Speakers

Betsy Albright

Betsy Albright has spent most of her career in client services at several publications. Prior to becoming Director of Client Services for BeTuitive Publishing this summer, she worked for StayWell Custom Communications, which focuses on healthcare.  At SCC, she partnered with hospitals and managed care organizations to create publications that offered health information to communities as well as customers. At BeTuitive, she is working with clients to create effective email publications.

 

Marilyn Allen

Marilyn Allen is a literary agent and partner in the Allen O'Shea Literary Agency. Prior to that she spent 25 years doing sales and marketing for various publishing houses. Her responsibility culminated in Associate Publisher and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Harper Collins. Prior to that, she had directed sales and marketing teams for Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster, and Avon Books.

 

Through the years she created many innovative marketing campaigns and managed a host of successful author brands including Dr. John Gray (Mars and Venus), Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Barry Sears (Zone), Dean Ornish, Star Trek, NBA, The Simpsons and worked with many best selling writers including Stephen King, Ken Follett, Mary Higgens Clark and Barbara Kingsolver. She spearheaded the nationwide Diet Coke/ book sample promotion and created out-of-the box campaigns with such non-traditional partners as Mattel, Atlantic Records, and PBS. She is an impassioned advocate for innovation in the marketing and selling of books.

 

Ms. Allen currently represents many authors including the New York Times bestseller Regina Leeds, the work-from-home gurus Paul and Sarah Edwards, Julie Fast, Karon Karter, Liz Palika, Julie Jason and Skip McGrath. She focuses in the areas of nonfiction; health, parenting, sports, business and narrative nonfiction.

 

She has taught publishing courses at NYU and for Gotham University. She frequently conducts publishing seminars and gives speeches at writing conferences.

 

Allen O'Shea Literary Agency is an author-centered boutique agency. We work closely with our clients to develop proposals and manuscript materials, and continue our involvement with the author's career to assist in developing marketing and publicity campaigns with the client and publisher. We have excellent industry contacts with publishing personnel as well as in the retail and special sales community. We have established relationships with our foreign agents who assist in selling book rights throughout the world.

 

Lena Anthony

Lena Anthony is a senior editor at Hammock Inc., a Nashville, Tenn.-based media company specializing in custom publishing—meaning that its publications are produced for a specific audience of customers or association members, in collaboration with a corporation or organization that wants to build a deeper relationship with its audience. Some of Hammock's clients include the National Federation of Independent Business, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Marine Corps League. Lena spends most of her time at work managing MyBusiness, the bimonthly small business magazine that goes to NFIB's 500,000 members nationwide.

 

 

 

 

Barbara Brody

Barbara Brody is the health editor at Woman’s Day, where she develops, assigns and edits health, nutrition, and fitness stories. She also edits a weekly medical q&a blog for the magazine’s website, womansday.com, and occasionally contributes to other online content. Previously, Barbara has worked at Weight Watchers Magazine and More magazine. She is a past president of the Newswomen’s Club of New York and a graduate of Cornell University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dianna Collier

Collier Associates was founded Jan. 1, 1976, by Oscar Collier and headquartered in New York City. Oscar was sole proprietor of Collier Associates until 1994, when he decided to devote more of his time to writing. Since I had been involved with the agency since the 1980s, I agreed to become the manager and literary agent while Oscar assumed the role of consultant until his death July 3, 1998.

 

Currently we are headquartered in the Palm Beaches, though we visit with publishers in New York, and elsewhere, at least twice a year. Before working with the agency I wrote and sold cookbooks through the agency: "Bread, Making It The Natural Way", (with Joan Weiner), published by J. B. Lippincott (now HarperCollins), which won the Tastemaker Award for Cookbooks featuring Natural Foods; and "Frozen Delights", (with Nancy Goff), published by T. Y. Crowell (now HarperCollins). Both books were also published in England by Robert Hale, Ltd.

 

My other occupations have included that of being an assistant modern language editor at Blaisdell Publishing Company; a manager of a small restaurant in New Jersey; a partner in a business brokerage firm, Aidan Enterprises; and, a group pension contract underwriter for the pension department of The Equitable Life Assurance Company.

 

 

Judith E. Dacey, CPA

Ever wonder how to keep more of your profits out of Uncle Sam’s pockets? CPA, Judith E. Dacey, may be the answer. She is adept at translating complex tax laws into crystal clear ideas to accomplish just that. She graduated at the top of her accounting class, passed the CPA exam on her first sitting, and has been a member of Mensa for thirty years.

 

Passionate about entrepreneurism and the joys of being self-employed, Judith makes what is often a dry subject, into an entertaining learning session. In the last two decades, she has educated thousands of the self-employed to greater prosperity. She is often quoted or featured in newspapers and magazines; as well as, books. Key “Judith Dacey” into any internet search engine and you will see pages of references for her.

