Abhilasha Pandey is an editorial professional with over 16 years of experience in the publishing domain. Setting up editorial and publishing services for new clients is her challenge of choice. As an acquisitions editor, she forms warm relationships with authors and editors.

She joined Newgen in 2006 as a trainee copy editor although her previous work experience was as a school teacher. The initial months at Newgen were not only instrumental in her training to be a copyeditor and team lead, but they also gave her several opportunities to learn from her seniors, particularly Vidhya Gowrishankar, Rohini Krishnan and Srilakshmi Narasimhan, the trio of managing editors who actively worked on honing the team’s skills not only as thorough professionals but as better people managers too. She remembers Jason Pearce as the guiding light for the editorial department then, and how she and her colleagues benefited from his training.

At Newgen, Abhilasha has worked as an editorial lead and then as a managing editor for several clients including Palgrave UK, IB Taurus, Cambridge University Press, Wolters Kluwer, Oxford University Press, Anthem Press and Peter Lang. Currently, Abhilasha is an acquisitions editor for Thomson Reuters India (Legal Division) and Indus, an imprint of Newgen KnowledgeWorks.

She claims that life at Newgen has been a continuous learning process and she appreciates the opportunities she’s received to try, test, fall and then rise again. She finds monotony unbearable and Newgen has kept things very interesting for her these past years with new challenges every now and then.

Apart from the initial days, she believes that as an individual professional and also as a team, she learnt the most when she worked for Anthem Press and learnt about end-to-end publishing in the true sense of the word. For her, the learning during that phase was phenomenal, something that has prepared her for her current role in acquisitions.

She recalls with fondness the initial year or two at Newgen to be the happiest of times at Newgen. She learnt so much and made good friends for life. For her, the weekly editorial meetings were also a great place to learn, express, explore and connect with a warm and cosy editorial gang. A moment of pride for her was when she was asked to manage a multivolume medical book, assisting the acquisitions team at Oxford University Press, an updated edition of a project that she had worked on before.

The people make a company, and the company makes the people. She feels Newgen allows its employees to build and better their skills and find their strengths. These skilled professionals, in turn, give strength to Newgen. Today, Newgen has a sizable women workforce because it values individuals for their skills and facilitates self-expression through work.

She is grateful that Newgen has allowed her the opportunity to continue her work through the years and the various profiles, all while working from home. She believes her situation or responsibilities have not hampered her growth as a professional at Newgen.