Dominique Cimina has been promoted to vp, executive director, publicity and corporate communications at Random House Children’s Books.
Bess Braswell has joined Harper Children’s as senior director, marketing. She was most recently director of marketing for Teen, Middle Grade, Graphix, and Audio at Scholastic.
At Touchstone, Meredith Vilarello has been promoted to associate marketing director.
At Simon & Schuster, Christina Pecorale has been promoted to vp, director children’s sales.
Cayla Rasi will join Random House Children’s as senior marketing manager, digital. Cayla previously worked at Deep Focus agency.
The ABA confirmed the election of the four nominated board members; Kris Kleindienst of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Missouri and Chris Morrow of Northshire Bookstore are serving for the first time; Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut, and Savoy Bookshop in Westerly, Rhode Island and Robert Sindelar of Third Place Books in Seattle, Washington will serve their second terms.
US poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera will serve a second term.
In the UK, Laura Hassan has been promoted to editorial director at Faber.
Initiatives
The BBC has expanded their relationship with Curtis Brown UK‘s Cuba Pictures production company — where they have had a first-look deal since 2014 — extending that deal by five years until 2012. And more ambitiously, the broadcaster is by taking a 10 percent stake in a new CB UK parent holding company. BBC Worldwide will hold shares in Original Talent Ltd., which will own both the agency and the production company. The BBC will place a director on the board of each unit.
Quarto has set up a business development group, Quarto Innovation, to sell their “rich resource of content, brands and expertise beyond our growing co-edition and publishing businesses, and find more channels and customers to serve.”
Frank Chambers is director (he has worked at Pavilion, Guinness World Records and Carlton), reporting to md of Quarto International Co-Editions group David Breuer. Carolina Connor from the foreign rights team will be business development director.
Separately, Quarto announced a joint venture with the Sharjah-based Kalimat Group to supply titles for publication in Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, starting in early 2017, under a Kalimat Quarto imprint.