 

She has been recognized by the Small Business Administration as the Regional Small Business Advocate of the Year, has significant leadership involvement with Florida real estate investors associations, serves as the Vice Chair of the Florida statewide SBDC Advisory Board, and is a senior member of the Florida Leadership Council for NFIB. She is also the founder of the Florida Small Business Referral Network and Past President of the 1200 member Jacksonville Chapter of the Florida Institute of CPA’s.

 

 

Dimity McDowell Davis

A sports and fitness writer, Dimity McDowell started her magazine career in New York City, where she was on staff at (the now defunct) Women’s Sports + Fitness, Self, ESPN: The Magazine and (also defunct) Sports Illustrated Women. During those six years, she covered everything from mainstream sports (hanging out in the Denver Bronco’s locker room was less fun than you’d think) to the less well-known (flinging myself from an airplane was more fun than you’d think).

 

A freelancer since 2000, Dimity has held contributing editor positions at Health, Shape, Muscle and Fitness: Hers and is currently a contributing editor at Women’s Health and Runner’s World. Eight years later, she’s written more workouts about how to get a better butt and sports bra reviews than she’d like to admit, but she’s also profiled a woman who wants to be the first woman to row across the Pacific for Play, the New York Times Sports Magazine, admitted how much she sucks at changing flat tires in the pages of Bicycling and chronicled the expensive chewing habits of her dog for Real Simple. She was also nominated for an ASME in 2004, in the service category, for a story about how to buy your first house she wrote for Budget Living (another defunct one).

 

Currently based in Colorado Springs, Dimity lives with her husband, Grant, and two kids, Amelia and Ben, and two dogs, Dharma and Jessie.

 

 

Elizabeth Dougherty

Elizabeth Dougherty is an executive editor of lifestyle and children’s books at Weldon Owen in San Francisco. Weldon Owen produces premium-quality lifestyle and reference books featuring beautiful photography and artwork. Known for its commitment to editorial and design excellence, Weldon Owen creates branded books for prestigious companies, such as Williams-Sonoma, as well as its own lines of books. During her five+ years at Weldon Owen, Elizabeth has developed books for Hallmark, Gymboree, The Body Shop, Pottery Barn, 3M, and Parenting magazine. Prior to joining Weldon Owen, she was a freelance editor, writer, and web consultant for several years. Elizabeth also spent three years developing content for Disney’s Go.com (formerly Infoseek), where she was an executive producer, and has more than a decade of experience as a magazine features editor. She holds an MSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

 

 

Joseph Faria

Joseph Faria has worked digital video production and post-production for over five years on such projects as the television show “The Directors” (segments starring Ethan Hawke, Kevin Bacon, Eric Stoltz, and Bob Balaban, among others) and the internationally distributed music video for Goldenhawk’s “My Dream.” He gained experience as a director of photography, lighting technician, set designer, and video editor for H.M. Rifken Productions and Dan Placentra Productions, and this past semester he created and taught a digital video production course for Montclair Adult School in NJ. The author of a nonfiction children’s book and the technical reviewer of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Digital Video, he is also the writer, director, and editor of “Union,” an official selection at the 2007 Garden State Film Festival. He currently works as a freelance digital video specialist for mediabistro.com.

 

 

Eric Hanson

Eric Hanson has worked as an editor with About.com since 2004, heading up the program that selects, trains, and hires Guides, the writer/editors who cover individual topics. A graduate of Skidmore College with a BA in History and Music, he is currently enrolled in an MBA program at Baruch College at the City University of New York.

 

 

Brad Hill

Brad Hill is the Director of Weblogs, Inc., the world’s largest professional blog network and a wholly owned AOL company. Brad oversees the publication of about 15,000 blog posts per month, produced by a freelance staff of about 500 writers. He manages a full-time employed staff of 25 editors, designers, and producers.

 

The Weblogs, Inc. portfolio includes best-of-breed blog brands Engadget, Joystiq, Autoblog, Gadling, BloggingStocks, TV Squad, Switched, and many others. International versions carry translated and original content in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Polish, and German. Together, the Weblogs, Inc. sites serve nearly 300-million pageviews to about 45-million unique users each month. Weblogs, Inc. is recognized as creating the freelance blogging marketplace, and maintains the industry’s best practices.

 

Hill is also the author of more than 20 books about online services and music, including Blogging For Dummies (1st edition, Wiley, 2006). One of the most prolific how-to authors in the world, Hill was contributed titles to three major series brands: …For Dummies, The Complete Idiot’s Guide, and Getting Started In. He has also written several books about music, including an encyclopedia of American classical music (Facts on File, 2004). Three of his titles focus on the digital music revolution, including The Digital Songstream (Routledge, 2003).

