes a range of materials, both online and print, and her regular clients include OCLC. She is also a freelance medical editor and proofreader for McCann Health.

Sarah’s career started in IT, before she made a career change into librarianship. She spent five years managing special libraries in the metals industry. Following this, Sarah moved to Talis, then a UK library software vendor. There she combined her library and IT skills in business analysis, product management and content marketing roles.

In 2011 she left Talis to set up her freelance copywriting and content marketing business. Between 2015 and 2017, she worked as a Senior Editorial Manager for Tomorrow People, an award-winning business-to-business digital marketing agency. She produced content strategies for global and national B2B brands in a range of sectors. She also devised editorial calendars and managed the outsourcing of content production to a team of freelance writers.

Rachel Middlewick

Affiliate Senior Associate

Rachel has worked in publishing since 2000. After initially specialising in subscriptions marketing and international trade marketing at Haymarket Media Group, she moved into central publishing roles, eventually running a portfolio of B2C and B2B brands in the outdoor leisure market. In 2018 she was responsible for driving a digital product development strategy to improve relevance for new audiences and to deliver new revenue streams.

Alongside the path in owned media Rachel has also spent 10 years in content marketing running and retaining high value accounts and delivering multimedia content strategies for brands across the retail, sport, automotive, education and membership body sectors. She developed go to market positioning and marketing strategy for a leading Agency and focused on future proofing and optimising agency services, alongside driving new business, in her position as Strategy Director.

Most recently she has focused on business transformation. First at PA Media as Chief Commercial Officer where she led a £30m portfolio and developed and implemented an end to end data strategy which allowed the business to understand the different trading conditions and behaviour of each customer segment for the first time. She restructured sales teams accordingly, aligned marketing strategy – auditing and refreshing the customer journey and launching new go to market positioning – delivering budget busting revenues along the way.

She is currently working as a consultant including a project to support the largest East African news media publisher integrate its TV, print and digital newsrooms and adopt digital-first working practices. She has used her organisational design and leadership experience to full capacity!

Peter Harden

Affiliate Senior Associate

Peter is a multi-talented publishing professional who has over 30 years of experience in educational and trade publishing.

For the last ten years, Peter served as the Managing Director of York Press, known in the UK for its leading series of Study Guides for GCSE and A Level; and internationally for a number of school courses in ELT, Maths & Science for MENA Ministries of Education. From 2018, in partnership with Pearson, Peter sat on the management board of Project Sphinx in Egypt: Pearson’s largest single online assessment project. Peter also managed the development of York-E: a school-focused LMS now installed in hundreds of Egyptian schools.

Founded in 1991, Peter’s original publishing project – Harden’s – was one of the first UK businesses to use the collation of User Generated Content to source content and remains a leading brand amongst UK restaurant guides today. Over its thirty years in operation, it has had marketing partnerships with many top consumer brands – Rémy Martin, Champagne Mumm, Spa Natural Mineral Water – and content partnerships with media brands such as The Sunday Times, The Observer and the Evening Standard. The business has evolved in recent times to incorporate an innovative subscription-driven loyalty scheme.

The skills Peter brings to Maverick from positions in senior management to early-stage start-up range from strategic consultancy and financial modelling to the nitty gritty of project management, digital development and print production to the nuts and bolts of marketing, PR and social media management

Mert Köse

Affiliate Senior Associate

Mert Köse is an academic publishing professional and a lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University’s media communication department. With over five years of experience in open-access publishing, he has a deep understanding of various aspects of the publishing industry.

He has previously worked as a Research & Development manager at Turkey’s largest publishing house, Galenos, where he played a pivotal role in establishing their dominance of the Turkish academic journal market. He has full command of index applications, journal management, and academic guidelines, ensuring the quality and integrity of scholarly publications. He possesses a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing academic publishing in Turkey and beyond. Additionally, He has presented a conference on predatory journals at the interdisciplinary Ph.D. communication conference at İstanbul Bilgi University in 2021, demonstrating his active involvement in the academic community.

His varied background and expertise make him a valuable asset to any academic publishing team, and he looks forward to contributing to the growth and success of the industry.

Nicholas Cop

Affiliate Senior Associate, Territorial Specialist

Nicholas Cop has extensive international senior level experience in sales, marketing, and project management in the information industry, with particular emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, and has a working knowledge of French and an understanding of Slovenian.

He was the Founding Director of OCLC’s Division for Latin America and the Caribbean and was responsible for all of OCLC’s sales and marketing activities in the region. He worked in that position for 10 years until 2005. During that time he also established the subsidiary of OCLC Mexico in Mexico City to more directly address the large, growing market in the country. He later founded Nicholas Cop Consulting, LLC, a consulting company specialized in advising academic libraries, national and regional information networks, publishers and information vendors in the areas of sales and marketing, strategic partnerships, digital libraries, e-journals and ebooks, mobile devices, Open Access initiatives and digital formats and standards. The company was also an authorized distributor in Latin America of the citation management software Mendeley Institutional Edition. Consultancies undertaken by Nicholas Cop Consulting include market and competitive analyses and content development for information vendors, and studies and analyses for national science councils and national academic library networks.

