IPG - Key Persons
Alan was a Chartered Accountant who worked in various industries until his employment at general publishing house B.T.Batsford Ltd. In retirement he became Secretary of the IPG and held this position for 17 years. He enjoyed rugby union and was a Life Vice President of Kent County Rugby Football Union.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Boldwood Books
Amanda is the founder of Boldwood Books, a new independent fiction publisher. She was formerly CEO of Head of Zeus.
Andrew Johnston began his book trade career working at Foyles Bookshop and after almost three years decided to travel to Australia where he started as a Sales Rep for the then Hutchinson Group, eventually managing the Sydney office for what was to become Random House Australia. After twelve years Andrew returned to London to work for the Penguin Group as Special Sales Manager across all hardback and paperback imprints, then moving to Shropshire in 1990 having been appointed as Sales and Marketing Director with Airlife Publishing in Shrewsbury. He left to establish his own business Quiller Publishing in 2001 by acquiring Quiller Press and then a further four publishing companies including Kenilworth Press, previously owned by IPG Patron David Blunt. Quiller Publishing was acquired by IPG member Amberley Publishing in 2021. Andrew was Chairman of the Independent Publishers Guild from 2009-2011 and was a member of the IPG Board for eight years and credits the IPG with being an invaluable and constant source of inspiration and support throughout his independent publishing career.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Neem Tree Press
Archna Sharma is the founder and CEO of Neem Tree Press, a publisher of books that change and broaden perspectives. The press seeks out and amplifies captivating and crucial voices, wherever they come from. With a background in medicine and finance, she also provides strategic and financial advice to healthcare companies and mentors healthcare start-ups for the NHS.
For the past 30 years Brian been writing about pottery, advertising, women's fashion magazines, book publishing, and smell - primarily, but not exclusively, in Japan. Brian's link with the IPG is purely altruistic: he made some money out of investment in, and later sale of, two academic publishing companies, and wanted to give something back to an industry that had indirectly paid for his daughter's private education in the UK. He has been around long enough to be appointed professor of this and that at well-known academic institutions in England, Denmark and Hong Kong, but probably his single greatest achievement has been the fact that he once hitch-hiked from Aachen to Athens two hours faster than the train.
Brian spent most of his publishing career at Longman (later Pearson), ending up as Publishing Director for Humanities (Higher Education). After that he started Willan Publishing, specialising in books on criminology and criminal justice. Willan Publishing won IPG awards for Academic Publisher of the Year and International Achievement before being sold to Taylor & Francis in 2010, its 300+ books becoming part of the Routledge imprint. Brian now researches and writes about South African history.
Bridget is chief executive of the IPG. She delivers the IPG's strategy and has overall responsibility for the organisation.
Cath is the founder of award-winning children's publisher b small publishing, publishing creative non-fiction, activity and language learning books. Cath is also a former member of the IPG board and has been a generous supporter of many new and established independent publishers over the years, including through the IPG's mentoring programme.
Job Titles:
- Membership Engagement Manager
Charlotte is the IPG's membership engagement manager, whose main responsibility is overseeing the IPG collective stands at London and Frankfurt Book Fair. She also works on the IPG Skills Hub and the IPG Podcast, as well as helping to organise other IPG events throughout the year. Charlotte graduated from Kingston University with an MA in Publishing and joined the IPG in 2017.
Job Titles:
- Ford
- Learning and Development Manager
Charly is the IPG's Learning and Development Manager. Prior to joining the IPG in 2014, Charly spent six years in editorial and digital roles at a successful independent publisher, and organised multiple publishing events in Oxford./p>
David Graham - Chairman, Managing Director
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Managing Director
David Graham is Managing Director of Batsford Books, a publisher of illustrated books.
After working for several other academic publishers, Edward set up James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd in 1989. The company gradually specialised in international environmental issues and grew its types of output to include directories, magazines, yearbooks, journals and databases as well as books. In 2003 they acquired Earthscan. They sold the magazines in 2006 and rebranded all the publishing as Earthscan, winning the IPG Publisher of the Year award in 2010. In 2011 Earthscan was acquired by Routledge. Since then Edward has worked in a non-executive capacity for a number of other small publishers, as well as acting as the IPG's Development Director.