 

A long-time advocate of the online experience, Hill owned and operated CompuServe Forums starting in 1992.

 

 

Chris Kissell

Chris Kissell is an associate editor at Bankrate.com, where he generates story ideas, hires freelance writers to work on personal finance stories and edits the copy of several columnists. He also writes occasionally about the housing market.

 

Chris has worked as a reporter and editor for nearly two decades at various newspapers, magazines and news-oriented Web sites. He has earned more than a dozen national awards for his writing and reporting. Most recently, he worked as a medical editor for NBC Universal's iVillage Total Health Web site and as national night editor for the Internet Broadcasting Systems news network.

 

 

Crystal Lauderdale

A multimedia content producer/video product manager for The New York Times Regional Media Group. Crystal is a photojournalist with a degree in print writing, and loves storytelling regardless of story form. Her experience in the industry has primarily been in highly converged newsrooms working closely with print, television and online journalists. Crystal feels as comfortable producing video, audio and multimedia reports as she does in the traditional print environment. It is her goal to help shape the way our industry tells stories online through continued learning, teaching and practice and through collaboration and conversation with fellow journalists throughout the field.

 

 

Tammi Marcoullier

Tammi Marcoullier is Director, Editorial of Publish2, Inc. Tammi brings more than 16 years of diverse experience that includes print, television, magazine, and Internet media. Throughout her career, she has been on the cusp of evolutionary changes in the industry.

 

As an editor and consultant for WashingtonPost.com, Tammi launched the definitive and popular blog "Living in LoCo," and was part of the team that developed the newspaper's hyper-local strategy. Prior to that she was Director, Content Strategy and Programming for AOL Broadband, overseeing the creation and launch of Sports, News, Finance, and CityGuide original productions and partner content.

 

When color graphics topped the newspaper trend charts, Tammi was the Graphics Reporter for USA Today, wrote the "Business Travel Today" column and contributed to the Sports and Life sections. She also wrote a book about the first U.S. gold medal-winning Olympic Bobsled Team, but what most people ask about is the year she worked for George Michael of the infamous "Sports Machine."

 

Tammi manages editorial development of the Publish2 site and, along with Josh Korr, is a primary contact for journalists and media companies who are using, or would like to learn more about integrating, link journalism.

 

 

Tricia O'Brien

Tricia O’Brien is the features editor for American Baby magazine. She has also worked on staff at Natural Health and Country Living’s Healthy Living, and her articles pertaining to health, nutrition, and fitness have appeared in such publications as Prevention, Shape, Fitness, Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal, Seattle, and Parents. She contributed an essay to the 2006 anthology Woman’s Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives (Seal Press). She lives in New York City.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jodi Ornstein

Jodi Ornstein is managing editor of The PPI Group, a Fort Lauderdale-based publishing company specializing in the cruise industry. The company publishes Porthole Cruise Magazine, a national consumer cruise magazine produced six times a year, as well as dozens of custom publications for most of the major cruise lines. Ornstein is responsible for assigning stories, working with cruise line clients, editing, and following industry trends. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University, was formerly the associate editor for Nova Southeastern University’s Office of Publications, and joined The PPI Group in 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

Andrea Rotondo

A senior acquisitions editor at Barnes & Noble Publishing. On the editing side, she acquired and developed rock star Tom Petty’s as-told-to biography, the award-winning Conversations With Tom Petty. Several other books she’s edited have won Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY). She is the author of Getting Married: A Complete Guide to Planning Your Special Day and Disney Weddings: Tying the Knot and Renewing Your Vows at Walt Disney World. She also contributed to Birnbaum’s Official Guides to Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

 

Mike Sharsky

Mike Sharsky is a seasoned journalist with more than 20 years writing for magazines, newspapers and press efforts. Editorially, Mike has covered topics including local, county, state and national governments, higher education, technology, science and industry, to name just a few.

 

Before Joining Pace Communications, Mike was a newspaper reporter, working at various papers since 1984. He also served as a press secretary for a gubernatorial race as well as for a U.S. Senate primary. Mike is currently the managing editor of SIGnature, the Bluetooth Quarterly and AAA Traveler. He is also editor of AAA Sojourns.

 

 

Ted Spiker

An associate professor of journalism, University of Florida. Spiker is a contributing editor to Men’s Health magazine, where he was previously articles editor. He is also co-author of 10 books, including four national bestsellers, YOU: Staying Young, YOU: On a Diet, YOU: The Owner's Manual and The Abs Diet.

