About

Zando’s founder and leader is Molly Stern. Molly previously led Penguin Random House’s Crown as SVP & Publisher. At Crown, she launched Hogarth, a literary imprint conceived in collaboration with Chatto in the UK, which launched the bestselling, prize-winning work of Sally Rooney, Anthony Marra, Han Kang, and Herman Koch in the US. In partnership with actor and entrepreneur Sarah Jessica Parker, Molly launched the SJP for Hogarth imprint. Over the course of her career, Molly has published numerous literary prize-winners, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and nonfiction, as well as genre-defining bestsellers such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, Andy Weir’s The Martian, and Michelle Obama’s Becoming, the best-selling memoir of all time. Molly also serves on the board of The Opportunity Network, an organization combating the inequity in college opportunity and professional mobility that disproportionately affects students of color and those from low-income communities.

Andrew Rein joins Zando after thirteen years at Penguin Random House, where he most recently was Vice President, Director of Mass Merch National Accounts, including Walmart and Target, and was responsible for sales and strategy across over 100 imprints. He partnered with retailers on distinctive promotional models designed to maximize sales of bestselling authors such as Barack and Michelle Obama, John Grisham, and Chrissy Teigen, as well as publishing brands like Game of Thrones and Star Wars. He specializes in designing custom, high-impact approaches to book sales, marketing, promotion, and branding with national retail partners.

Dennis Lee joins Zando with over eighteen years of publishing experience, where he most recently was VP Finance, Strategy & Operations at HarperCollins. He assisted the company in the integration of HMH Books & Media into the HarperCollins ecosystem. Prior to Harper, he assisted the President of Books & Media at HMH to develop overall business strategy; managed the capital & financial planning process; provided financial business plans for building an Audio studio and created financial models in order to help the sales team negotiate financial and operational terms for large retail accounts such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Readerlink, and Ingram. Prior to joining HMH, he was Vice President of Business Management & Finance at Penguin Random House and also held positions at Simon & Schuster and Marvel Enterprises, Inc. Dennis received his MBA from CUNY Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business.

Nathalie Ramirez oversees marketing campaigns, brand strategy, and creative direction for consumer channels across each of Zando’s imprints—and produced the campaign for instant New York Times bestseller The Butcher and The Wren. Prior to joining Zando, she led brand partnerships at Urban Outfitters and creative strategy for clients such as American Express and Target during her time at PAPER Magazine’s in-house agency. She is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College as well as the Columbia Publishing Course and started her career at Oxford University Press.

Sam Mitchell is Director of Publicity at Zando where he oversees media campaigns, author tours, and public relations strategies across all imprints and partnerships. Before joining Zando, Sam spent a decade leading national publicity tours for a variety of bestselling fiction and non-fiction authors. At Penguin Press and at the literary PR agency Hilsinger-Mendelson, he led campaigns for Michael Pollan, Edward Enninful, Sherry Turkle, Jane Fonda, Wright Thompson, Ocean Vuong, Fran Lebowitz, and Werner Herzog. Sam got his start in publishing at W. W. Norton & Company, where he had the pleasure of working with a variety of writers including Michael Lewis, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chris Hayes, and Richard Powers.

Prior to joining Zando, Sierra Stovall spent over a decade working in the rights departments of some of the most prominent publishing houses. Most recently, she worked for Sourcebooks where she ran the rights business across all adult and children’s imprints, negotiating international and domestic licenses for New York Times bestselling authors including Layla F. Saad, Kristina McMorris, Raj Haldar, and Marieke Nijkamp, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling How to Catch series. There she also represented the company at the Frankfurt, London, Bologna, and Shanghai book fairs. Before joining Sourcebooks, Sierra worked at W. W. Norton, St. Martin’s Press, and Penguin Group where she had the honor of licensing rights for bestselling authors such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil Gaiman, Nora Roberts, Rainbow Rowell, Louise Penny, Walter Mosley, Lisa Scottoline, and Brandon Sanderson.

