My perspective as a producer comes from having experienced publishing from nearly every side of the business.

I began in bookselling, eventually managing stores and regions for Doubleday Bookshops. That gave me an early education in something I've never forgotten: what makes a consumer stop, pick up a book, understand it, and decide to buy it.

At Chronicle Books, I moved from Special Markets Director to Executive Director of Sales & Marketing. My work there encompassed specialty retail, custom publishing, sales, marketing, and publishing strategy during a period of extraordinary growth for the company and for illustrated gift publishing.

I later became Vice President and Publisher of Running Press, overseeing a broad publishing program while continuing to develop the inventive, visually driven, and culturally responsive books that had long interested me.

These roles gave me responsibility not only for individual books but for publishing programs, creative and commercial strategy, budgets, sales expectations, and teams. Just as importantly, they allowed me to work with an extraordinary range of authors, artists, designers, editors, salespeople, booksellers, retailers, and other creative partners.

My work at Running Press was profiled in Running Press: Anticipating Trends, Fostering Fun— a title that captures surprisingly well an approach to publishing that still describes much of what interests me.