thanks just to take glad to be here today and thank you for having me. Eso say it's been kind of, Ah, long journey to get where I am now and really began in undergraduate, where I took a technical writing class and I discovered that I really enjoyed editorial work. So trying to make the presentation of information and content Aziz good as possible so that it could reach his audience in the best way that it could be meaningful to them. So then I ended up going to graduate school for medieval studies, and I did a PhD in English and video studies. But then all the time, I was doing some freelance editorial work as well. So I kept the hand in there and got some good opportunities as a graduate student to participate in the editing of academic journals on also to work in an office based setting as a graduate assistant for a survey and analysis center, which gave me some experience with more corporate communications, eso I found that to be a valuable opportunity. And then once I finished my PhD, I had to think about what to do next, and so I realized that I would not like to go down the academic route of doing teaching and research because while many people are right at balancing both of those, I find it very hard to balance both and do them equally well. So my family moved to Oxford in the United Kingdom s O. That my husband could be a professor of Earth science there. And so at that time, I decided to get into academic publishing. Uh, because Oxford is sort of a hub for many academic publishers. So I was able Thio convince, uh, some publishers that the skills that I had built, you know, in this freelance editorial work plus the English graduate studies would translate well into anak a dem IQ publishing setting. And I took up a role as a production editor, Oxford University Press. And so my focus there was law books. Eso I was a production editor, meaning that I was responsible for taking about 15 to 20 titles at a time through the steps of copy, editing, typesetting, proof, reading, indexing and publication. And so that was really interesting work and a great way to learn about the book making process first hand and ask a lot of questions and about, uh, better. There was a resignation, and I got on opportunity to become the team leader of a production team responsible for outsourcing action. Eso The majority of the outsourcing work was with India s O. That was a great experience in understanding how to work with vendors in a more local setting and got a lot of on the job training on. Got to visit India and, you know, just again better understand the book making process from end to end. Uh, and so I was in that role as a team leader for three years, And then again, a restructure and resignation gave me an opportunity to take on a role as, um managing the US and UK teams producing books for Oxford University Press. And so, at that time, the team is producing about 2400 titles a year and working with both offshore and onshore vendors to do that. And so that was, you know, again, just learning more about different aspect, like manufacturing and design and the supply chain eso just really taking the opportunity to ask questions and get all the knowledge that I could Okay, and so I e have one final move in which I we moved back to the US again for my husband's job. So he is now a professor at the University of Minnesota and I was able to move to a smaller academic and religious publisher in downtown Minneapolis. Although of course we are now all working from home. And there I am the senior director of content Management s. So I'm responsible for not only the production of books but also all of Thekla contracts and permissions as well as the metadata, which I am really enjoying learning more about, as that is again, such an important part of the supply chain.

so I would say they're her quite a variety of responsibilities and decisions. But I would see my main responsibility as being to make sure that my team has what all of those individuals need to be able to do their jobs, because in this director role, I am not personally responsible for delivering any of the content right. I have a team of managers and individual contributors who are really doing that that day to day work of the actual production and content management. So I see it as my core responsibility to make sure that they have what they need to successfully do that work toe, understand any barriers that they face and work both with them in my team and across different functions within the business to remove those barriers.Okay, so I would say my top three priorities. First of all, to ensure again that the team is under the conditions that it needs to succeed, Right? So, of course, each team member is a different individual. Um, but it's really a priority for me to understand what their career development goals are and how I can help them to feel satisfied in the job that they have. Uh, and, you know, make sure that even a job that is, you know, quite repetitive eyes still something that they're engaged in right, and that we can keep thinking critically about it and, you know, stretch the boundaries of what we do in that team to keep up with the ever changing publishing industry. And the second priority is of course, um, making sure that I understand the business context in terms of the budget and business objectives. So I work very closely with my own manager and other heads of department to make sure that we are all aligned in progressing toward our our top priorities, which, you know, I would generally characterize as, um, meeting are budget and schedule and quality objectives. So those three are kind of the Golden Triangle. Oh, weekly work hours. Eso i When I moved from Oxford, I started working part time, so I asked to have this rule as a 25 hour week role. Eso I work five hours a day, so that way I am in every day and available. Um, but then I have ah, young family. So I feel like they put a lot of time and in breakfast Club and after school club in Oxford and I'm able thio be there before and after school.

definitely a major challenge is always the assumptions that can get made when you know content is flowing through a pipeline wherein there are multiple actors all touching that content and having to do something with it to make the end product. S o. I think one of the greatest challenges and one that were just constantly reviewing and revising is you know how all of those handoffs work on day and touch points and triggers throughout the process. So I think of this as, ah really kind of operations focused role, um, where in always trying to build a better pipeline for that content to flow through on minimize the risk of error at any given point. I think that, you know, definitely stakeholder communication is ah, very big aspect of this role, and I wouldn't necessarily say it's often a challenge, but there can be some delicate communications that are required. You know, for example, when uh, content does not meet authors expectations because really, as a publisher, you kind of have to customers, right? The author is like your customer on then the readers are your customer as well, so making sure that our authors are happy with our performance and are, you know, addition of value to their content is a really key priority s So I think that's a number of times when we have not met author expectations, you know, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps there was a quality control steps that was myth or that should have been in the process, but was not, uh and sometimes it can be really challenging when there was a good explanation for something. But an author just disagrees with the approach. Eso there's a kind of process of negotiation of those times, right? Where in your trying to get the best outcome for yourself A za publisher, while also honoring the author, is the creator of that content on Really? You know, of course it is their their name and reputation attached to it.