Technology & Content | Maverick Publishing Specialists

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.

Rebecca Moakes

Head of Business Development EMEA, Senior Associate, Content & Technology

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.

Nancy Roberts

Senior Associate, Head of Content & Technology Division

Nancy has worked in a variety of production and operations roles across publishing for the last 20 years, following on from the completion of her postgraduate publishing diploma at West Herts College. Her experience encompasses a wide spectrum of sectors, from children’s to trade to academic, culminating in her most recent role as Academic Global Operations Director at Cambridge University Press, during which time she spent time working out of the Hong Kong office and travelling extensively in Asia, Europe and the US. She therefore has a global view of the publishing industry and brings a uniquely broad perspective gained from across the different sectors in which she has worked.

Nancy is passionate about helping businesses to solve problems and deliver sustainable profitability and process efficiency. She specializes in operations strategy and execution; process design and improvement; delivering operational efficiency and profitability; digital workflows; metadata and content enrichment and dissemination; organizational design; supply chain management; outsourcing and offshoring strategies; project management; and knowledge management. She also enjoys providing personal coaching and support to first time managers and leaders. She has a PhD in Postcolonial Feminist Literary Theory and is currently an EMBA student at Cranfield University.

Jayne Marks

Senior Associate

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.

Andrea Eastman-Mullins

Senior Affiliate Associate

Andrea is a digital publishing and e-learning professional with over 25 years of experience in all aspects of aggregated collections for teaching and research. In executive and product management roles for ProQuest, Alexander Street Press, Chadwyck-Healey, and SIRS, she developed over 300 library databases including the first streaming video and audio collections for academic libraries. Most recently, Andrea launched West End Learning, a new business providing services and products to accelerate the adoption of OER and affordable learning resources.

Andrea is interested in improving access to education through open pedagogy, libraries, and archives. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Higher Education Administration with a focus on Instructional Design. Her graduate work included research on the peer review process of MERLOT.org, one of the first aggregations of digital learning objects. Andrea also led faculty development initiatives statewide with the University of North Carolina’s Teaching and Learning with Technology Collaborative.

At ProQuest, Andrea was Vice President, Product Management for an $80M product line used globally in K-12, higher education, and public libraries. Prior to her work with ProQuest, Andrea was COO with Alexander Street, leading strategic planning and execution of all publishing plans. Andrea oversaw the Production, Software Development, and Human Resources departments including a staff of 50+ and all product budgets. She was a key member of the Executive Team that grew the business from $5M to $30M before it sold to ProQuest.

Andrea has been a speaker at Charleston, ER&L, UKSG, MLA, and EDUCAUSE and was interviewed for articles on OER in Against the Grain and Research Information.

Maria Hatfield

Senior Associate

Maria has over 17 years of experience working in the academic and scholarly sector in various roles including publisher & vendor relations, product, account, business development, and senior management. She started in the industry managing the Title Information Department for the subscription agent, WT Cox Information Services and moved on to other roles with the organization culminating in Vice-President of Integrated Solutions. Maria most recently worked as Senior Business Development Manager at Research Solutions overseeing the go-to-market launch and as product owner of their newest product for academic libraries.

Maria has presented at various conferences and has been an active member of NASIG for over 12 years serving on various committees and the Executive Board. She has maintained a keen interest in library technology, standards and data over her career, including being a member of the ISO/TC 046/SC 09/WG 05 ISSN Revision Working Group Committee.

Emma Thomas

Senior Associate

Emma has worked in a variety of editorial, strategy, production and operations roles in academic publishing for the last 27 years. Her experience includes working at major publishers like OUP, Wiley, Emerald and Springer Nature, as well as managing production and peer review for the British Psychological Society.

She specializes in operations strategy and execution; systems and workflows that support Open Access; organizational change management; process design and improvement; delivering operational efficiency and profitability; digital workflows; project management, and business development (journals editorial). She is a qualified coach, experienced facilitator, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and ProSci Change Manager.

Alison Maclean

Senior Associate

Alison is a publishing operations executive with international experience in concept-to-market editorial and content management in trade, education, reference and professional publishing. She has shaped publishing programs, directed content operations, and marshalled complex project portfolios to deliver significant benefits. Her focus is on bridging from stakeholder priorities to execution, leveraging organizational design, technology solutions and process optimization for scalable results.

