Societies & Associations – Maverick Publishing Specialists

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.

Jayne Marks

Senior Associate, Head of Business Development EMEA

Jayne brings over 40 years of scholarly publishing experience to Maverick. She has worked at senior levels in a variety of companies helping to devise and deliver on business strategies tailored for different markets. Throughout her career Jayne has responded to ever changing market environments by developing new product, sales or content strategies to maximize new opportunities.

Jayne has worked on all aspects of journal publishing focusing particularly on journal development and strategy. More recently her focus has been on helping journals and societies to respond to the new requirements from funders for more open publications linked to data sets. Jayne has worked with a wide variety of society and association partners to help craft publications that meet the needs of their specific markets and members, spanning disciplines from the basic sciences to social sciences and most recently to the unique challenges of clinical medicine.

Starting as a copy editor and proof-reader, Jayne spent a number of years as a managing editor, helping to managing the peer review process. She then moved to Macmillan, where she worked in a variety of roles on journals and books. In the 1990’s Jayne was a director of the newly formed Nature Publishing Group and managed a range of Nature journals in both the UK and US. She then spent three years as the founding director of MPS Technologies – an off shoot of Macmillan Production in India – developing new services to meet the needs of book and journal publishers.

Jayne then moved to the US to work for SAGE Publishing as VP Journals. Here she helped to expand their journal portfolio and introduce open access journals to the group. For the last 10 years, Jayne worked as Vice President for Wolters Kluwer Health Learning, Research and Practice, overseeing a broad portfolio of journals, working with medical society partners and introducing new product options to help diversify traditional revenue streams.

Jayne’s primary focus has been on understanding the needs of the customers and markets that her products serve and ensuring they evolve to meet changing needs.

Rebecca Rinehart

Senior Associate

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—with emphasis on strategic alignments with societies and associations. 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.

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 also served as Senior Director of Publications at The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, managing a publishing program of books, periodicals, and consumer literature that included the journal, Obstetrics & Gynecology. 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.

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.

Martin Davies

Senior Associate

Martin has over 30 years’ experience of working in the publishing industry. He has worked in a range of sectors including professional, academic, medical, and educational publishing. Before joining Maverick, his latest role was Head of Digital Learning Products at the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) and has previously held e-Learning Director and Publisher roles at Wiley and Editorial Director and Publisher roles at Hodder Education.

Martin has wide-ranging experience from researching and launching e-commerce enabled digital learning platforms, developing textbook programmes for the school, FE and HE sectors in both domestic and international markets as well as the development of professional health sciences book and journal products for global consumption. Additionally, Martin has in-depth knowledge of working collaboratively with membership organisations, digital learning platforms and authoring tools, agile product development, running RFP and tendering exercises and market research projects both in the UK and internationally.

Amanda Weaver

Senior Associate

Amanda is an experienced, MBA educated, strategically aware senior publishing industry professional. With over 35 years in B2B, STM and Professional Association publishing, before joining Maverick her latest role was Director – Professional Publishing and e-Learning at the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology), and previously held both Publisher and Publishing Director positions with Elsevier.

Amanda possesses an excellent track record of growing existing businesses and launching new ones. Her wide-ranging experience includes establishing and overseeing an e-learning academy for the IET; standards and good practice publishing; managing journal and books programmes; launching magazines; and developing conferences. Additionally, Amanda has in-depth expertise in winning society publishing contracts; developing and launching e-products; running RFP and tender exercises; and specifying and implementing new publishing systems.

Lynsey Haire

Senior Associate

Lynsey Haire is a skilled operations leader with almost two decades experience in the publishing industry. An expert in all things peer review, she has deep expertise in manuscript submission, author services, content assessment processing, editor & reviewer engagement programs and procurement of associated technologies and services.

Lynsey headed up peer review systems and services internationally for Taylor & Francis from 2012 to 2023, ultimately as Global Peer Review Director. In this role she led the implementation of online submission systems across the estate as well as roll-out of outsourced journal editorial office services; both programs which required continuous scaling, improvement and iteration to keep pace with a rapidly evolving landscape. She conceptualised, commissioned and scaled key new content assessment capabilities including reviewer selection services, in-house subject matter expert services, roll-out of T&F’s bespoke author-facing Submission Portal and the reviewer recruitment and training program.

A proven process improvement specialist, Lynsey believes strongly in the power of peer review to filter and improve modern scholarship. However, increasing content volumes, fatigued reviewers and bad actors such as papermills put this ~350-year-old trust-based process under significant pressure. With a demonstrated ability to support partners in countering the challenges facing peer review, Lynsey is passionate about harnessing the opportunities and benefits of technology. Her experience and passion is working with teams to optimise journal editorial office efficiency via system change, task sequencing and appropriate automation, whilst supporting staff to keep pace with emerging research integrity best practice.

With close to two decades experience in the field, she is uniquely qualified to support your organisation in balancing the often-competing needs of author customers and volunteer editors to meet your commercial goals.

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.

