HarperCollins Publishers, Pace University Career Services, and the MS in Publishing Program organized a site visit at HarperCollins on March 29th to allow students to meet with publishing professionals and learn more about the industry.
The HarperCollins Lobby
Once at HarperCollin’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan, students got to look around at the publisher’s main entrance—which was decorated with mementos from HarperCollin’s history, understated art pieces, and neatly packed cases of books—before being funneled into the conference room. All the seats came with an itinerary for the visit and a complimentary book published by one of HarperCollin’s imprints, which was exciting to everyone.
The presentation opened with Carolyn Zimatore, who is the Director of Talent Management at HarperCollins, sharing a basic overview of HarperCollins’s business history and their current imprints. The scope of the talk narrowed then to her describing the different publishing departments, which served as an excellent lead-in to her explanation of internship and job opportunities at HarperCollins and possible departments students can consider applying to.
Students listen to Carolyn Zimatore, the Director of Talent Management, introduce the guest speakers
To give a better idea of the day-to-day operations of employees from different divisions of the company, Zimatore invited 4 guest speakers to share their experiences, responsibilities, and answer related questions. Angela Craft, the Associate Marketing Director of Avon, Harper Voyager, and Impulse, shared how she went from blogging about books on her own to making a full-time job from it. Chelsea Green, the Sales Product Manager of Harper360, talked about how she went from working in inventory to determining which books HarperCollins published overseas seemed like they would sell well in the US and why. Senior Manager, Digital Production and Children’s Managing Editor Heather Brady, who discussed the importance of encouraging children to read to cultivate adult readership. The last speaker was Lucia Macro, the VP/Elective Editor of William Morrow and Avon, who informed students the importance of a publishers relationship with their author.
Graduate students Genna Daniel and Bidisha Bhattacharya show off their gifted HarperCollins books (Welcome to Night Vale and Of Things Gone Astray, respectively)
The site visit was informative and helpful for all the publishing industry hopefuls who were able to go, and it felt more personable because of the fact there were all exclusively Pace undergraduate and graduate students present. Judging from the full room of attendants and the impressive line of students trying to thank Zimatore at the end of the talk, it’s clear that opportunities like this are greatly appreciated by Pace students.