The ORCID Team

Rob Blackburn
Web Producer
Rob maintains the ORCID Info site keeping it up-to-date. Tech and Product liason for the Communications Team.
Likes ink and paper.

Thamirys Cabral
User Support Specialist
Thamirys supports users who speak Portuguese and Spanish.
She has a Bachelors in International Studies and her biggest passion is learning about and experiencing new cultures and ways of living.

Ana Patricia Cardoso
Engagement Lead, LATAM & US.
Ana provides coaching to support technical integrations by members in the Americas.
She is fluent in Spanish, English, French and is currently studying Portuguese.

Estelle Cheng
Engagement Manager, Asia-Pacific.
Estelle is responsible for growing the adoption of ORCID, engaging with partners across sectors and establishing communities of practice in the Asia-Pacific region.
She has an infectious enthusiasm for scholarly communication.

Pedro Costa
QA Lead
Pedro leads the QA process for the ORCID Registry managing manual and automated test plans for its UI, back end, and API. He’s also responsible for escalated (Tier 2) support requests.
In his free time, Pedro enjoys playing bass, listening to vinyl records, and playing beach volleyball.

Paula Demain
Product Manager
Paula is responsible for gathering, managing and refining the requirements of the ORCID user community, with a specific focus on members and integrators.
Paula manages the product roadmap.
Paula is a keen equestrian and loves animals.

Tom Demeranville
Product Director
Tom ensures our technology is responsive to our community and aligned with our mission. He collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to identify innovation opportunities and manage ORCID’s technical roadmap.
Tom holds a first class honors degree in software engineering from the Open University.
Tom likes to make and fire his own pottery.

Dan Dineen
UX Designer
Dan is our UX designer. He works making sure we have usable, accessible products that are a joy to use. He’s happiest when shouting about accessibility, user-centred design, legible typography and flexible grid systems.
Outside of the office he can be found playing football, reading comics, running D&D games or skateboarding. But never all at the same time.

Camelia Dumitru
Senior Java Backend Engineer
As part of the IT team, Camelia develops back end functionality for new features, bug fixes, and maintenance of the ORCID Registry and APIs, and related projects.
She has a BS in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania and fluently speaks English, Romanian, Spanish, and a bit of French. When not busy developing applications, Camelia enjoys trekking, dancing, and traveling.

Padma Gopinath
Accountant
Padma supports the finance and accounting functions of ORCID by maintaining books, preparing financial reports and assisting with audits.
She has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University of Madras, India and an Honors Diploma in computer applications.

Stephanie Harley
Operations Manager
Stephanie supports and streamlines ORCID’s operations and events. Before joining ORCID, she was the International Program Associate at the Council of American Ambassadors. Prior to that, Stephanie served as a research analyst in governmental and political organizations. She graduated from Villanova University with honors and majored in Political Science.

Ana Heredia
Engagement Lead, South America.
Ana is responsible for driving ORCID awareness, promoting adoption and engagement, and building strategic relationships with the government, academic, and publishing communities in Latin America. She received a BS in Biology and an MS in Neuroscience from Université Paul Sabatier as well as a PhD in Sciences from Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium).

Sarah Hershberger
Director of Finance & Operations
Sarah manages all aspects of ORCID’s back office operations including financial management, human resource management, internal information infrastructure, and coordination of international activities.
Sarah has spent time living in southern Africa and considers it her home away from home.

Nabil Ksibi
Engagement Lead, Middle East & Africa
Nabil is responsible for fostering ORCID community adoption in the Middle East & Africa. As part of his responsibilities, Nabil supports ORCID members as they develop new and existing integrations and workflows.
Nabil is passionate about Engineering, Art, and Humanitarian work. In addition to English, he is fluent in Arabic and French.

Emilia Kutrovska
Operations Project Manager
My role at ORCID is to lead projects to implement and optimize internal processes as well as to administer ORCID’s internal portfolio of information tools and systems.
In my free time I study Greek, paint and draw.

Camillia Lu
Engagement Lead, Asia-Pacific
Camillia works with the ORCID community in the Asia-Pacific region and is fluent in English, Japanese and Mandarin. Based in Taiwan, Camillia builds regional partnerships to promote adoption of ORCID and establish Communities of Practice.
Camillia has a BA in Economics from Taiwan University and a MBA from Waseda University.

Paloma Marín-Arraiza
Engagement Lead, Europe
As part of the Engagement Team Paloma supports ORCID members and consortia in Europe to develop new and existing integrations and workflows and to promote ORCID adoption.
She is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, German and English and speaks Catalan at a conversational level. In her free time, Paloma enjoys knitting and crocheting, lifting weights and open-water swimming.

Leonardo Mendoza
Senior Front End Engineer
As part of our Open Source Team Leonardo specializes in UI development and JavaScript frameworks. Before ORCID he worked as Full Stack Developer in many other projects.
Leonardo has a BS in Computer Science from the Tecnológico de Costa Rica and is fluent in Spanish and English.

Gabriela Mejias
Engagement Manager, EMEA
Gabriela is responsible for developing the community adoption of ORCID. She onboards and supports institutional members as they build and upgrade their integrations and engages with the wider community delivering training and presentations.
She has a degree in Social Communication from the University of Buenos Aires. She speaks Spanish, English, German, and French.