Most recently, Alison held the position VP Content Enablement at Wiley. Her brief included defining and executing strategic initiatives to control cost and to make colleagues’ work more meaningful. She led the global team responsible for process design, content technology, editorial standards, accessibility initiatives, data governance, KPI design and reporting, and vendor management. Prior to that, she was a tenured professor and program director of Creative Book Publishing at Humber College (Ontario), guiding graduate students to best practices in book publishing.

With a proven ability to forge successful partnerships, Alison is adept at productive collaboration. Her experience and passion is working with teams to commission, shape and deliver content with clarity and impact.

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.

Stephen Laverick

Senior Associate

Stephen has over 20 years’ experience in scholarly publishing with time spent working in both the UK and China.

Primarily focused on digital publishing solutions, during his time as Technical Director at The Charlesworth Group, Stephen was instrumental in overseeing the development of robust, scalable and efficient XML-first workflows for OA megajournals for the likes of PLOS, Nature and RSC as well as tailoring solutions around specific publisher requirements. He was also heavily involved in the growth of the Charlesworth China subsidiary through the migration of production work and accompanying training of local staff, to the creation and subsequent management of a dedicated technical development team consisting of Beijing, China and UK based programming support teams.

Stephen later moved on to work with Edanz Editing, again based in Beijing, as Integration Manager. Here, his main role was to ensure that the companies “publication process” based suite of author services met the needs of the publishing community by forming and managing collaborative partnerships with a wide range of both publishers and third-parties to create efficient workflows. Stephen was also able to make use of his experience in XML-first publishing workflow integration, advising on technical infrastructure and feature requirements for the development of an online authoring eco-system aimed at simplifying the publication process for authors who have English as a second-language.

More recently Stephen was a key figure in the setup of the Alliance for Scientific Editing in China, an industry response to the growth in unethical practices in author services in China. He is a member of the Society of Scholarly Publishers, volunteering on the Membership Committee, and is involved in the JATS4R initiative to introduce standardisation in the use of JATS XML. Stephen is also well versed in budget management, cross-departmental reporting and has had ongoing regular involvement in strategic planning initiatives for business development within his organisations.

Stephen has been a regular conference speaker and attendee at industry events such as SSP, ISMTE and ALPSP. He is now based in North Yorkshire, UK offering advice on XML and digital publishing workflows.

Gavin Jamieson

Senior Associate

Gavin has over 30 years’ experience working in the publishing industry, primarily in the academic and STM sectors. After graduating with a BA in Publishing from Edinburgh Napier University, he originally started his career in medical journals with Churchill Livingstone. Subsequently he had a variety of senior management roles including Journals and Electronic Publisher with Greenwich Medical Media, Commissioning Editor for books and journals at Cambridge University Press and Hodder Education. Before joining up with Maverick, and establishing his own consultancy company, Gavin was Senior Commissioning Editor with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE Publishing).

Gavin has extensive experience at list building, commissioning new titles and acquiring journals, managing online resources, strategy planning and working with international editors and authors. He has most recently been working with international societies to project manage the publication of conference proceedings, and creating a strategy for journal inclusion in major abstracting/indexing services.

Gavin has been an invited guest speaker on STM publishing at University College London, University of Strathclyde and Edinbrugh Napier University. He is a Director of the annual Cuckfield Book Festival, working with high profile fiction and non-fiction authors, and his Lapwing Publishing Services imprint provides a hybrid publishing route for authors.

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.

Rob McPherson

Senior Associate

Rob adds over 30 years of highly-technical experience in the STM / Scholarly publishing and Distribution industries – together with a track record of calm, pragmatic and incisive lateral thinking – to the Maverick team

From his early career in IT Development at Blackwell Science and then Marston Book Services, Rob quickly moved into project management, business analysis and then senior management with Ingenta, before setting up his own consultancy company and subsequently working with United Independent Distributors.

Rob has worked internationally in India, Sri Lanka, China and Australia; relocating to Sri Lanka for a number of years to set up and run an offshore development centre. He is also the author of white papers on prospective market expansion, third-party representation and M&A projects in China and Australia.

His project management experience includes the end-to-end implementation of ERP solutions, warehouse management systems, B2B/BC2 e-commerce systems, data warehouses, third-party logistics integration and inventory transition projects.

