Paul Slavin, CEO of Open Road Integrated Media (OR/M), announced a number of new hires and promotions for the company across marketing including Business Development and Publishing, Digital Marketing, Content/Owned Media, and Newsletters/Audience Development as well as Production.

“These employee changes demonstrate our ongoing commitment to building discovery for the 37,000+ titles we are currently managing for our publishing partners, authors and agents,” said Mary McAveney, CRO/CMO, “The importance of the content we manage and our direct audience relationships, which are key to that discovery engine, and are reflected in how we build our teams.”

“The entire company is oriented around developing marketing technology and data solutions that allow us to scale our efforts in a way no other publishing services provider can match,” Slavin said. “In October, we have over 40,000 titles in promotions. In an industry that generates nearly two million new products a year, scalability is essential.”

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From Business Development and Publishing Relations:

Mara Anastas joins Open Road Integrated Media in the newly created role of VP Business Development and Publishing Relations reporting to CRO, Mary McAveney. Mara has held executive roles in sales and publishing at Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Scholastic. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in publishing, contract negotiation, licensing, and brand development with a focus on driving revenue and profit. She will be working with authors, estates, and publishers to continue to drive their revenues and profits through Ignition as well as ORIM’s publishing models.

Lisa Echenthal has joined in the newly created position of Business Development Manager, reporting to VP Business Development Heidi Sachner. Lisa is responsible for preparing business reviews and other sales analysis for all current or prospective Ignition publishers and managing the onboarding and internal set-up of new Ignition publishers and titles. Lisa brings terrific marketplace experience to Ignition and Open Road. She was previously a buyer at Barnes & Noble for many years with responsibility for non-fiction categories ranging from true crime and narrative nonfiction to lifestyle, spirituality, and sports. She has partnered with publishers across the industry to grow their sales and is very skilled in trend analysis and identifying opportunities.

From Digital Marketing at Bloodhound Books:

Hannah Deuce joined Bloodhound from one of the UK’s largest publishers, Hachette UK, where she built her experience in Digital Marketing and Publicity, working across multiple genres and varied titles. With a Masters degree in Publishing and professional background in Marketing and PR in the publishing sphere and beyond, she combines analytical methodologies with creative thinking to promote exciting new books.

From Production:

Laura Voorhees, Executive Director of Production, started as an intern in the fall of 2014, and in over seven years with Open Road in production she has worked on the titles published by ORIM as well as acting as production lead for Open Road Distribution, Worth Books, and Ignition. The last two years she has managed our amazing production team and will report to Slavin.

From Content/Owned Media:

Lisa Quigley, Senior Editor, The Lineup and Murder & Mayhem joined Open Road in October, coming from Stevens Institute in New Jersey, where she was a communications coordinator. A horror fiend, Lisa also hosts the podcast Ladies of the Fright and writes novels in her spare time. Lisa will report to Director of Content Strategy, Catherine Phelan.

Also reporting to Phelan, Kaytie Norman has been promoted from Editor, Early Bird Books to Senior Editor, Early Bird Books. In addition to assisting the content team with overall content guidance, she will be working more closely with the tech and product teams to improve our user experience.

Reporting to Norman, MacKenzie Stuart has been promoted from Associate Editor to Editor, The Archive. Joining our team as an intern three years ago, MacKenzie has since ably stepped into managing The Archive and assisting content creation and ideation for The Lineup, Murder & Mayhem, and additional sites.

Reporting to Quigley, Kelsey McConnell has been promoted from Editorial Assistant to Assistant Editor. After a successful internship with ORIM, Kelsey joined the team full-time in November 2020, and has been helping The Lineup, A Love So True, and Murder & Mayhem grow ever since. She will be focusing on trending stories and social media.

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From Newsletters/Audience Development:

Nicole Matura has joined the Early Bird Books team as our Marketing Operations Coordinator. Nicole graduated from the University of Vermont in May 2021 and has experience marketing retail and social brands through email, social media platforms, and PR.

Nicole will analyze data from Early Bird Book’s newsletter and acquisition campaigns, provide the team with actionable insights, generate ideas to further engage our subscribers, and add efficiency to our audience acquisition marketing.

Ed Bambara comes to Open Road Media from Canon USA. As Consumer Insight Manager at Canon, Ed analyzed the performance and effectiveness of marketing campaigns across multiple product lines. Ed brings his data analytics and consumer marketing background to the Early Bird Books team to uncover trends in subscriber engagement and acquisition, formulate and implement new email marketing strategies and enhance Early Bird Books subscriber experience.

Matura and Bambara report to Executive Director of Audience Insights, Mason Kostinsky.