Nicholas also writes on information issues and is an author and editor of the ebook “SciELO: 15 Years of Open Access” about the SciELO Open Access network. He is well known for his lucid and dynamic multi-media presentations on trends and technologies in information and as such is contracted by information vendors, library consortia and national science councils to deliver keynotes at national and regional meetings in Latin America

Duncan Enright

Affiliate Senior Associate

Duncan has spent more than 30 years in STM and professional publishing, delivering growth as a publishing and marketing director in both large multinational and professional society settings.

Most recently, Duncan has led Evidence-based Networks Ltd, a specialist publisher in healthcare, delivering major World Bank projects in Central Asia and winning multiple awards for books in the field of oncology. Previously he was the Publishing Director at the British National Formulary (BNF), the leading healthcare reference in the world and a joint venture between the BMJ Group, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. His responsibilities included the migration to digital forms, a new contract with the UK NHS, and international growth including the launch of the New Zealand Formulary.

Duncan has published in a wide range of academic and professional markets including medicine, engineering, business and management, science and technology. In all of these he has championed the development of publishing strategies that put the professional community at the heart, using their expertise to sift key evidence and decide on best practice; then using the best publishing tools to bring the right information to the appropriate point in the professional workflow to allow better decisions.

As a marketing director at Elsevier for many years Duncan oversaw the growth of digital marketing and championed the role of sales and channel promotions, as well as developing direct and non-traditional ways to reach readers. At the BNF he worked closely with sales colleagues to develop licensing options using XML as the basis for apps and embedded content use.

Duncan’s expertise lies in spotting opportunities for growth, working with stakeholders in a profession to create a new offering, finding and working with the right authors and organisations, deciding on the right way to bring the information to the professional workflow, moving from print to digital forms by using the best new publishing technologies, and winning professionals over to new knowledge products.

Rebecca Erskine

Associate

Rebecca has over 20 years of experience in the digital funding world, having started her career at Grantfinder Ltd and further developing her career at global software and publishing group Idox Software Ltd. Her final role at Idox was as Director of the Grants business unit where she led a team of 40 people in the UK and mainland Europe to develop and deliver highly profitable grants & policy products and services. This included leading new research funding product RESEARCHconnect through inception to delivery and international growth.

Rebecca is well versed in orchestrating activity across multiple business functions including Commercial, Content, Product Development and Marketing. Her expertise spans a number of key areas including go-to-market strategies for the academic sector in mainland Europe and beyond, strategic planning, delivery of focus groups, end-to-end marketing campaigns, content writing, client workshop delivery, development of bid writing courses and sales recruitment.

In her spare time she writes for a regional lifestyle magazine on topics ranging from industrial heritage to restaurant reviews.

Jemma Macfadyen

Affiliate Senior Associate

Jemma has 22 years’ business management and product development experience in the B2B online information industry through senior management roles at Thomson Reuters, Gartner and LexisNexis UK and more recently, through strategic and consulting engagements for large online information and software vendors. Jemma founded Spinnaker Consulting in 2008, a small, successful and well-networked consultancy.

At Thomson Reuters, Jemma was responsible for a range of online, software and advisory services including Consult GEE, online information subscription services for the UK regulatory market. Jemma delivered a completed online product overhaul including usability testing, detailed market research and an accessibility audit. Previous to Thomson Reuters Jemma was at LexisNexis, managing and delivering a range of editorial projects then later heading up the development of online products and services. In addition, Jemma has experience of successfully setting up and delivering strategic partnerships and revenue generating initiatives.

Jemma specialises at the customer and markets end of qualitative research, delivering insight for market planning, segmentation, growth strategies, go-to-market tactics, new online product development and competitive intelligence. She excels at getting to grips with projects and markets quickly and in not just delivering PowerPoint but real, executable outcomes that drive commercial results for clients. Jemma has a first class degree and a scholarship from the University of Manchester.

Janice Kuta

Affiliate Associate (USA)

Janice is a highly respected STM and scholarly publishing industry executive with over 25 years experience. She has worked for both global commercial and not- profit organizations, with a proven a track record for generating profits & surplus, successful in sales, marketing, strategic planning, change management and new business development.

She has a proven ability in developing business partnerships, strategic alliances and branding initiatives, with broad experience in online, digital, web-based products and services. Janice brings a high energy, hands-on approach with excellent cross-cultural communication, team-building and problem-solving skills.

Acting as consultant, Janice was Director of Membership for the International Association of STM Publishers and Marketing & Event Director of Books for Development. She has held Executive and Senior Vice President positions at Classical International, Macmillan Online Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan, AIP Press and Blackwell Publishers. Janice also served as Chair of AAP/PSP’s Executive Committee and has participated as speaker and moderator at many industry events.

Tao Tao

Affiliate Associate, China Specialist

Tao Tao’s entire career has been in scholarly publishing and communication. She started as an Associate Editor of the Chinese Medical Journal, the oldest Chinese academic journal published in English.