Over the last ten years, Eela has worked closely with CEOs and Boards. At CLA, she is a member of the Senior Leadership Team and leads on the product and data strategy for the company. Experienced in influencing Boards, she has a solid understanding of financial oversight, is a champion of good governance, processes and risk management. She is currently a trustee of the Federation of British Artists.
After a career in STM ad journals publishing, latterly with Cambridge University Press, Geoff took a PhD at the Courtauld Institute, where he is now an associate lecturer in Renaissance Art, his specialist area of research is art and patronage in the Tuscan city of Lucca during the fifteenth century.
Job Titles:
- Company Secretary
- Head of Finance and Operations
Heather is the head of finance and operations, and company secretary at the IPG. With a background in both business and charity, most of Heather's career has been spent in the tourism industry where she was managing director of Ice and Fire Ski for 12 years.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Kogan Page
Helen Kogan is Managing Director of Kogan Page, a leading independent publisher for specialist professional communities (including Human Resources, Marketing, the Financial Sector and Logistics) and for a general Business and Management readership. Prior to her current position, which she has held since 2006, she was a journalist specialising in areas relating to human resources and management. In recent years Kogan Page has won the Independent Professional and Academic Publisher of the Year (2019), Independent International Achievement of the Year (2019), Independent Digital Publisher of the Year (2020) and has been shortlisted for five consecutive years for the British Book Awards Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year. The company won the Stationer's Company own Product Design Innovation Excellence Awards 2021 for its ground-breaking work on providing accessible eBooks to visually impaired students. It has offices in London and New York.
Imogen is the IPG's head of partnerships. Imogen manages key supplier relationships in regards to the IPG's two main Conferences and Awards. With 17 years publishing services experience her expertise lies in building business relationships and event management.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Globe Law and Business
Jim is chairman of Globe Law and Business. Previously, he was at LexisNexis, where he was on the board of the UK company. He moved from Lexis to found Tottel Publishing, which specialised in tax and law, and which was sold to Bloomsbury Publishing in 2009. Since selling Tottel, Jim has become a shareholder in several publishing companies, and combines this with a range of interests in other sectors. Jim is a former chair of the IPG and outside of work, he enjoys sailing, golf, and trying to play jazz piano.
A former IPG Chair, John began his career in the book trade with Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge in 1973. He joined the Open University in 1976 in order to help develop the embryonic Open University Press, initially in sales and marketing, and later in editorial. He was part of the management buyout team in 1988, became managing director in 1990, and oversaw Open UP becoming a leading social science publisher before selling the business to McGraw-Hill in 2002. Since then he has sat on a number of boards including those of independent publishers such as Acumen, Flame Tree, Manchester University Press, Policy Press and Salt; but his main preoccupations now are family, the arts, competitive running, and armchair sport.
Jonathan founded Learning Matters in 1999 and joined the IPG in 2000; he successfully built Learning Matters into one of the leading publishers in teacher training and social work before selling to SAGE in 2011. Jonathan started work in the book industry at Foyles in 1980, and subsequently went on to work in sales and marketing positions in professional publishing before starting Blackstone Press with two colleagues in 1988, and then taking up the role of Managing Director at Letts Educational between 1993 and 1998. Since 2011 Jonathan has undertaken a variety of consultancy projects and has mentored numerous start-up businesses. He is the Publisher at College of Law Publishing, and is Chair of IPG member Red Door Publishing.
Job Titles:
- Founder and Managing Director of Nosy Crow
Kate Wilson is the founder and managing director of Nosy Crow, a children's publisher that launched in 2010 and has won multiple awards including Independent Publisher of the Year at the IPG's Independent Publishing Awards.
Job Titles:
- Head of Visual Arts Publishing at Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Kathryn Earle is Head of Visual Arts Publishing at Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. She oversees the Fairchild Books imprint, and managed the acquisition and integration of both Fairchild Books and AVA Publishing for Bloomsbury. Prior to joining Bloomsbury, Kathryn was Managing Director and one of the shareholders of Berg Publishers. Having joined Berg in 1993, she led its management buy-out in 2002 and sold the business to Bloomsbury in 2008. Kathryn has particular experience with digital products, having conceived of and launched the award-winning Berg Fashion Library. She began her career at the Modern Language Association of America in New York. Kathryn is an IPG Patron, has served on the Board, including as Vice-Chair, and enthusiastically supports the creativity, dynamism and entrepreneurship that characterize the IPG's membership.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPG BOARD
- Co - Founder and Managing Director of Roll & Play Press
Kay Lubwika Bartlett is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Roll & Play Press, an independent publisher creating books and resources for tabletop role-playing games. Previously, she worked as a solicitor at Farrer & Co, specialising in commercial disputes.
