Sales Support – Maverick Publishing Specialists

Martin Marlow

President and Principal

Martin Marlow is the President and Principal of Maverick Publishing Specialists. He oversees the overall organisation, coordinates the Associate teams, and often works as the lead analyst on a number of key assignments. With over 38 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 noted as one of 5 “key thought leaders” in the information industry in the UKSG’s Management Handbook, and is frequently consulted to provide his views and opinions on the future of electronic publishing and the industry as a whole.

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 Moakes

CEO

Rebecca is an accomplished senior publishing professional specialising in developing cutting-edge digital resources and delivering B2B and B2C products and services. With over 16 years’ experience working for and with publishers, she offers a combination of strategic, commercial and technical insights to deliver measurable business goals.

She has a proven track record of facilitating collaborative relationships between technical and business teams; informing product development through marketing intelligence and web analytics; and translating business requirements into user stories. As a champion of agile, and UCD, she has engaged extensively with end users through focus groups, interviews and usability testing to ensure a seamless experience which supports the product vision.

During her role at Taylor & Francis, as a Senior Digital Product Manager, she drove forward the digital collections product portfolio, designing and launching new primary archive resources for the global research market. She also implemented key enhancements to the journals platform such as delivering article metrics, automated open access, e-commerce support for ANZ dollars and enabled alternative publishing models.

Prior to this role she worked at Atypon as an Account Manager and Blackwell Publishers as the Electronic Production Editor. In both of these companies Rebecca managed major content migration projects for both books and journals, including transforming 381 journals into a fully XML workflow, and moving content onto new hosting environments. She was instrumental in optimizing content processes, establishing new quality standards, providing extensive technical support and online publishing expertise.

Rick Naylor

Head of Marketing

Rick brings to Maverick product and brand marketing knowledge and expertise acquired from over two decades of helping companies in multiple industries achieve ambitious business goals by building successful marketing organizations from the ground up. His strengths in messaging, publicity, content, digital, CRM, advertising, social media and other tactics make for consistently robust and cohesive marketing plans and high-return campaign execution. With a passion for innovative initiatives that push the creative envelope, he has held senior-level marketing roles and managed the marketing for a wide range of scholarly publishing products and services.

George Farina

Senior Associate (USA)

George Farina has demonstrated his business development and leadership acumen across executive level positions of substantial scope and responsibility both for major global STM publishers as well as distributors. His corporate experience includes senior level sales/marketing and business development positions with iGroup (Asia Pacific) Ltd (marketing and distribution to academic libraries throughout Asia, E-book licensing, US start-up publishing operations and finance support); Joint Commission Resources (healthcare accreditation and patient safety publishing, e-learning and training); Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (clinical medicine/nursing publishing); Thomson International Publishing (university textbooks/professional reference publishing) as well as eight years living in Tokyo and working with Longman/Pearson (ELT publishing).

With a keen understanding of key market and business drivers, George has risen to the level of complete P&L responsibility for business units in excess of $100 million. He is skilled in strategic planning and in developing and executing growth strategies yielding significant increases in revenues and profits.

He has extensive global experience, is well versed in the details of international expansion, distributor networks and global partnering, and is recognized for cost-effective sales expansion into new markets, restructuring and building sales organizations that achieve targets, hands-on development of senior level, high profile customer relationships and excellence in customer service.

Kate Wood

Senior Associate

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.

Gary Bowman

Senior Associate

Gary has over 30 years’ experience working in the publishing industry. He originally started his career at Butterworths (now part of Reed Elsevier) and subsequently had a variety of senior management roles including Customer Service Director, Development Director, and Implementation Services Director. Before joining up with Maverick, alongside establishing his own consultancy company, Gary’s his most recent roles were with Vista/Ingenta, where he progressed through various senior positions during his time with the company.

Gary is an accomplished Project & Team Manager, with practical experience of many system implementations across different publishing sectors in both the UK and Europe, as well as North America. He has extensive knowledge of Order Management, WMS, Rights & Royalty, CRM, Product Manager, Production and Permission systems – and he was also directly responsible for leading the team that built and implemented the original, widely used, global PubEasy system over 20 years ago.

Equally happy working as part of a team, or directly managing teams or people, Gary’s significant and wide-ranging knowledge and expertise enables him to provide business consultancy and project management across a variety of areas. These include system implementations and upgrades; business process and operational reviews; business system requirements; definition and design; system integrations; and data migration projects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Pallai

Affiliate Senior Associate

David has been in the publishing industry for over 40 years, with expertise spanning both the scholarly, professional, and textbook sectors. Alongside business transformation and growth strategy development, his expertise also includes content acquisition, editorial management, and digital product development.

With a keen entrepreneurial vision and extensive knowledge of the evolving publishing landscape, David has founded, developed, and successfully sold three publishing companies. He has driven significant growth across multiple organizations, notably in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content.

David was president and founder of Mercury Learning and Information, managing all publishing operations until its acquisition by W. DeGruyter GmbH in 2023. Previously he led Jones and Bartlett Learning’s computer science/math division, achieving revenue increase from $2.7 million to $5.5 million within two years. At Infinity Science Press and Charles River Media, he oversaw title production in engineering, computer science, game development and digital filmmaking, with both companies ultimately being acquired by major industry players.

David’s earlier career saw him hold senior roles at Academic Press and Addison-Wesley, (where he launched the successful AP Professional imprint) and began his publishing career in textbook sales for Prentice Hall.

David has also served as an adjunct instructor at Boston University and Emerson College, holds an MA in English Literature from Yale University and dual degrees (BA and MA) from Boston College. He is a member of MENSA, the ASEE, and was a member of the STM Innovations Committee.

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.

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.

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.