A highly experienced business consultant and corporate trouble-shooter, his areas of expertise include: RFP generation, feasibility studies, lost-revenue recovery, cost-saving projects and post-implementation reviews. Rob also has significant product management experience and has created numerous third-party integrations, reseller agreements and associated legal contracts.

Gareth Jarratt

Senior Associate

Gareth brings 28 years of experience working within the print and electronic supply chains of trade and academic publishers, most recently as the Director of Book Publishing Services at Taylor & Francis. A keen believer that the best publishing is for nothing if customers can neither find, access, or use it, he has made it his mission to ensure that books can get to customers when they want it, wherever they want it, in the format they want it, in a manner that is both financially and environmentally sustainable.

With responsibilities in areas including inventory management, procurement, and supplier management (including RFPs) on a global basis, Gareth has led projects including major distributor changes as well as driving broader supply chain transformation, with its supporting process re-engineering, as well as mass backlist digitisation (across print and e-products), and ongoing content and metadata enhancement. He has been involved in business systems selection and implementation and has handled numerous publisher acquisitions, integrations and divestments. With a clear sense of the pressures facing the industry, he is a strong believer in the power of teams working together to forge solutions to those challenges, and of the importance of quick tactical, as well as longer term strategic solutions. He is a Director at Book Industry Communications.

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.

Ken Heideman

Senior Associate

As Director of Publications at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for over 20 years, Ken managed a large team of publication assistants, technical editors, and copy editors, collectively responsible for the timely publication of 11 scholarly peer-reviewed journals. He also supervised all aspects of the AMS Book Program. In addition, he was Senior Editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the society’s flagship magazine. Ken’s management philosophy focused on each individual’s unique needs and strengths while forging a close-knit team ethic. This resulted in exemplary performance by the group as a cohesive whole and led to his development of a Publication Management course, which he has presented at many professional conferences.

Ken became a liaison from AMS to the greater publishing community, primarily via his involvement with the Council of Science Editors (CSE), an international membership organization for publishing professionals. Prior to being elected President of CSE, he served the organization as an executive board member, instructor, a regular columnist in the quarterly journal Science Editor, and a mentor for early-career professionals. CSE provided Ken with invaluable experience interfacing and working with leaders of other scholarly societies.

Ken is a wordsmith and communicator —an editor, writer, content developer, management consultant, and public speaker —who specializes in adapting complex and technical concepts to any target audience. His skill set and interests extend well beyond the scientific realm to a wide variety of technical and creative genres. By way of background, Ken holds an advanced degree in meteorology. However, he learned early on in his career that his literary talents superseded his forecasting abilities. He thus wisely chose to spend his career in service to the written and spoken word rather than in anticipation of precipitation.

Micah Vandegrift

Senior Associate

Micah Vandegrift is a librarian with more than a decade of experience developing strategic and practical approaches to open science on university campuses. He has a distinct knowledge of library positioning in the evolving research environment, especially in the areas of open science, digital scholarship, and open publishing. His portfolio includes: consulting with campus-based open access journals on improving discovery, institutional repository development, experimental publishing with new and emerging media, and an advanced knowledge of intellectual property.

Micah researched the overlap between open science policies and technical infrastructure in Europe as a Fulbright-Schuman Research Fellow in 2018-2019. His project, titled “Open Scholarship Policies and Technologies: The European Research Library as a Model for Advancing Global Scholarly Communication,” was carried out at Maastricht University in The Netherlands and at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. This research has led to a deeper interest in sustainable open infrastructure and scientific community management.

Micah is confident and passionate about centering researchers and their needs in the evolution of scholarly communication, examining and preempting research policy changes at local and national levels, and exploring new modes of research communication and their impact. He approaches challenges methodically and creatively, and borrows liberally from software development approaches to project development.

Jane Anderson

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.

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.

Aengus Carroll

Senior Associate

Aengus has been working on the editorial and production end of print and digital publishing since 1990, initially with Oxford University Press in journal production. Working on a freelance basis since 1993, and based in Ireland, he has managed numerous reference, educational and humanities titles from concept/proposal through to delivery of bound copy, overseeing standards for the commissioning publisher and their authors. Similarly, he has produced many documents, reports and various ephemeral materials for both marketing and advocacy contexts. Such work frequently has an editorial developmental element, prior to substantive or technical processes. In concert with the client, Aengus oversees the format and design of the material (the look and organisation); its editorial process to ensure quality (copy editing, proofing); and its translation to specified audiences (targeted, academic or general reader, language).

