For this installment of our People of Atypon series, we sat down with Hannah Smith, Director of Strategic Account Management and Development at Wiley Partner Solutions.
Fast facts: Hannah joined Partner Solutions 2 years ago (after 9 years with Wiley) and works out of the Hoboken, NJ, office. She’s a fan of coffee, soccer, and Moonstruck, which “needs no explanation—it’s perfect.” If given the choice, she would eat popcorn three meals a day.
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Like many of us working in scholarly communications, Hannah Smith stumbled into academic publishing completely by chance. Armed with a brand-new bachelor’s degree in English and Film, she moved to Brooklyn to live with her sister and started furiously applying for every office job she could find—and when she landed at Springer Science+Business Media (now Springer Nature) as an editorial assistant, it was immediately clear that she’d found the right fit. “I love the energy that comes with working with researchers, scientists, and scholarly societies who are passionate about what they do,” Hannah says. “What we do makes a difference in advancing science and ultimately addressing global challenges, and that’s what makes it all worth it.”
Building partnerships with Partner Solutions
As Director of Strategic Account Management and Development, Hannah and her team focus on building partnerships with customers—that is, on moving beyond traditional client/vendor relationships—and on supporting and advancing our partners’ strategic priorities.
Working across all product lines and solutions under the Partner Solutions umbrella, the team makes sure that client management, product, and support teams are working in concert and keeping the focus on customers’ objectives. Priority number one is deeply understanding what matters to our customers—and then to work with each customer to find the solutions that will support their work, meet their needs, and get them where they want to go. “Our remit extends beyond Literatum,” Hannah explains, “and we’re often working with our customers to connect the dots between products and services, streamline workflows and processes, and look at ways to diversify revenue.”
“Atypon brings an exciting and innovative culture to Partner Solutions, and I’m really proud to work amongst this very forward-thinking crew!”
In their work alongside client management and other delivery teams, their focus is always on what drives our customers’ success and on developing and implementing innovative solutions.
Relationships + technology = success!
Coming to Partner Solutions from the Wiley side, Hannah is very proud to be part of the Atypon world following the launch of Partner Solutions in fall 2022. Atypon is the cornerstone of our publishing technology work, and for Hannah, this new role has come with a learning curve: “My background is managing society relationships and implementing publishing strategy, so while I’m experienced on the customer side of things, it took me a minute to get fully up to speed on how a technology organization operates.” Combining that background with an appreciation of Atypon’s exciting and innovative culture is part of what makes Hannah so good at what she does!
“Being part of the solution means being willing to roll up your sleeves and help get the work done. That’s really important to me, and I aspire to embody this in my work.”
She’s also taken to heart a piece of advice she received early on: Be part of the solution. “To me,” she says, “being part of the solution means you are always working to find a way, a relentless problem solver, and the kind of thinker that others want to have at the table when faced with challenges—whether big or small.” Hannah strives to embody this roll-up-your-sleeves-and-help attitude in her work with both colleagues and customers.
More adventures ahead
Looking ahead, Hannah says, she’s especially excited about how Atypon’s platform is evolving into an audience engagement powerhouse. Because OA has fundamentally shifted the business of publishing towards a B2C (business-to-consumer) model, it’s more important than ever for publishers to understand and engage their audience: authors, editors, and readers.
And we’ve got the tools customers can use to make that happen! Through CONNECT, you can streamline the user login experience and develop enriched user profiles; through marketing integrations, you can send user information—including those enriched user profiles—into your marketing system. We’ll also soon be rolling out more powerful Smart Groups capabilities and tools to engage with those groups.
When she’s not at work or knee deep in parenting two small kids, Hannah’s going on adventures with her family, eating good food—don’t forget the popcorn!—and watching football (or soccer, depending on your reading location). “I’m a little bit obsessed with Liverpool FC,” she says, “and it brings me great joy when they win and great sorrow when they don’t!” (Fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs can relate.)
For a busy but adventurous parent, Hannah’s choice of superpower may not surprise you: “I would love to snap my fingers and just appear wherever I want to be. It would make it so much easier to travel the world and explore new places!” But meanwhile, she’s exploring a different area of physics by getting back into playing tennis.
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Thank you, Hannah, for sharing your insights with us!
Meet more People of Atypon!
Dina Abulfailat (Product Manager, Digital Objects) § Polivios Roussis (Program Manager) § Rob Posadas (VP, Solution Architecture) § Dino Paravandis (VP of User Experience)