2024 USA Seminar Seminar

22 May 2024 09:30–17:00 Eastern Time (US & Canada)

This year we are excited to be back again for our biannual Seminar, a great chance to meet in person with our US-based publishers, mills, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

The Seminar will be an informal day with guest speaker presentations and opportunities for networking and catching up. The theme we will be exploring is “Lifting the Cover: The Age of Transparency and Supply Chain Collaboration”, highlighting how regulation and other drivers are pushing for increased transparency, necessitating further and deeper collaboration across supply chains.

Attendance is by invitation for the stakeholders involved with the Book Chain Project. If you are not a participant in the Book Chain Project, please feel free to register below, and we will confirm your place.

This event is in the past

Guest Speakers
22 May 2024 09:30–17:00 Eastern Time (US & Canada)

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Brian O’Leary
Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group (BISG)

Brian O’Leary is executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, a U.S.-based trade association that disseminates information, creates and implements standards, and conducts research to benefit the book publishing supply chain.

Before being named to this role in 2016, O'Leary was principal of Magellan Media Consulting, which helped publishers improve how they create, manage and distribute content. In that role, O’Leary wrote extensively about issues affecting the publishing industry. With Hugh McGuire, he co-edited Book: A Futurist's Manifesto (O'Reilly Media, 2012).

O’Leary served as senior VP with Hammond Inc. and oversaw production and distribution operations at several Time Inc. magazines. O’Leary joined Time Inc. after earning an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He also holds an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College.

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Elizabeth Girardi-Schoen
Strategic Industry Advisor Pharmaceuticals/Biophar, ERM

Liz is a chemical engineer with over 40 years of experience in leading environmental sustainability in industry. As environmental sustainability leader at Pfizer for 30 years and Teva for more than 4, Liz also helped form many of the pharma industry coalitions [e.g., PEG, PSCI] and has the unique perspective of customer and supplier. Liz had direct experience in all aspects of EHS risk and compliance, as well as environmental sustainability including product stewardship, [e.g., green chemistry, sustainable medicines, REACh, Pharmaceuticals in the Environment [PiE]] and responsible supply chain. Liz has broad experience with many governments [e.g., US, EU, Israel, Asia] many non-government organizations [e.g., WBCSD, BST, WRI, UNEP, UNDP].

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Healy Hamilton
Chief Scientist, Sustainable Forestry Initiative

Dr. Healy Hamilton is a biodiversity scientist with over 20 years experience in the development and application of species, ecosystem, and landscape data in support of resource management and conservation. She is trained in diverse disciplines, with integrative graduate degrees from Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, and extensive field experience in the tropical forests of Latin America and tropical coasts of Pacific islands. She began her post-graduate career as the founding director of an applied conservation science center within the California Academy of Sciences, a major natural history museum, leveraging spatial information from among the 20+ million specimens in the CAS collections. From 2013-2022, Dr. Hamilton was Chief Scientist at NatureServe, the world’s first biodiversity information network, where she led a staff with expertise in ecology, zoology, botany, and spatial modeling in the delivery of foundational information on the distribution and conservation status of species and their habitats. In 2023, she joined the Sustainable Forestry Initiative as their first Chief Scientist, where she is focused on developing and delivering data and tools to support SFI-certified organizations to achieve the conservation objectives of SFI standards. Dr. Hamilton is also a world expert on the taxonomy and evolution of seahorses and their relatives. She is a recognized science communicator whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, and KQED, among others. She has served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the IUCN U.S. National Committee, an Honorary Fellow of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, a contributor to the IUCN Species Survival Commission for Seahorses and Pipefish, and a member of the Key Biodiversity Areas leadership committee. She is the past President of the Society for Conservation GIS, a Switzer Foundation Environmental Leadership fellow, and a former U.S. Fulbright Scholar.

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Matt Baehr
Executive Director, Book Manufacturers' Institute (BMI)

Matt Baehr is the Executive Director of the Book Manufacturers' Institute (BMI). He’s been the chief executive of the association since 2017. Matt has a long career in association management, primarily working with trade associations. He holds an undergraduate degree from the Catholic University in Washington, DC as well as graduate degrees from Ohio University in Athens, OH. He resides in Bradenton, FL where he enjoys soccer, cooking and spending time with his wife and 3 children.

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Michael Wettstein
Major Account Manager, Lakeside Book Company

Michael Wettstein has Bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters in Graphic Communications Management from NYU.

His first job in the Graphic Arts was making screen printing in a shop in Madison Wisconsin. His professional life began at Simon and Schuster where he as a an Editorial Assistant and then moved into production. After a few years there he took a job in Customer Service at Phoenix Color and eventually moved into Sales. Presently he is a Major Account Manager at Lakeside Book Company running book component marketing and book component sales. He is fascinated by color management and just raised a puppy for the Guiding Eyes for The Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York.

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Philip Rothrock
Business Development, Everland

With over a decade of experience within the sustainability space, Philip advocates for nature-based solutions to solve global resource management challenges, with a special focus on ending deforestation this decade. Through his past research and outreach, Philip has helped companies, financial institutions, and industry groups to benchmark corporate leadership in managing deforestation-related risks within global agricultural value chains. More recently Philip joined Everland’s Business Development team to focus on helping companies to meet their climate targets and support large scale forest conservation. Philip has an MS in Environmental Sciences from the University of Wisconsin and a BS in Environmental Studies from Dickinson College.

Venue