Aengus has also maintained editorial consultancies with several state agencies and institutions in Ireland (such as the National Educational Welfare Board [now TUSLA] and the Irish Human Rights Commission, amongst others – assisting them in both planning and executing their publishing programs, and in delivering their content. Aengus holds a Masters degree in international human rights law. Over the past decade, he has researched and compiled materials for organisations working with the UN and EU systems, and written for international development agencies such as USAID, SIDA and others. Aengus also has much experience in delivering contemporary sensitive content to a variety of audiences, including in professional and business contexts. He brings substantial editorial and production management skills to Maverick’s Technology and Content division.

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.

Simon Crump

Senior Associate

Simon has worked for over 25 years for various publishers, mainly in production related roles. He started his career learning all about production from author manuscript to bound book. Since then he has worked for Academic Publishers and as his career has progressed moved further down the production process to be an expert in printing and binding, and supply chain activities. He has also worked in the USA, and has a global view of publishing process as a result of this. His most recent role was as Head of Supply Chain Operations at Cambridge University Press.

Simon is passionate about producing beautiful books in all formats and technologies to the appropriate quality. He expertise covers product management; operations management, supply chain management; strategic planning; budgeting and forecasting; project management; change management; process redesign; problem solving and team leadership. He has run a number of RFPs during his time at Cambridge University Press. Simon is regarded as a strong and supportive leader who actively promotes a coaching environment of continual improvement and best practice. He enjoys working with people to help them develop their careers.

Mark Purvis

Affiliate Senior Associate, Publishing and Open Access

Mark has spent the last 30 years in scholarly and b2b publishing, specialising in delivering product and portfolio growth in challenging and changing markets. Most recently, he has been focused on finding solutions to the challenges of open access in the scholarly publishing market. He was the OA lead at IOP Publishing where he was responsible for bringing open access right into the heart of the organisation. He has experience in a very broad range of open access business models, including consortial models like SCOAP3 and transformative agreements. He launched a new portfolio of fully gold OA journals at IOP and also played a major role in developing IOP’s open access and open data policies.

He started his career at Elsevier editing scientific journals and managing peer review before spending more than 15 years helping to build Elsevier’s magazine and newsletter publishing division during the transition to digital publication. His expertise lies in enabling teams to produce high quality and profitable editorial products that meet the needs of their customers, whether those customers are researchers, readers, editors, societies, librarians or funders. He relishes finding practical solutions to challenging problems and has worked with staff, customers and partners from every corner of the world.

Howard Blythe

Senior Associate, Marketing and Market Research

Howard provides Maverick with nearly two decades of experience in corporate, graphic, exhibition and website design. He works in consultation with our clients in the conception, design and production of online and offline marketing and market research activities – including brand development, pricing and product placement, physical market presence (point of use; point of presence) and marketing materials. His team have experience across all traditional and digital marketing and market feedback/interaction channels (including online surveying and analysis, SEO, Social Networking and multimedia marketing) and have worked with the widest range of specific market requirements and available budgets.

Howard’s clients include leading information industry intermediaries and publishers. Howard’s background includes the establishment and ownership of 212Design – a full marketing services company that he ran for 11 years. Howard and his team have in-depth experience of working as strategic or operational marketing consultants, for large corporations as well as “start-ups” and specialist niche suppliers.

Mark Styles

Affiliate Associate, Higher Education Textbooks and Online Digital Learning

Mark has over 10 years’ experience in the Higher Education textbook and digital solutions market, gained in a variety of editorial, advisory and management roles with John Wiley & Sons Ltd, combining both hands-on project experience with strategic level planning.

Acquiring, developing, and delivering content across a range of subject areas in both print and digital formats, Mark has a proven track record in conceptualising and producing innovative products and solutions aligned to exacting individual customer and broader market requirements.

Having managed Wiley’s custom publishing programme for the EMEA market, Mark has worked closely with sales and business development teams to create content strategies and deliver solutions for international as well as UK clients. Success has come through Mark’s capacity to control margins and ensure timely delivery of complex projects by managing effectively and building strong relationships across locations, vendors and stakeholders.