Job Titles:
- Head of Learning and Development
Louise is the IPG's Head of Learning and Development.
Martin Sheppard founded the distinguished independent publishing house of Hambledon, based in Primrose Hill Village, editing and publishing over three hundred books by leading historians. His illustrated history, Regent's Park and Primrose Hill, was published in 2010. As a patron of the IPG Martin believes "No individual publisher knows all the answers in publishing, which is a complicated and tricky business. If, however, there is an answer to a publishing question, someone in the IPG knows it. Not only that, the person who knows it is almost always willing to share his or her knowledge with other members. All the aspiring publisher has to do is to define the question and ask the right IPG member. The IPG is a wonderful organisation: friendly, efficient, quirky, tolerant and stimulating. Its members are a remarkable set of enterprising and intelligent people. Independent publishing can be a lonely business. Meeting others who have made a success of it is both enjoyable and inspiring."
Martin Woodhead entered publishing in 1966 as a sales rep for Macmillan. In 1969 he joined the fledgling Gower Press as sales manager and left in 1972 to start his own business in Cambridge, Woodhead-Faulkner (Publishers) Limited, with Ian Faulkner as his partner. The business expanded steadily and was acquired by Simon & Schuster in 1987. It was around this time that Martin joined the IPG and soon realised what had been missing in his publishing life for many years. In 1989 he started his second business in Cambridge, Woodhead Publishing Limited, which also expanded steadily until it was acquired by Elsevier in August 2013. Martin served as Chair of the IPG in 1994 to 1995 and subsequently re-joined the committee in 2007. He became an IPG patron in 2014. Martin is now Chairman of Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing Limited in Cambridge, a company formed in March 2015 to specialise in agricultural science and technology.
Nicholas is the former owner of Nicholas Brealey Publishing, which he founded in 1992. It grew an international business with London and Boston offices and two acquisitions in the US before being sold to Hachette UK in 2015. He has also worked at Macmillan Press, Allen & Unwin and Simon & Schuster London. A past Chairman of the Independent Publishers Guild, Nicholas now coaches authors and is a consultant for independent publishers.
Nicola is Chief Executive Officer at Edinburgh University Press. Prior to this role she was Head of Editorial (Books) at EUP and Publisher for their acclaimed Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies List.
Nigel Farrow became one of the first members of the IPG when he founded Gower Press in 1967. The imprint still thrives as part of the Ashgate Publishing business that Nigel sold to Taylor & Francis in 2015, by which time Ashgate was publishing more than 850 new titles a year across a wide range of the social sciences and humanities. Nigel's other publishing activities and ventures have included time in the 1970s as chairman of Xerox's education and information companies in the UK, Australia, Africa and the Caribbean, and from 1981 to 1999 he was founder and chairman of Information Publications International, a company that marketed and installed research databases in university and national libraries. He is now chairman of Lund Humphries, a publisher of books on the visual arts. His other interests include modern British art, a vineyard in South West France and the development of community schools in Zambia.
Job Titles:
- Executive Assistant to Bridget Shine
Nikki Grogan is executive assistant to Bridget Shine, the IPG's chief executive. Along with assisting Bridget in her day-to-day activities, Nikki is primarily responsible for the administration of the IPG's mentoring programme and all things speaker-related at our conferences. Nikki joined the IPG team in 2017, having previously spent the majority of her career in corporate law.
Job Titles:
- President
- Adviser
- Chief Executive of Rowman & Littlefield International
Oliver Gadsby is Chief Executive of Rowman & Littlefield International, a new academic publisher based in London. He started his publishing career as an editor in Germany in the 1980s; he was subsequently a sales and marketing director in Sweden (with Liber), and later CEO of Nelson Thornes in the UK. Oliver varied the mix for a few years by becoming Director of Strategy & Acquisitions for Informa plc; he then returned to publishing by becoming CEO of Continuum, which was awarded the title of IPG Independent Publisher of the Year in 2011. Oliver led the sale of Continuum to Bloomsbury in 2011. Oliver is non-executive chairman of business publishing company WTiN.