Later she joined the Charlesworth Group, a UK publishing services company, and helped establish their first overseas office in Beijing from scratch. There she held the position of General Manager for 15 years, before moving to the US office and taking the position of Vice President China Sales. In 2018 Tao became an Independent Consultant focusing on China market research and development. In this new role she helps both western organizations to explore and further penetrate into China, as well as Chinese publishers to grow their impact internationally.

She is also an active member and volunteer of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (as a member of the Community Engagement Committee) and is also a Scholarly Kitchen chef.

Jonathan Tedds

Affiliate Senior Associate

Jonathan is the ELIXIR Europe Compute Platform Coordinator based at the Cambridge Hub. ELIXIR is an intergovernmental organisation that brings together life science resources from across Europe through secure AAI access and identity management. These resources include databases, software tools and containers, training materials, hybrid cloud services and HPC.

He is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester and as Director of Research and Data Informatics (RED) Informatics Ltd coordinates research and development implementations and consultation in the critical data integration space between multi discipline research and health datasets and systems with the informatics + big data analytics end users. He is an internationally recognised expert in research informatics, compute and data management bringing together research, commercial, public and educational communities including negotiating funding & collaboration with NHS England Code4Health, Genomics England, NIHR, RUK, EU FP6,7 and H2020, Jisc, NSF, RDA, Digital Curation Centre, Wellcome Trust, IBM, Cerner, Eduserv, Arkivum, Aimes, UK Cloud, Krishagni.

He took the lead in the HEFCE/Jisc funded BRISSKit integrated open source biomedical research software solutions for a range of public health, environmental health and multi-disciplinary research challenges. His background also includes Publishing and Peer Review of Research Data online and via Data Journals contributing to leading research articles in the area. He led the Jisc funded PREPARDE project, was a founding Co-Chair of the RDA Publishing Data Interest Group and is Editor-in-Chief of Open Health Data Journal (Ubiquity Press), Associate Editor at Geoscience Data Journal (Wiley).

He has 20+ years research experience in astrophysics and was a Science Team member for the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre, International Virtual Observatory Alliance, European Virtual Observatory and the UK AstroGrid project. He contributes at Advisory Board Level to e.g. BioSharing.org and the UK Environmental Observation Framework Data Advisory Group.

Nancy MacCreery

Affiliate Associate, Marketing and Market Research (USA)

Nancy is a business-oriented marketing professional whose diverse career spans strategic marketing, product and business development for both B2B and consumer products. She has an in-depth knowledge of all the facets of effective marketing strategies and understands the processes needed to create, facilitate and drive the implementation of practical, innovative marketing solutions.

Her industry experience gives her insights into healthcare and professional services as well as e-books and publishing. Nancy implemented groundbreaking market research and digital campaigns for Ingram Digital (VitalSource Technologies) and has developed newsletters and white papers for major publishers. Nancy has worked for both large and small organizations, co-founded, supported and built successful small businesses, and is a life-long continual learner. This diverse background gives her a unique understanding of the challenges in maximizing business resources and priorities.

Her educational foundation is an engineering undergraduate degree complemented by an MBA from Michigan State University; she is the author of several books as well as numerous business publications.

Nancy holds certifications in: Idea and Innovation Management (North Carolina State University); Practical Product Management (Pragmatic Marketing); Inbound Marketing (HubSpot)

Michael Ross

Affiliate Senior Associate

Michael Ross is the President/Founder of Ross & Associates LLC, an educational publishing and technology consultancy. R&A’s clients are based in the U.S., U.K., the Middle East, and Asia, and comprise nonprofits, private equity firms, publishers, content developers, universities, marketers, and corporations.

Before establishing Ross & Associates in 2017, Michael was the SVP and Education GM at Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., where he led the sales and marketing activities in North America and EMEA and ran the product development and technology teams. He led the expansion of the company’s institutional products and databases in the K-12 and higher education channels. Prior to joining Britannica in 2002, he was the EVP and Publisher of World Book, Inc. and previously held executive positions at other global publishing companies. He began his career as an editor for Time-Life Books, including three years in Tokyo.

Michael’s products and publications have had worldwide circulation, have generated substantial revenue over decades, and have won the highest industry awards, including: The Distinguished Achievement and the Golden Lamp Awards from the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP/AAP), and the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) prestigious Codie Award.

Michael has written and spoken extensively on digital publishing and educational technology. In addition to articles in textbooks, journals, and blog posts, he has authored three books, most recently Dealing with Disruption: Lessons from the Publishing Industry (2016, Routledge). He has been a keynote speaker at global conferences such as: The Licensing Executive Society; the Hammond Organization; Book Expo America; BookTech; The London Book Fair; SIIA; the Shanghai Book Fair; and the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Michael was inducted into the PrintMedia Production Executives’ Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Association of Educational Publishers’ Hall of Fame in 2009. He has served on several boards, including the Board of Directors of the Association of Educational Publishers, and one year as president.

Michael holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota; an M.A. from Brandeis University; and a certificate from Stanford University’s Advanced Management College.

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