Working in high-growth markets such as the Middle East and Asia, and by significantly increasing market share for new products, Mark has demonstrated and received awards for his ability to adapt to new and challenging conditions within publishing.

Chris Humphrey

Senior Associate

Chris has spent 10 years running operations for Cambridge Scholars Publishing, working on streamlining activities right through the publication process, including management and oversight of an in-house print production environment, a semi-automated pre-press and author liaison system through the use of a bespoke database system, and a warehousing and fulfilment department. As a result of CSP’s initiative to offer production and fulfilment services to other academic and non-academic publishers, he has a wide range of experience with the challenges publishers typically face and enjoys thinking creatively about the best ways to approach them. Having also worked extensively and directly with authors for many years, he also has a solid understanding of the need to balance efficiency and optimisation, with traditional publishing values, and how to present modernisation efforts in a positive way.

Chris is a passionate problem solver, with a particular keenness for data analysis driven decision making and process improvement. He specialises in improving operational efficiency and profitability, organisational design, supply chain management, data analysis, internal technical systems and database development oversight, distribution channel development and streamlining, project management and author liaison/publishing specific challenges (rights, production, legal, etc), and product pricing analysis and strategic review. He studied Chinese at university and has an EMBA (distinction grade) from Durham University. He is currently also learning the programming language python, having worked with it extensively as a manager for many years.

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!!

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.

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

Eloisa Viggiani

Affiliate Senior Associate, Latin and South America

Eloisa brings to Maverick knowledge and expertise in bibliographic databases and research evaluation. Her career in the publishing industry began 15 years ago, when she joined Elsevier as a consultant for research intelligence. In this role, she engaged with journal editors and scholarly publishing associations in Latin America and with Scopus´ Content Selection and Advisory Board to expand the regional coverage of the database with the most relevant local journals. She became a specialist in bibliographic databases and science evaluation, providing analysis, insights and recommendations around science evaluations and the responsible use of indicators for the assessment of journals, researchers, institutions, and research proposals. Eloisa also had the opportunity to deliver consulting services to government organizations, research funding agencies, and leading universities in Latin America around the assessment and evaluation of teaching, research and third mission, and around topics of special interest, such as globalization, academic mobility/Brain Drain, regional inequalities, and gender gaps. Her experience also includes capacity development and the management of international cooperation projects. Prior to Elsevier, she worked as an engineer and project manager with IBM and Lucent Technologies for nearly 10 years.

Eloisa has a PhD in Education in Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. She is a member of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics – ISSI and of the Brazilian Association for Research in Science Education – ABRAPEC. She is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Ana Heredia

Affiliate Senior Associate, Latin America

Ana is a former researcher who moved first into STEM editorial and publishing, and more recently into open science infrastructure.

After more than 15 years in research, Ana joined Elsevier as a Research Advisor for Latin America, developing extensive relationships and partnerships within the research community: universities and research institutions, learned societies, government agencies and funding agencies. At Elsevier Brazil, Ana joined the Journal’s Department, managing acquisitions, the daily editorial and production workflow, and acting as a strategic consultant for societies journals in their strategy and indexing challenges. She then worked as a consultant for the Research Intelligence team, providing insights and solutions for research institutions and agencies.

After Elsevier, Anna then changed from commercial publishing to the non-profit space as Regional Director for Latin America for ORCID. here she was responsible for driving the community engagement and membership strategy in the region.

Ana is a Biologist by training, and has a PhD in Science (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and a Msc in Neuroscience (Université Toulouse III), two post-doctorates fellowships and a few papers published on Eco-ethology of ants. She is an active member of SSP – Society for Scholarly Publishing, NISO and C4DISC, and is particularly committed to open research and equity, inclusion and diversity in scholarly communication. She is fluent in English and French, and native in Portuguese and Spanish.

Sarah Waldram

Affiliate Senior Associate

Sarah is an accomplished project manager for both print and digital publishing initiatives. For example, she managed the launch of the industry-wide award-winning Berg Fashion Library (now Bloomsbury Fashion Central) for Bloomsbury Publishing. Similarly, at Oxford University Press, she oversaw preparation of lexical datasets for technology company clients, bringing in revenue of over £9 million.