 

 

Joe Stella

Joe Stella joined Imagiantion in 2002 as the senior editor of a custom magazine for Allstate Insurance that was distributed to 3 million customers quarterly. Over the years, Joe has moved up through the ranks at Imagination, growing personally and professionally as the custom media space took off. He became senior vice president and group publisher in 2006, where he oversaw five business units: associations, consumer, financial services, small business and technology. There, he fostered client partnership development, and ensured that Imagination’s creative force had all the tools and information it needed to produce best-in-class content and design.

 

In his new role as senior vice president, general manager, associations, Joe is responsible for a growing segment of Imagination's strategic account base: professional and trade organizations.

 

Joe earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Illinois State University in 1994. Prior to earning his degree, he spent six months in Florence, Italy, where he studied language, literature and the culinary arts. He is a former restaurant owner who loves to cook and write. His short fiction has been published in a university press literary journal and he aspires to complete a collection of short stories for publication.

 

In his new role as senior vice president, general manager, associations, Joe is responsible for a growing segment of Imagination's strategic account base: professional and trade organizations.

 

Joe’s first job was working as an editorial assistant for the national monthly Italian-American newspaper, Fra Noi. From there, he spent several years with Cahners Publishing in various editorial roles at trade magazines in the furniture manufacturing industry, and then with Reed Business Information (formerly Cahners Business Information) as managing editor in Reed's Residential Construction Group. Wanting to see what the other side of magazine journalism was like, Joe moved into consumer publishing in 2000 with Consumers Digest, where he become the senior editor of the company's personal finance bimonthly, Your Money. Even while he was employed full-time, Joe was an active freelance writer who covered business, finance and culture for Chicago-area newspapers.

 

Joe also served for two years as vice president of FIERI International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and fostering Italian-American culture, and he is a recipient of the City of Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley Young Community Leader Award.

 

 

BJ Towe

When the music group Wild Cherry recorded “Play that Funky Music,” BJ recorded her first job in communications—as a direct marketer for a management consulting company.That was more than 30 years ago. Since then, BJ’s career path has been a little bit “funky”—ranging from writing and editing direct response to later roles in public relations, advertising and ultimately magazine.Among her positions, she was copy chief for a national retail chain and later copywriter/creative director at advertising agencies in California and Illinois.In the 1980s she served as public relations director for Iowa’s largest healthcare network, overseeing all advertising, marketing, media relations, photography and other communications programs. For the next 16 years, she owned and operated Words that Work, Inc., a business focused on providing direct-response and editorial writing services to a variety of national organizations—among them, Meredith Corporation. After a longtime and successful relationship with Meredith, BJ joined the company’s Integrated Marketing division in 2004.

 

As executive editor, BJ oversees a staff of editors, each of whom acts as editorial lead on multiple custom publications representing food, health, shelter and family categories. She also serves as editor-in-chief for Figure magazine, a bi-monthly beauty and fashion title sold at newsstand, by subscription and in Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug and Catherines clothing stores.And she still keeps her toe in clients’ promotion and direct-response initiatives.

 

BJ received her BA in advertising/journalism with a minor in art from Drake University, Des Moines, IA.

 

 

Michele Wells

An acquisitions editor at Penguin Group (USA), Michele Wells has over twelve years of experience in publishing. Although she has been involved in everything from academic to children’s books to magazines, her current focus is on trade nonfiction. She acquires books in all adult lifestyle categories, but prefers manuscripts on entertainment, travel, cooking, foreign language, and technology. In recent years she has expanded into producing content for DVDs, CDs, and podcasts, and she is interested in the integration of book and multimedia production. She continually strives to maintain a strong network of author and agent relationships, and looks forward to making new connections through FLX.

 

 

 

 

 

Betsy Wright-Lampe

Betsy Wright-Lampe has 20 years of experience in the book publishing industry. She holds the positions of president and editorial director of Rainbow Books, Inc. (www.RainbowBooksInc.com), a 30-year-old, family-owned, independent publisher of self-help/how-to nonfiction (middle readers through adults) and mystery fiction (for adults). Betsy twice served as president and currently works as association executive of the Florida Publishers Association, Inc. She also creates its monthly FPA Sell More Books! Newsletter. Rainbow Books, Inc., holds a house membership in the Association of American Publishers (www.publishers.org) and a founding membership in both Publishers Association of the South (www.pubsouth.org) and Florida Publishers Association (www.FLbookpub.org). Google "Betsy Lampe" and "Betsy Wright-Lampe" (don't forget the quotation marks) and know that she neither quilts nor raises Samoyed dogs. She does, however, love Keeshonden, aviation, portrait art, emergency medicine and American Quarter Horses.

 

 

 

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