Stefan Kendzierskyj

Affiliate Senior Associate

Stefan Kendzierskyj has an extensive background in commercial, consulting, and strategic leadership, holding senior and executive-level positions with technology solution-led companies servicing the publishing, fintech, government, and cybersecurity sectors.

After working a number of years as senior business development in financial accountancy software and database systems industries, he moved into the publishing sector. There he managed government clients and grew new business as a risk publisher for The Stationery Office (part of Williams Lea), leading high-profile projects for the Home Office, Foreign Office, MoD, and large bid tenders. He deployed a number of successful digital initiatives at TSO. Subsequently, Stefan moved to the software vendor side of the industry as Executive Vice President for Sales with the digital transformation company, Impelsys Inc. Over the next 10 years, he built and managed the EMEA/APAC regional sales team, executing P&L, forecasting and budget, responsibilities alongside achieving high revenue growth, extensive regional development, and winning/implementing multi-million Euro digital transformation deals.

Post Impelsys, Stefan has undertaken publishing and Web3 projects including iGaming, blockchain, and cybersecurity – and led (as a senior consultant) many publishing discovery phases, market research/analysis, and strategic selling initiatives.

He holds a master’s degree in Cybersecurity and is an accomplished author in emerging technology subjects, such as blockchain, self-sovereign identity, AI, cyber warfare, and cyberattacks/threats – with published works through Springer, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, IGI, and World Scientific.

Jason De Boer

Affiliate Senior Associate

With 30 years’ experience in a diverse range of roles and sectors within publishing and information services, Jason works with clients to support their business growth, strategy delivery, customer outreach and product development.

During his career, Jason has held senior commercial and client-facing business development roles with Kriyadocs, Aries Systems, Elsevier, The Charlesworth Group, OCLC, Thomson Learning (now Cengage) and the British Standards Institution (BSI). In these roles, he has worked with a broad range of institutional and corporate customers. In recent years, Jason has helped publishers to optimise their editorial and production processes, focussing on technology and services to improve author experience, support peer review, implement XML-first workflows, and integrating AI tools to support editorial decision making. He is also a CIPD qualified trainer, with experience of recruiting, leading and coaching sales teams.

Since late 2020 Jason has been living in the rural tranquillity of the Creuse region of France.

Lisa McCarthy

Affiliate Senior Associate

Lisa consults across transformation, strategy, sales enablement, and training. She has 20+ years of experience successfully leading end-to-end business transformation programmes and operational improvements in Academic publishing from ideation to cultural integration, utilising coaching, training and leadership practices to steer teams towards shared goals and outcomes. She has also worked on technology enabling change, strategic planning, facilitating culture shifts, sustainable change adoption and process design.

Lisa has extensive expertise in sales enablement and training and feels passionate about creating the best possible environment for sales teams to thrive in a digital selling landscape. She specialises in driving real behavioural change across regional and global teams, with a strong track record of leading global cross-cultural teams across diverse operational levels and functions.

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.

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.

Dr Neeraj Mehta

Affiliate Senior Associate

Dr Neeraj Mehta is a Publishing and Life Sciences solution expert, having over 17 years of cumulative experience at various levels in Consulting, Solution Selling in Pharma & Publishing, Market Research, Teaching, Drug Discovery and Preclinical Evaluation, Pharmaceutical Research and Development. He has served organizations such as WILEY, SmartAnalyst, Panjab University, Punjab Technical University, Council of Scientific an Industrial Research, University Grants Commission and Panacea Biotech. Neeraj has been involved in leading strategy development, delivering profitable outcomes, incorporation of rationalizing, cost saving initiatives and resolving of significant operational matters. He has built highly profitable businesses from scratch by creating high performance collaborative sales & project teams. He is currently engaged in global consulting assignments related to discoverability enhancement solutions for publishers/societies/associations, while also acting as advisor to companies offering technology solutions to life sciences companies.

Neeraj is M.Pharm., Ph.D. in Drug Discovery and PGDM in Marketing and International Business. He has been an Author with Elsevier & Springer, and, Reviewer with Bentham Sciences He has 6 Patents, 4 Research Papers in International Journals, 3 Poster Presentations in International Conferences and 35+ Poster Presentations in National Conferences (including 4 Best Poster Awards) to his credit. He is a “foodie”, who loves to travel, cook and play chess in his free time!

Manish Singh

Affiliate Senior Associate, India + South Asia

Manish is a respected sales and marketing professional with over 18 years’ experience in the publishing industry and an in-depth knowledge of the South Asian market. He started his career in 2002 at Informatics, Bangalore, where he headed the Wolters Kluwer- Ovid and ProQuest business for South Asia when Informatics was their exclusive distributor. He also managed Informatics’ own products business lines alongside all other international publisher partners for Delhi and the adjoining NCR (National Capital Region). In his role, Manish led all key national level consortia agreements for e-resources in India, whilst working with the who’s who of the state/provincial and central/federal government departments/ministries/academic and research institutes across most of the subject disciplines.Over 7 years at Informatics, Manish and his team achieved a multi-million-dollar business – initially in Bangalore and later (for the larger part) in Delhi.

Subsequently, Manish joined CABI’s publishing division to establish their sales office and direct sales operations for the South Asia region. Over 11 years at CABI, he not only recruited and mentored a result-oriented team of sales & marketing professionals, but also substantially grew the CABI business and client base for both e-products/eBooks/databases as well as printed books. In his role as General Manager – Sales for South Asia, Manish introduced CABI’s flagship database to the ICAR’s (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) CeRA (Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture), resulting in the highest ever value deal for 102 Research Institutes/Universities alongside the biggest ever deal for printed books. Manish has an undergraduate degree in Physics with honours from the University of Delhi and an MBA from SYMBIOSIS in Pune, a top 10 Indian B’School.

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.

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