She has strong cross-functional skills – her success in project delivery relies on close collaboration with business development, editorial, technical and sales colleagues. And a talent for leading teams, whether in-house or external.

Sarah also has solid editorial experience, having first gained formal copy-editing training at Macmillan Publishers, then going on to do managing editing and commissioning for other blue-chip publishing companies. Meanwhile, her strong analytic skills and technical interests give her the edge in dealing with XML technologies, systems and web considerations.

Finally, Sarah has a background in Chinese and fluent spoken/written Mandarin. She has recently been living in Beijing, working for Chinese publishing enterprises on digital project management, print book creation and rights acquisition, and is keen to grow networks in China.

Michelle Urberg

Affiliate Associate, Metadata Expert

Michelle is a publishing professional and trained librarian and musicologist, whose expertise encompasses end-to-end metadata standards use, creation, and conversion. She has conducted research studies to improve customer engagement with scholarly outputs in digital platforms and to assess the state of the field for digital scholarship and digital humanities. Her work focuses on addressing the customer need for better metadata in strategizing realistic solutions. She is adept at meeting researchers’ needs for enhancing their scholarly footprint.

Before becoming a consultant, Michelle was a metadata librarian for the ExLibris business unit of ProQuest. Her work encompassed metadata transformation at scale (including KBART and XML), MARC cataloging at scale, developing metadata creation workflows, and managing open access metadata across multiple platforms. Michelle has deep knowledge of metadata, analytics, and principles governing discovery.

Michelle has a special interest in music, video, and non-traditional scholarly formats. She is intimately familiar with the challenges of finding music and video for research. Recent projects have focused on two key gaps in streaming video content creation: identifying options for standard identifiers and enhancing metadata produced for access and discovery.

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

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.

Anna Drage

Senior Associate, Technology and Content

Anna has spent the last 20 years working in the academic publishing industry, specializing in the editorial and production side of electronic publishing. Her broad-based experience of both e-book and e-journal 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 a 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. Anna’s current 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.

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.

Simon Bewick

Affiliate Senior Associate

Simon Bewick has over 25 years’ experience in the educational publishing sector. While working at Oxford University Press, Simon held a range of Sales and Marketing roles including ten years as Direct Marketing Manager and another ten as Global Head of Digital Marketing.

Over his career Simon has developed extensive knowledge of Strategic Planning and Analysis and has global experience of delivering fully integrated campaigns utilising Digital and Direct Marketing methodologies.

A highly experienced people and project manager, Simon has led high profile projects including large-scale CRM Strategic Development and Implementations, Web Vision creation and delivery, and over a hundred global projects in a wide range of sales and marketing specialisms including Brand Management, Thought Leadership, People Management and Development, Customer Acquisition and Retention. He is a highly experienced presenter, public speaker and facilitator having given lectures, workshops and seminars on a wide range Sales, Direct and Digital Marketing topics in more than 30 countries.

Away from OUP Simon has provided consulting services for a wide range of companies inside and outside of the publishing industry including Educational Service providers, Tech companies, Thought Leadership teams, Entertainment and Music companies, various start-ups and media companies. Simon is an alumni of Reading University and Oxford University where he graduated in Strategy and Innovation from the world-renowned Said Business School, as well as qualifications from the Institute of Direct Marketing and CiM, and is Vice Chair on the Trustees Board of the SMART Multi Academy Trust in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Julia Brockley

Affiliate Senior Associate

Julia combines content development and list building expertise with partner relationship management skills acquired from over 25 years of experience in academic and scholarly publishing. With creativity, market insight and a flair for anticipating emerging disciplinary trends, Julia has held senior-level publisher/commissioning roles in at a number of companies including, Palgrave Macmillan, (Springer-Nature), Routledge, (Taylor & Francis), Chadwyck Healey, (ProQuest), SAGE Publishing, and Berg Publications, (Bloomsbury Academic).

During her career, Julia has commissioned and managed journals, (including society-owned ones), digital resources and books, spanning all product categories, (textbooks, major reference works, and monographs). She approaches the process of content development with creativity and commercial judgement, and a keen eye to strategic list development. Many of her textbooks are now in their fourth or fifth edition, and a number of her launch journals including New Media & Society, (1999), and The Journal of Visual Culture, (2002), helped define their respective disciplines and continue so to do.

