When I learned about the interesting role of Director of Membership, I knew that serendipity was at play again. In my career, I have been fortunate to feel like I was in the right place at the right time, and this opportunity is exactly that. Joining the ORCID team at such a pivotal time for the organization is exciting and I am proud to be part of an innovative and essential group in the community.
My entire professional background has been spent working in some aspect of scholarly communications and publishing. My first job after college was as a Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian translator for EBSCO Information Services, and later as an Account Director for their marketing division PP&F. Most recently, I ran the marketing and sales consulting firm Publishers Communication Group (PCG).
It was at PCG that I was fortunate to work with a broad constituency of organizations involved in the publishing cycle: mission-driven publishers such as BioOne, CABI, and American Society for Microbiology; researchers and librarians across the US, Europe, and Latin America; and consortia such as CAPES in Brazil, CONACyT in Mexico, DFG in Germany, and CAS in China. It is these connections that have taught me the value of strong international partnerships and the importance of standards that can be applied across borders. The need for an organization like ORCID was clear to me at the time and what a privilege it is now to contribute to ORCID’s membership growth worldwide!
In this new role, my focus will be to oversee the global strategy for developing and growing relationships with researchers, publishers, research institutions, associations, consortia, and funding organizatoins. The first order of business is to build a team of Regional Directors in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and Africa/Middle East, to join our colleague Josh Brown, Regional Director for Europe. We are working to recruit the regional directors, and will be announcing these appointments soon.
There are great opportunities for ORCID to grow, and the work ahead is cut out for us. I’m really excited to get started with the team and to be part of this great adventure, but I can’t say that I am without concern…I haven’t quite figured out how to explain to my mother what ORCID does.
