compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager
While the publishing industry continues to contend with various challenges in the marketplace, it also has a deep foundation of resiliency and collaboration to draw upon that provides us with the ability to adapt and thrive. Here are some ways we partnered with our industry colleagues throughout 2022 to help them identify and implement effective solutions:
Sharing Industry Knowledge
In 2022, we continued our successful partnership with Publishers Weekly, hosting two highly attended and informative webinars. In the spring, panelists Michael Jacobs, Lorraine Shanley, Jessica Ryan and Jim Fetherston discussed how each of their respective areas of the publishing industry were “Driving Business Forward”, and in the fall, Bill Kasdorf, Kristen McLean, and Rachel Martin provided steps publishing businesses could easily implement to have positive “Impacts on Accessibility and Sustainability”.
Also in the fall, consultant Jay Diskey was a panelist for the Westchester Education Services webinar, “2023 K-12 Education Funding and Policy Outlook”. The hour-long session was geared towards helping businesses developing materials for the K-12 education market better understand the various legislative and funding initiatives at both the federal and state level, and how these will impact the market during the next year.
A Fresh Look (and more great info!) for the Westchester Education Services website
This fall we improved the functionality and features on the Westchester Education Services website to provide you with a better user experience. With a mega-menu to help you quickly get to the specific subject areas you’re interested in, along with expanded content throughout including downloadable case studies, it’s packed with helpful information. Check it out and make sure to subscribe to our blog and our mailing list so you’re always up to date on what we’re doing.
Westchester UK and International Grows
Our colleagues in the UK expanded their ranks to continue serving the growing client base Westchester works with beyond the North American market. Joining the education team throughout the year were Thomas Storr, Emma Hudson, and Adam Wilkinson. In June, Rebecca Durose-Croft was promoted to the position of Managing Director, Education. In the fall, she took some time to discuss what led her into a career in education publishing in this blog post.
Promotions within our US editorial and production teams
As our client base inside the United States has continued to experience stellar growth, several of our US-based editorial and production staff received well-deserved promotions during the year. Some of the long-time employees who are bringing their vast experience into new roles are Terry Colosimo, Scott Keeney, Wendy Muto, Celeste Bilyard, Amanda Montes de Oca, Melody Negron and Erin Davis. Congratulations and continued success!
Westchester Education Services Expands its Staff
It was also an exciting spring and summer of growth for the Westchester Education Services team as they welcomed several new people. Content Directors, Jennifer Cole and Laura Cunningham, Senior Editor, Tara Hlavinka, and Director of Client Solutions, Kevin Schroeder all arrived at Westchester in the spring, as shared in this press release. Later in the year to continue supporting client growth, we welcomed Christina DeYoung as Director of Client Solutions, Jada Bradley as Senior Editor, Culturally Responsive Education, Sheyla Lucas as Editorial Project Manager, and Jordan Orfitelli as Project Manager.
Scholarly and Academically Speaking
In June, Hugh Shiebler, Director of Client Solutions was busy on the conference circuit, representing Westchester Publishing Services for the Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference, in Chicago. Later in the month, he joined Bill Foley, in Washington, DC, for the in-person return of the Association of University Presses Conference. Both enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with fellow publishing industry colleagues, to discuss workflow solutions to help publishers. Hugh also conducted an information session for AUP attendees about accessibility, which you can view and download here.Westchester UK Spring Events
Members of the Westchester Education UK & International, and Westchester Publishing Services UK teams participated in several publishing industry events during the spring, including sponsoring the Independent Publishers Guild Awards in April, the star-studded British Book Awards (known by its nickname, the Nibbies) in May, both of which were held in-person. Rounding things out in June was the hybrid Independent Publishers Guild Spring Conference. You can read more about it in these blog posts.Westchester Education Conferences
Our Westchester Education Services colleagues were busy attending several industry conferences in-person, including BETT UK in late winter, ASU-GSV in the spring, and several events in late fall, including sponsoring the EdWeek Market Brief Summit in November (Christina DeYoung shares 3 Key Takeaways), as well as attending the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) regional conference, and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), which you can read about in this overview from Kevin Schroeder. You can read more about our 2023 conference plans later in this message.
Have you heard Westchester Words?
Our podcast episodes are an efficient (15 minutes on average) way to learn about various topics that matter to the publishing, education and ed tech sectors on both sides of the Atlantic. You can find the Westchester Words and Westchester Words UK podcasts on your favorite streaming platform as well as on our websites, where we provide additional content related to the episodes along with downloadable transcripts. New episodes will be premiering in January, so now is the perfect time to get caught up!
What are we reading at Westchester?
The staff of Westchester are fortunate to be involved in working on thousands of book projects every year and on the other side of it, we enjoy doing our fair share of reading the finished product! See our Summer 2022 selections along with our recently published blog post Books We Want to Read or Gift Holiday 2022, to find out what books we’ve been reading this year.
Where Will Westchester be in 2023?
- Digital Book World (January 16)
- Future of Education Technology Conference (January 23)
- BETT Show (March 29)
With best wishes for a happy holiday season and a healthy, prosperous New Year.
April began strongly, with 
In May and June, Westchester Education Services hosted two informative webinars that were each moderated by 
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Westchester Education Services expands into CTE
It truly is an honor to be nominated
Ensuring Content Compliance on Digital Platforms
While some kids get chills up their spine when told they will have to read several books during the summer break and turn in book reports on the first day of school, I wasn’t one of them and I suspect many of you weren’t, either. Now that we’re all adults and can skip doing book reports, each May I ask my colleagues to tell me what books they plan to read during the quieter days of summer and they always impress me with their title selections. 
Looking Ahead
Words are the primary means by which our clients communicate with their customers, so we are always looking at various media that we can use to connect with them, as well as our colleagues throughout the publishing industry. During the pandemic, the absence of in-person events combined with an urgent need for timely, relevant content grew, motivating us to host more webinars of our own and to partner with others in the industry to speak with their audiences about topics that were of interest to them.