Julia believes passionately in the social value of publishing and is inspired and excited by the pace of change in the industry. In professional terms this translates into the pursuit of a sustainable Open Access model for HSS book publishing.

Julia’s skills span all the content development functions including pre-commissioning research, competitor and market analysis, author/editor selection, advisory panels and peer review, business case development, financial and investment appraisal. In addition, she can offer a board range of team management experience developed both within publishing as well as outside the industry.

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.

Sarah Greaves

Affiliate Senior Associate

Sarah has over 20 years of experience within STM editorial and publishing. She was originally an academic researcher, completing her PhD at the MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology, before joining the editorial team at Nature Cell Biology in 1999. After 4 years working within editorial, she moved into the Nature publishing team and was the Publisher for Nature for many years. During her time at Nature Publishing Group (now Springer Nature) Sarah also launched the first Nature branded title with an Open Access option, Nature Communications, and subsequently launched Scientific Reports. Subsequently, Sarah was the Chief Publishing Officer at Hindawi during which time she consolidated the portfolio and implemented new Editorial models.

Throughout her career, Sarah has focused on creating innovative new products and services aimed at solving key researcher pain points, whilst ensuring the academic scientist remains at the heart of any publishing decision.

Sarah is involved in numerous STEM outreach initiatives, is currently a volunteer with InToUniversity and is working alongside numerous industry colleagues to drive forward the C19 Rapid Review group.

Charly Nobbs

Affiliate Senior Associate, Supply Chain, Distribution and Logistics

With over 40 years Industry experience, Charly specialises in Supply Chain Optimization, delivering significant and sustainable improvements across local, regional and global publishing supply chains. He has considerable experience reviewing logistics arrangements and distribution operations, delivering increased productivity and improved accuracy, whilst at the same time reducing time to market and overall costs. He has also helped many publishers increase their revenue by working with them to develop fully integrated solutions to allow them to transition to lean inventory models by exploiting the latest short and ultra-short print capabilities. Additionally, he specializes in warehouse design, redesign and automation as well as systems selection, integration and upgrading. He can also assist with the review, selection and negotiation with domestic, international and global freight suppliers.

Charly’s earlier career started in 1975 with Grantham Book Services where he ran the warehousing operation. In 1988 he joined Cambridge University Press, working predominantly at their UKDC, but also spending time at all their other operations around the world. In 2003 he moved to Wiley, becoming responsible for Distribution and Customer Services in the UK, Singapore and Australia. Promoted to Vice President, Global Supply Chain in 2014, he was responsible for the global distribution and inventory management of all Wiley book and journal products in print. He developed optimal logistics arrangements globally to support their network of distribution centres, ensuring consistent provision of a cost effective and market leading service to all internal and external customers.

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.

Helga Zunde-Baker

Affiliate Senior Associate

Helga Zunde-Baker has almost 25 years of experience in academic and professional publishing. She has worked with organisations as diverse as the British Standards Institution, The Lancet (Elsevier), The Chambers Dictionary, IDS (Thomson Reuters), Palgrave Macmillan and most recently, SpringerNature.Expert at developing large, global, teams, and with a wealth of technical production knowledge, Helga can quickly build rapport and deliver meaningful results fast. Most recently Helga was Global Head of Production at SpringerNature, responsible for production of the Nature Academic, Palgrave, and British Dental Association journals portfolios. This involved both in-house and offshore production, including the sensitive management of learned society partner relationships, and production of the Nature Partner Journals open access list. As part of post-merger integration she led the successful migration of large volumes of legacy data and work in progress to Springer tools and systems. Prior to this she was Publishing Services Director for Palgrave Macmillan, where she led a digital first review and worked collaboratively with offshore suppliers to develop fast-track scholarly monograph production (weeks, not months) for the innovative Palgrave Pivot offering.

Helga has extensive experience of RFP and procurement, vendor management, workflow optimisation, restructuring, change management and BPO. She has been a guest lecturer on the UCL MA in Publishing, and in 2016 spoke at the ALPSP “new digital models” event.

