After he received his D.phil in Molecular Biology from the University of York, David decided to join scholarly publishing. Currently, he is a technology strategist with a strong background in developing profitable digital products for research and academic markets. He has more than 15 years of experience in leveraging technology, project management, strategic thinking, relationship building innovations and profitability.

<p>Christian is an Independent Consultant and Project Manager for Digital Publishing and IT, helping publishers and technology companies around the world to define and implement innovative products and processes. He has successfully completed large and small projects for STM, HSS, educational, newspaper, and special interest publishing companies as well as for software companies. Currently, his projects are focussed around digital content and e-commerce solutions, content management, online dissemination of knowledge, and the application of methods from artificial intelligence to various stages of the publishing process.</p>

<p>Christian has worked extensively with service providers all around the world, leading many RFP processes, system migrations, system implementations, and consolidations as well as defining and implementing the digital strategies for various publishing houses. Christian holds a masters degree in Computational Linguistics and has worked as a project manager, software developer, server administrator, event manager, and researcher in previous lives.</p>

<p>Kirsty Butcher is a director at property news publishers, Place North West and PlaceTech. She oversees the delivery and development of Place North West and PlaceTech products, projects, and operations.</p>

<p>She joined Place North West six years ago and has grown the reach of Place North West’s events, website, and daily publication. In 2018, she helped to launch the leading international proptech publication, PlaceTech.</p>

Ann Michael is Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chair of the Board of Delta Think, focused on strategy and innovation in scholarly communications. Throughout her career she has gained broad exposure to society and commercial scholarly publishers, librarians and library consortia, funders, and researchers. As an ardent believer in data informed decision-making, Ann was instrumental in the 2017 launch of the Delta Think Open Access Data & Analytics Tool, a comprehensive, interactive, regularly updated data set with diverse visualizations and extensive analysis, which tracks and assesses the impact of open access uptake and policies on the scholarly communications ecosystem. Additionally, Ann has served as Chief Digital Officer at PLOS, a member of the executive team, charged with driving execution and operations as well as their overall digital and supporting data strategy. Ann has a MS from SUNY Stony Brook in Policy Analysis and Public Management and an MS in Business Analytics from the NYU Stern School.

Stephanie Dawson, CEO ScienceOpen, grew up in northern California, studied Biology at Yale University and received a PhD in German Literature from the University of Washington. She spent over 10 years at the academic publisher De Gruyter in Berlin in the fields of biology and chemistry in both journals and book publishing. 2013 she joined ScienceOpen as managing director. With ScienceOpen she has been exploring scholarly communication in a digital environment, experimenting with open access publishing, discovery, preprints, open post-publication peer review, community curation, metadata enrichment, and alternative metrics.

<p>Sabina Mathur, Director, ITS Publishing Solutions and Application Development, at the
American Psychological Association, has over 20 years of experience in digital publishing
technologies. She is well-versed in the architecture, design, development, and support for
enterprise content management systems in all aspects of primary and secondary publishing.
The areas of focus for Sabina have been in the realms of peer review, full-text creation,
abstracting &amp; indexing database production, indexing of content, metadata workflows, process
automation, transmission of publishing content, research database platform search &amp; display,
identity &amp; e-commerce management, and digital learning. Throughout her career, Sabina has
improved publishing processes, collaborating with key stakeholders by bringing insights to
support business intelligence, while maintaining high quality products in the market that meet
publishing standards.</p>
<p>Some of the flagship products that have been developed and managed by Sabina, and her
teams are: APA PsycNet ® , an intuitive search platform designed specifically to deliver APA
content, APA PsycInfo ® , a premier abstracting and indexing database covering the behavioral
and social sciences from the authority in psychology, APA PsycArticles ® , a database of full-text,
peer-reviewed articles from top-cited psychology journals, APA PsycBooks ® , a set of scholarly
and professional psychology books available at the chapter-level, and Academic Writer ® , an
authoring tool for teaching and learning effective writing that helps instructors support
students through the process of writing papers in courses that require APA Style ® .</p>

<p>Astrid worked in various roles in publishing for over 15 years and has recently set up Above the Fold Organizing, her own professional organizing business, helping people apply focus in their lives, both personally and professionally.</p>

<p>She gets excited by all sorts of organizational challenges; always striving towards optimization of efficiency and joyful work-life balance.</p>

Chip Colbert is the senior director of sales at Rebellion Defense. Before joining Rebellion, Chip was the managing director for ITC Global Advisors, a D.C-based consulting firm focused on bringing private sector innovation to national security challenges. Chip also serves as a coach and facilitator for the COMMIT Foundation, supporting military veterans during the transition from the public- to private-sector. Prior to his private sector career, Chip worked at the White House, serving as the National Security Council’s Director for Defense Policy and Strategy for the Middle East. Over a 20-year career as an Army infantry officer and strategist, he was deployed worldwide in support of military operations, including commanding a company during a combat tour in Iraq. Chip is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and holds an MA in Organizational Psychology and Leadership Development from Teachers College, Columbia University.