Michael Smith is Executive Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Michael aims to help advance the interests of publishers, technologists, and readers by evangelizing the adoption of IDPF standards for electronic reading applications and products. Michael has over 22 years of book publishing and print production expertise. Prior to joining the IDPF, Michael was employed by Toronto based romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. where he managed eBook and book production servicing North America, UK and Australian markets.

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Mr. Brooks is senior vice president, global production and manufacturing services at Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) where his responsibilities include the development, production, and manufacturing of textbooks and reference content in print and digital formats across the Academic and Professional Group, Gale, and International divisions of Cengage Learning. Prior to his position at Cengage Learning, Ken was president and founder of Publishing Dimensions, a digital content services company focused in the eBook and digital strategy space. Over the course of his career, Ken has founded a Philippines-based text conversion company; a public domain publishing imprint; and a distribution-center based print-on-demand operation and has worked in trade, professional, higher education and K-12 publishing sectors. He has held several senior management positions in publishing, including vice president of digital content at Barnes & Noble, vice president of operations, production, and strategic planning at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and vice president of customer operations at Simon & Schuster. Prior to his entry into publishing, Ken was a senior manager in Andersen Consulting’s logistics strategy practice.

Leslie Hulse is the Vice President, Digital Business Development at HarperCollins Publishers. In this role, Leslie focuses on crafting partnerships with retailers, search engines and others to distribute digital content widely for marketing and commerce, including the launch of Browse Inside on Booksense.com, BN.com, and the HarperCollins sites. In addition, she works closely with the HarperMedia staff and other publishers to drive our ebook, digital audio, and other digital revenues. Leslie also oversees HC’s online consumer membership programs AuthorTracker, First Look, newsletters, and others in development.

Leslie is actively involved in a number of industry groups including the AAP’s Digital Issues Working Group and the Online Piracy Working Group and the BISG Digital Standards Committee.

Leslie has worked at HarperCollins for eleven years in a variety of senior financial and management roles supporting the strategic growth of our online efforts. Most recently, she has led the development efforts on www.harpercollins.com its sister sites. In 2004 she was co-leader of the Publishing + Direct to Consumer team, from which much of HC’s online strategy has evolved.

Cynthia Cleto is the Global Manager for eBooks at Springer Science+Business Media. She is responsible for market penetration, product development, and other commercial aspects of the Springer eBook Collection. Prior to Springer, Cynthia worked to help launch a number of innovative products in the electronic space – these consist of A&I and Chemistry Databases for Elsevier as well as Thieme Medical Publishers. Before entering the STM Publishing field, Cynthia trained and worked as a supervisor and graduate student in Genomics laboratories at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

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