Donna Sanzone

Affiliate Associate

Donna brings to Maverick more than 30 years of executive-level experience in academic, reference, educational, and trade publishing, specializing in strategic planning, new product development/management, publisher/partner relations, and the transition from print to digital for both commercial and not-for-profit companies and organizations. Over the course of her successful career, she has provided the vision as well as strategic direction for many publishers, often working in close collaboration with educational/cultural institutions and scholarly societies (for instance, the Getty Art History Information Program, Smithsonian Institution, and the American Studies Association). Her background and extensive experience have given her unique insight into the business requisites of commercial publishers as well as the mission of scholarly/not-for-profit organizations, resulting in the development and execution of successful, high-quality, market-driven, and profitable products and programs for a wide range of publishers and organizations.

Career highlights include: Executive Editor at Macmillan Reference (developing and implementing large-scale reference/academic programs); Editor in Chief at Grolier Academic Publishing (developing and managing a new Grolier division of academic print and digital products); Executive Editor at HarperCollins (creating and directing the joint Smithsonian-Collins imprint); VP of new product development at M.E. Sharpe (developing, implementing, and distributing new digital products and academic databases); and Consultant/Project Manager at Choice/Association of College and Research Libraries (developing and managing a new review database).

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.

Alison Jones

Affiliate Associate

Alison Jones is a business coach, consultant and independent publisher. She is passionate about supporting people and books that make a difference.

She has enjoyed a prestigious 22-year career in trade and scholarly publishing working with major publishers such as Chambers Harrap, Reader’s Digest, Oxford University Press and Macmillan, most recently as Director of Innovation Strategy for Palgrave Macmillan. Throughout her career she has pioneered digital publishing of reference works, ebooks and apps, delivering award-winning online products such as The Statesman’s Yearbook Online and Palgrave Connect.

In 2014 she left Macmillan to set up Alison Jones Business Services and establish a new model: position, or brand, publishing. She works with entrepreneurs wanting to build their brand and take their business to the next level, focusing on clarifying the strategic purpose for the book, coordinating content creation and publication with core business activities, and creating superb books with professional, polished editorial and production standards under the imprint Practical Inspiration Publishing. She also offers consulting and training services to traditional publishers and societies, especially those seeking to diversify and/or upskill their workforce.

A trained small business and corporate coach, she combines extensive publishing expertise with coaching, facilitation and training skills. Her focus is on business strategy, content marketing, innovation and digital publishing.

Chris Baker

Affiliate Associate

Chris Baker has been involved in digital publishing for over 20 years, initially as an editor and then as a project manager, requirements analyst and consultant. After 7 years at Oxford University Press, finishing as Web and Electronic Development Manager, Chris founded his own business in 2002. Since then he’s worked with a range of well-known publishers including Oxford University Press, Pearson and Professional Engineering Publishing. He has managed a string of successful projects from CD-ROMs and websites (with various platforms and online hosts) to content management systems, databases, xml production processes and usage statistics systems.

Chris began his career as a molecular biologist, being awarded a PhD in Biochemistry. While he no longer often needs to extract RNA from frogs’ eggs, the analytical skills and insight into publishing from the academic’s point of view have continued to be useful.

David Ball

Affiliate Associate

David is a consultant with many years’ experience, specialising in scholarly publishing, Open Access, e-books, virtual learning environments, design and management of academic libraries. Recent projects include: research in the area of open access publishing for Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (see http://edoc.bbaw.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=2515); a full library service review for City University London; an e-books contract for Jisc Collections; research on approaches to collection management by universities for a major serials agent; training in Open Access for SPARC Europe and UKeiG (UK Electronic Information Group).

As University Librarian at Bournemouth he created a vibrant library service, chiefly electronic in delivery, both for research, through the institutional repository and e-journals, and for teaching, pioneering the integration of paid-for and open educational resources into the virtual learning environment. He also won two prestigious national awards: the quinquennial SCONUL Library Design Award 2007 and the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award for the Outstanding Library Team 2009. David has a strong record in procurement, having led six ground-breaking national and regional tenders for journals, books and e-books, with individual contracts worth £10m per annum.

Previous experience includes the private sector, as information manager for the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times, where he was responsible for transforming a cuttings library into a full-text electronic archive. He was also responsible for negotiating the sale of rights to text and pictures, publishing the first digital newspaper in Scotland on CD-ROM. He has a strong publishing record; including a major book, Managing Suppliers and Partners for the Academic Library. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences, particularly on e-books, VLEs and procurement. For a list of major publications click here.

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