Oliver Gadsby is an experienced leader and adviser of international publishing and information businesses and has served on the IPG board as a director and as Chair. Oliver is Founder and Chair of Zero Carbon Academy and Chair of World Textile Information Network. He founded and is a director of Rowman & Littlefield International and was Chief Executive at Continuum Publishing. Previous positions include Director of Strategy and Acquisitions at Informa, and several roles at Wolters Kluwer, in Sweden and the UK. Oliver sits on the advisory boards of Amnet ContentSource; of Perlego, the e-book subscription platform; of academic publishers Peter Lang and Berghahn Books; and of trade publisher Muswell Press. He represents the IPG as a director of Publishers' Licensing Services. He is a member of the Court of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, the 600 year-old Livery Company in the City of London.
Jill Pearce worked as a commissioning editor for Chapman and Hall/Spon before moving to Gower Publishing to develop their list of technical books. In 1990 she set up Donhead Publishing with her husband, Chris Hall, specialising in books (but also subsequently developing a journal) for professionals and academics in the field of architectural conservation and heritage. The Donhead Publishing assets were acquired by Taylor and Francis in 2013. Jill is currently the book review editor for the Journal of Architectural Conservation.
Alongside fellow Patron Jill Pearce, Chris was a co-founder of Donhead Publishing, a specialist in architectural books for professionals and academics. Donhead was acquired by Taylor & Francis in 2013.
Philip Kogan started Kogan Page in 1967 after serving as publishing director of Cornmarket Press.The first titles were to do with industrial training and transport but the list quickly developed a much broader base in management and other subjects. A global business developed, with offices in the US and India. Philip played a huge part in making the IPG what it is today, having been an early member before serving as Chair between 1975-1977. He was awarded the IPG Patrons' Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 and became an honorary IPG Patron in 2017, and was also for some years Treasurer of the PA. Philip's daughter Helen has run Kogan Page since 2006.
Richard Fisher is the academic and policy correspondent of the IPG and has worked in scholarly publishing for over forty years: he currently serves as Chair of the Employee Ownership Trust at Boydell and Brewer and sits on the Advisory Boards of Berghahn Publishers, Bristol University Press and the University of Bristol Press. Richard was previously managing director of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press and Deputy Chairman of Yale University Press, and is a regular adviser to UK public agencies: he is currently External Adviser for Publishing and Open Access to the British Academy, and has served two terms as Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society.
Shannon leads the editorial and design teams for Quarto Kids across its seven trade and co-edition imprints, and sits on the leadership team for the Quarto Group. After moving to London from New Zealand in 1999, Shannon has over twenty years of publishing experience across children's illustrated and fiction books, working at Collins, Puffin and Ladybird before joining Quarto in spring 2022. Shannon is a passionate advocate for more diversity in publishing: in 2011 she co-founded the Commonword Children's Diversity Writing Prize and has worked across many initiatives to widen representation in children's publishing, including WriteNow and Undiscovered Voices. She represents Quarto on the Empathy Circle, the advisory group of children's publishers for Empathy Day, which is committed to building children's understanding of others through reading. When not getting excited about changing children's lives through books, Shannon is a keen foodie and speedy reader, and also enjoys spinning, being by the sea and spending time with her family.
Sonny was a former IPG Chair and a previous Honorary President of the Independent Publishers Guild. Sonny Leong is currently Chief Executive of Civil Service College and Executive Chairman of Academy for Parliamentary & Policy Studies, and Deputy Chair of Future First, a social enterprise company, whose vision is that every state secondary school and college should be supported by a thriving, engaged alumni community that helps each one to do more for its students. He has more than 30 years of publishing experience, having worked in various academic and professional publishing houses. He founded Cavendish Publishing and developed it to be the largest independent academic law publisher in the UK before it was acquired by Informa PLC. He is a former Chair of the International Division and Council member of the Publishers Association in the UK. In 2014 he was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
Job Titles:
- Honorary President
- Deceased
Honorary president of the IPG from 1993 to 2008, Tim Rix had roles at a number of publishers including Longman, Yale University Press, Blackwell, Frances Lincoln and Jessica Kingsley. He was Chair at Book Aid International and spent two years as president of the Publishers Association.
Tom Holman is the IPG's head of communications. He writes and edits much of our output, including blogs and social media, and helps at the IPG's conferences and collective book fair stands. Tom has worked in publishing for nearly 20 years, initially at the Bookseller and now as a freelance.