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.
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.
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.
Kate Wood joins Maverick with over 20 years in publishing with experience spanning academic, STM and trade as well as business-to-business magazine publishing. She has held a number of senior roles as a Director of Publicity for Robson Books, followed by positions as Group PR Director and Director of Marketing at Chrysalis Books Group. Kate was an Associate Marketing Director in STM at Wiley, where she led global teams and ran high impact campaigns resulting in product launches generating seven figure revenues, top 10 bestselling titles and high double-digit revenue growth for portfolios across digital STM products. While at Wiley, she was awarded the prestigious Pacesetter award for her work on digital product launch. After leaving Wiley, she was a finalist in the LEAP Entrepreneur of the Year award 2017. With nearly 10 years’ experience in trade and over 10 years’ experience in academic publishing, she is a true publishing all-rounder.
Her wide background in publishing began with publishing research reports in the civil service, moving to Chadwyck-Healey where she worked as an editor on some of the first digital products to go to market, this was followed by 2 years in magazine publishing and by 20 years as a publicity and marketing specialist. The skills Kate brings to Maverick range from marketing strategy and market research, competitor analysis and audits to the nuts and bolts of marketing communications such as campaign management and planning, copywriting, digital and social media marketing, content creation, PR and publicity campaigns and modern marketing methods such as email automation and CRM systems. She has considerable expertise in all sides of product marketing for a wide range of content – books, journals, references and data and workflow tools – and in product launches. At Wiley, she was a marketing specialist in chemistry, molecular life sciences, physical sciences and pharma. Her wide experience of many different parts of the industry allows her to see across discipline and from trade to academic and vice versa.
Kate is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and a fully qualified CIM marketer. She speaks four languages at various levels of fluency.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ruth is a publishing professional with deep experience of open science, change management and process development. She has worked in open access publishing since its inception and brings experience from a breadth of business types, from a start-up company using a new business model to global corporate environments.
Ruth has a special interest in in open scholarly infrastructure and how open principles can strengthen research. She has worked closely with the World’s largest professional societies and NGOs to support them to transition to open science. Including open research data strategy, transitioning a journal portfolio to open access, preparing an organization for an open science future, and convening stakeholders from across the research landscape to explore the relationship between open access and the development of research in low- and middle-income countries.
Before becoming a consultant, Ruth was Editorial Director for Springer Nature’s open access journals in Health Sciences, at BioMed Central. A lot of her career has been about looking ahead and enabling change. Ruth has a collaborative and progressive outlook. She brings a great mix of insight, logical thought process and creativity to her work.