Anna Drage

Senior Associate, Technology and Content

Anna has spent the last 30 years working in the academic and standards publishing industry, specializing in the editorial and production side of electronic publishing. Her broad-based experience of both e-book, e-journal and production, and her understanding of how editorial processes feed into this process, has supported publishers as diverse as OUP, Walter de Gruyter, and Woodhead Publishing, via online hosts such as Highwire, Atypon, and MetaPress. Working both for and with publishers, Anna has gained valuable insight into the production workflow of journals and e-books, the use of electronic data in online publishing, and working with third party online hosts.

After an early career as assistant editor for a specialist publisher, Anna worked for Oxford University Press in editorial and print production for their Science and Medical Books as well as their Journals Division, where she specialized in electronic production and online hosting. As their Online Project Manager, she managed the transition of OUP hosted journals to a third party host (Highwire) and acted as the main contact between in-house editorial/production staff and Highwire.

In 2003 she moved to OUP Pakistan as Design Manager for Educational Books before returning to the UK as production manager at Medic to Medic, a company providing software solutions to the NHS. In 2006, Anna moved back into the academic publishing, firstly an Account manager for Atypon Systems Inc, and then Senior Client Manager at Publishing Technology. In both these roles she acted as the day-to-day liaison with Publishers, as well as helping them develop their online products and product strategies. Other workplace assignments include working as the ‘E-Project Manager’ for a UK based publisher, working with their in-house teams to establish a new e-book platform using a third-party vendor.

In 2018, Anna’s career focus changed slightly to become a Data Analyst, then a Change Lead, in Editorial Services at the British Standards Institution (BSI). Here, she gained valuable insight into the process of publishing Standards, and working with sponsors and stakeholders to identify improvements in content workflow using Lean management techniques for incremental change to already established processes.

Her current interest is the use of taxonomies/ontologies and AI in the scholarly, academic and standards environment.

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.

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.

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.

Glyn Porritt

Affiliate Senior Associate

Glyn has over 23 years in digital academic publishing, specialising in project management, Agile Leadership, vendor management and support services. He joined microfilm publisher Adam Matthew Publications in early 2002 as their original online project editor. He delivered their first digital products and was integral in the end-to-end bespoke feature development and data design in their digital transformation to AM Digital and subsequent purchase by Sage Publications in 2012.

Glyn has consistently focussed on using technology to enhance research and discovery, such as database projects encoding reference works and the first integration of HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) search facility in primary source publishing. During his time at AM, Glyn launched their in-house technical team and as Head of Technical oversaw the creation of federated search tools and Quartex, a groundbreaking SaaS primary source publishing platform.

Glyn has extensive vendor management experience for partners delivering software; cloud and managed hosting; preservation; digitisation; data processing and discovery services. He is an ITIL4 Specialist and has operated within Agile teams since 2008. He is passionate about utilising Lean, Agile, DevOps and ITIL to drive genuine efficiency and continuous improvement, formalise support services and enable support lines to shift left. Glyn has a Masters in Contemporary History from the University of Bristol.

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.

Emilie McDermott

Affiliate Senior Associate

Emilie provides Editorial Management Solutions to Publishers, Editors and Journal owners. She has a broad range of expertise within academic publishing and has managed Book projects as well as academic Journals. She has a wealth of knowledge around Rights and Permissions, advising customers about copyright and attribution. Acting as a Senior Content Editor within an Editorial team, she has expertise in managing Editorial Boards, peer review management and is familiar with systems such as ScholarOne and Editorial Manager.

Within the Production department Emilie managed an overseas team to ensure regular copy flow was maintained for her portfolio and identify any potential issues and provide solutions. Ensuring schedules were adhered to and that journals were typeset to standard were also amongst her responsibilities. Emilie’s main passion lies within publication ethics, having worked as a Research Integrity Manager handling cases of ethical misconduct and conducting investigations in accordance with industry standards. As a Community Advisor for UKRIO, Emilie is constantly developing her knowledge of this area, as it continually challenges academic publishing and the scholarly community.

Emilie has worked at Clarivate as an Editor at Web of Science, conducting evaluations and providing feedback and guidance on journals around best practice and offering Editorial recommendations for Publishers. Emilie offers a multifaceted end-to-end skillset and is familiar with the systems, operating practices and challenges that Publishers and Editorial boards are managing.

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/).

Maria 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.

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.

Karen McKeown

Affiliate Senior Associate

Karen is passionate about helping B2B SaaS and Cloud companies unlock their growth potential, bringing fresh perspectives shaped by launching over 50 products across technology, learning, and research markets. Karen’s a veteran of many different roles in companies that focus on education, learning, and research – introducing services such as the hosting of Archives at JSTOR, leading usage-impacting integrations and design improvements at Gale/Cengage, conceptualizing and launching new research databases at ProQuest, and helping to launch OCLC’s Worldshare service.

Whether crafting compelling positioning, developing go-to-market strategies, advising on product roadmaps and launches, or creating high-impact marketing programs, she enjoys rolling up her sleeves to help teams achieve measurable results.

Her approach combines strategic thinking with hands-on execution – you might find her running a positioning workshop one day and creating interactive product demos or a sales pitch deck the next. She’s particularly energized by pioneering new approaches to solve problems or market challenges, whether that’s streamlining go-to-market processes or leveraging AI tools to enhance market research and content creation.

