Eric Huang
Deputy Programme Director, MA Publishing Programme
City St George's, University of London

Eric studied palaeontology at University. Unfortunately, field work didn't live up to his Jurassic Park dreams. So he moved back home to LA for a stint as a tour guide at Universal Studios. Several low-paying roles in Hollywood later, he finally landed a job as secretary to the Creative Director of Disney Publishing Worldwide, inadvertently launching a career in books.

Since then, Eric has held editorial and publisher positions on three continents, including at Penguin Australia and Penguin UK. Through his company Dinoboy Ltd, he consults for publishers, media companies, museums, and storytelling start-ups. He's also a podcaster, an author, and a lecturer in the Masters in Publishing course at City St George, University of London.

Heather O’Connell
Publishing Consultant, Coach and Trainer
Bluebird Consulting

Heather has been in book production for more than 30 years, producing everything from children’s novelty titles to mass market trade titles for small and large size companies.

Heather now runs Bluebird Works - a consultancy and training company, offering expert advice to consultants, coaches and trainers in the publishing and printing industries. She also helps start-ups to get their business up and running and helps established businesses to implement change and to increase their efficiency and produce great books.

Elaine Pooke
Business Development Director
PEEKprintConsultancy.co.uk

Elaine boasts over 25 years working in print production, her technical knowledge was recognised when working at English Heritage on several projects made considerable changes in both reprographic and print production from film to digital. She has brought into print hundreds of new titles both monographs, commercial and guidebooks. Elaine demonstrated her knowledge in colour management by working closely with an ISO colour management professional consultant to introduce this into her daily production and on press management.

Elaine has judged for other organisations in the past and is known for her skills in managing several successful projects, one in particular she loves talking about is re-introducing an important title (out of stock), the 444 page hardback of Kenwood Paintings for Kenwood House.

Elaine, recognising changes in the industry was able to complete her studies whilst at EH for a BA Hons in Print Media Management where she attended part time education at the London College of Communications and graduated in June 2004. Elaine left EH in March 2015, where she continues her career in Print Consulting.

Stef Thelwell
Sketchbook Artist

Stef is an active sketchbook artist, book-binder, painter, Urban Sketcher and supporter of community based arts events. She has over 30 years experience in Academic and Arts book design and production, beginning her publishing career in a pre-digital environment and developing her creative skills across a broad range of publishing projects. Currently living and working in the Black Mountains and book town Hay-on-Wye the printed and illustrated book page is central to her life.

Jon Tolley
Director
Precision Proco

Jon has over 34 years of experience in the printing industry, 30 of which were spent running his own successful business before merging with Precision Print and Proco in 2020 to create Precision Proco.

Throughout his career, Jon has been instrumental in delivering personalized products for major e-commerce brands worldwide. He is also a frequent speaker at international events, sharing his expertise on the printing industry.

Today, Precision Proco produces over 150 million personalised items annually, including books with lead times as short as 24 hours.