Brian Minihan
Engagement Lead, Asia Pacific
Based in Hong Kong, Brian is a point of contact for expanding ORCID member organizations in South Asia and Hong Kong, supporting existing ORCID Consortia in Oceania and conducting scholarly communications outreach and events throughout the Asia Pacific.
Brian races Dragon class sailboats at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club

Angel Montenegro
Tech Lead, Registry
As part of our Open Source Team, Angel is in charge of supporting existing ORCID infrastructure, helping the member services team in tech-related issues, and building new features for the ORCID registry.
Angel has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Costa Rica and is fluent in Spanish and English

Mitra Najafi-Gheidari
Senior User Support Specialist
Mitra provides first tier support to researchers with queries about their ORCID records. Before joining ORCID, she worked as a support representative in the tech startup community.

George Nash
Senior Software Developer
George joined the team in 2016 having worked as a developer across a variety of industries including finance, retail, telecoms, media, and publishing, specialising in Java development.
George enjoys football, films, and travelling in his spare time and plays a lot of chess. He once wrote an email based chess app and may or may not one day make it into a website.

Daniel Palafox
Java Full Stack Engineer
As part of our Open Source Team, Daniel specializes in front-end and back-end development using JavaScript and Java. Before ORCID he worked in different sectors as a Full Stack developer as well. He has a Bachelors Degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the ESCOM IPN Escuela Superior de Computo and a Masters in Project Management from the Universitat de Barcelona and is fluent in Spanish and English.

Sandy Paparisto
People Operations Manager
Sandy supports ORCID HR initiatives such as talent development and training, performance management, recruiting and onboarding, and other projects that focus on strengthening teamwork and collaboration.
Her interests outside of work include reading, wellness, stargazing, and spending time with her husband and two boys.

Julie Petro
Communications Director
Julie is responsible for setting and guiding the strategy for all ORCID communications and ensures our communications activities embed our values, align with our core strategies, and consistently articulate ORCID’s mission.
Julie speaks conversational Korean and can often be found trail running (read: mostly walking), reading, or practicing yoga.

Andrej Romanov
User Support
Andrej provides first tier support to researchers. Prior to joining ORCID, Andrej provided internal Citrix support at Barclays Groups Operations Lithuania. Andrej has a BSc with honors in Music Technology, having graduated the University of Hertfordshire in 2014.
In his free time he writes music, experiments with audio-visual installations, shoots film photography, rides his bicycle and explores nature.

Shawna Sadler
ORCID Engagement Manager, Americas & Caribbean.
Shawna is responsible for developing the ORCID community in the Americas and managing the regional Americas team: North, Central, and South America. Shawna focuses on continuing the adoption and integration of ORCID within the research communities and organizations of the Americas.
In her spare time she can be found snowboarding, mountain biking, and trying to keep up with her quickly growing children.

Bernette Sherman
Communications Coordinator
Bernette supports the communications team and provides external support for communications including developing communications and outreach materials, blog posts, newsletters. Bernette also helps to track and report on communications analytics and coordinate promotional events.
Bernette has published nine books since 2016 and writes poetry, plays, and books in her spare time.

Chris Shillum
Executive Director
With more than 25 years of experience in product and platform development in scholarly communications and STM publishing, Chris brings to ORCID his deep expertise in product and technology strategy in a time of rapidly changing business models, technological advances, and increasing expectations from users and customers. He previously held a number of leadership positions at Elsevier, and has served on the boards of Crossref, ORCID, the International DOI Foundation and the National Information Standards Organization. Outside work, Chris enjoys travel, music and movies.

Matt Stockman
User Support Manager
Matt has over 10 years experience of working in technology within the education sector. Matt has a passion for putting the user first and using technology to improve daily life. This has now spilled over into making a smart home and Matt can often be found shouting at Google and Alexa whilst sitting at his desk. When not geeking out with the latest tech he can be found spending time with the family, badly playing guitar and watching as much sport as time allows.

Will Simpson
Director, Technology
Will is responsible for ORCID’s technical strategy, infrastructure, and scalability, and manages the technology team.
Will graduated in 2000 with a first class honors degree in Physics from University College London, and is also a qualified teacher of English as a foreign language.

Giles Westwood
Senior Devops Engineer
Giles is an experienced engineer and manager in operations with over 15 years of experience architecting and maintaining infrastructure, following principles of configuration management, infrastructure as code and immutable infrastructure.
When not wrangling computers he likes outdoor sports like snowboarding and mountain biking.

Ivo Wijnbergen
Director of Engagement
Ivo is responsible for our community adoption and sustainability strategy and its alignment with our core strategies and values.
Ivo speaks Dutch, German, English, and Spanish, and has a wife and two daughters with whom he spends most of his spare time with.

Katrina Willis
Communications Specialist
Katrina helps develop and implement ORCID’s communications strategy across all regions and communities, and she also serves as the communications liaison for ORCID’s Engagement Team.
Katrina’s first novel, Parting Gifts, was published by SheWrites Press in 2016. She is currently at work on her second novel and her memoir.