Having led product marketing initiatives at companies such as Skillsoft (Corporate e-learning), Macmillan Learning (Higher Ed e-learning) ITHAKA (JSTOR, ARTSTOR, PORTICO), Gale/Cengage, OCLC, and ProQuest/Clarivate – she understands the unique challenges of complex solutions and rapidly changing markets. She brings a depth of experience to her consulting work, helping teams quickly identify opportunities and implement practical solutions that drive growth.

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.

Mark Berthelemy

Affiliate Senior Associate

Mark Berthelemy is an experienced consultant working at the intersection of business, learning and technology – helping translate between technical and non-technical audiences.

With his deep knowledge of digital media and a solid understanding of the technologies underpinning modern online learning and content management systems, he is able to help organisations to review their existing provision and design and procure new solutions.

Mark has worked within large and small corporations, in public sector bodies and in international non-governmental organisations. He is able to work and communicate at all organisational levels – facilitating change and offering hands-on support where necessary.

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.

Jo Havemann

Affiliate Associate, Global Research & Publishing Equity

Dr. Johanna Havemann (commonly referred to as ‘Jo’) brings enthusiasm for new ideas, projects, and viewpoints to the Mavericks team. Her aspiration is to share the tools, strategies and workflows developed over years, encouraging scholarly publishing with a global perspective in dedicated service for the dissemination of research accomplishments to enable their unfolding to societal and environmental benefits.

Jo is a certified trainer recognized by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce with over a decade of experience in Open Science Communication. Her biological research background culminated in a PhD in Molecular Biology specialized in Evolution and Developmental Research (EvoDevo).

Driven by a passion for Open Science, Jo embarked on a journey with Access 2 Perspectives to alleviate the challenges faced by researchers and to facilitate enjoyable research practices, alleviate publication pressures, and dispel myths surrounding Open Science and Open Access. This commitment stems from personal experiences during her PhD journey, and the realization that research practices should be purpose-oriented, fostering collaboration on a global scale.

Grounded in values such as transparency, accountability, cooperation, and diversity, Jo’s expertise lies in Open Science; Scholarly Reading, Writing and Publishing; Research Integrity; and Global Research Equity. At Access 2 Perspectives, Jo collaborates with institution-independent consultants to provide comprehensive comparisons of scholarly services by both commercial and non-commercial providers, enabling researchers, librarians and publishers across disciplines to streamline their digital workflows efficiently.

A notable achievement for Jo is her work with AfricArXiv – the African Open Access portal, leveraging the discoverability of African research primarily through the adoption of Persistent Identifiers.

Dedicated to life-long learning, Jo currently engages in brainstorming and sharing of best practices as a member of the OpenAIRE Training Coordinators – Community of Practice, the Subscribe to Open (S2O) Community of Practice, and the SDG Publishers Compact Fellows.

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.

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.

Giles Grant

Affiliate Senior Associate

Giles brings over 34 years’ experience in the global information industry, with extensive knowledge of driving transformational strategic change across B2B, B2C, STM, and Learned Societies in the Information, SaaS, and Solution sectors. Giles is passionate about the transformative impact of data, content and AI, with over 25 years’ experience of digitizing businesses and leveraging technology for strategic advantage as well as internal efficiencies across multiple businesses.

Formerly the Executive Director of the IET’s Knowledge Services & Solutions, he transformed the business, from initiating the largest journal flip to Open Access in partnership with Wiley, to an award-winning entry into the analytics and intelligence market.

His previous roles include VP Global Marketing for the Nature Research Unit at Springer Nature, reshaping marketing to become digitally driven and attribution focused; SVP for Pearson’s £200M English Language Teaching business, building and delivering eLearning and Assessment solutions & services to learners (primary, secondary/K12 and tertiary) and English language teachers globally- and VP of Strategy & Corporate Development at Thomson Reuters, where he drove corporate development, business unit management and expansion globally across both the Legal, and the Tax & Accounting Divisions.

Earlier in his career Giles was, Group Managing Director for Digital Strategy & Development, and Managing Director for the Interactive Marketing Division at Incisive Media. He also spent six years, as Managing Director at BSI, creating the Information business (centered on standards), part of an innovative digital/online joint venture with HIS (tripling the business globally over 5 years). He began his career at Reed Elsevier, holding senior general management positions in the UK, Americas and Asia Pacific.

Giles’ key skills include transformational growth, business turnarounds (from strategy creation and implementation development & corporate development) to digitisation via both organic growth, partnerships, and acquisitions. Over his career he has either led or been part of over 40+ M&A transactions with end-to-end oversight from strategic identification to investment and integration. He is also skilled in establishing global strategic partnerships, including JVs and outsourcing agreements across software, workflow solutions, and consultancy providers such as Deloitte, EY, Wiley, Clarivate, and Reed Elsevier.

Giles has been for many years part of the Outsell Executive Leadership Council. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a Fellow of Chartered Institute of Marketing and has an MBA from Bradford University Business School & NIMBAS/Utrecht.

Maverick Societies & Associations

Maverick

Key Services

Information

Contact