Hayley Wagreich is the Director of Original Development and Co-Director of Slowburn, spearheading the launch of Zando Projects, a program focused on developing original books in collaboration with Zando’s publishing partners. Hayley was previously Head of Content at Realm, the #1 producer of scripted podcasts, where she oversaw show development for the studio, including the Webby-winning If I Go Missing the Witches Did It, Signal-winning Roanoke Falls, Audie-winning The Haunting of Beatrix Greene, along with eight of the most downloaded fiction shows on Apple. Prior to that, Hayley was an editor at Alloy Entertainment and Disney Hyperion, where she shepherded multiple New York Times bestsellers and award-winners, including the National Book Award Finalist American Street, Printz Honoree Code Name Verity, and #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine. During her career, she has also negotiated and overseen co-development deals beloved entertainment brands, including Marvel, DC, Orphan Black, The Vampire Diaries, and the world of John Carpenter.

Ashley Alberico comes to Zando from Penguin Random House, where she spent over ten years working across multiple publishing functions, including Finance, Sales, and Marketing. In her most recent role as Sales Marketing Director at The Crown Publishing Group, she was responsible for maximizing revenue through targeted account-facing strategies for more than 200 new publications a year, in addition to Crown’s extensive backlist. Throughout her career, she has partnered with retailers and championed programs to amplify sales on celebrated bestselling authors, cultural icons, and licensed brands, like Erik Larson, Michelle Obama, Ina Garten, Dolly Parton, and Dungeons & Dragons.

Christopher King joins Zando with over 16 years of publishing experience, most recently as Associate Art Director at Penguin Press, where he designed covers for more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers and worked with authors like Maggie Haberman, Mark Leibovich, Dahlia Lithwick, Steve Coll, Emily Oster, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Earlier in his career, he served as Art Director at Melville House, where his covers were featured seven times in the AIGA/Design Observer 50 Books/50 Covers exhibition and highlighted in Print Magazine, which called his work “some of the most easily recognizable since Penguin’s orange spines.” He has also taught at the Parsons School of Design and spoken at the Type Directors Club, the School of Visual Arts, and the Dallas Society of Visual Communications.

Anna Hall joined Zando in June 2022, and has experience in digital marketing strategy and consumer insights across the media industry, including books, film/TV and music. She received her MBA from Columbia Business School with a focus on media and technology. During her MBA, she spent time at Paramount Pictures where she managed consumer insights and marketing research, identifying target audiences and key messaging for franchises such as A Quiet Place, Paw Patrol and Scream. She has also worked at Sony Music Entertainment in streaming analytics and spent several years at Hachette Book Group crafting creative marketing campaigns for bestselling and award-winning books.

Erin Wicks is a Senior Editor acquiring literary and upmarket fiction, as well as narrative nonfiction. Her list emphasizes underrepresented and multicultural voices exploring a range of themes, including identity, family, sexuality, trauma, community, and power. Prior to joining Zando, Erin spent over a decade at HarperCollins, where she published New York Times bestsellers and award-winning titles, including New York Times bestseller, NBCC Award for Fiction winner, National Book Award finalist, and Oprah Book Club pick, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers; New York Times bestseller, Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick, and NYTBR Editors’ Choice, A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum; PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award longlisted and a New York Times Critics’ Best Book of the Year, Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard; and A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes and The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, both shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her recent publications and acquisitions for Zando include A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang (SJP Lit), Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote (SJP Lit), and Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis (Hillman Grad Books).

Sarah Ried is a Senior Editor acquiring nonfiction of all types that explores themes of race, class, gender, history, geography, politics, society, and timely cultural and global issues. She is particularly interested in the vertices at which these themes intersect and interplay with each other. She aims to uplift writers from marginalized backgrounds and explore the diversity of lived experiences in American culture. Before joining Zando, she worked at HarperCollins for over five years, where she published the New York Times bestseller Patriarchy Blues by Frederick Joseph, and the Target Book Club Pick Black Girls Must Die Exhausted by Jayne Allen, among others. She has had the immense joy and privilege of working with authors such as Emmy award–winning reporter Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Sunday Times bestselling author Emma Dabiri. Recent acquisitions for Zando include For the Love of You by Ronald Isley for Get Lifted Books and The Big We by Hali Lee for Sweet July Books.

Lexy Cassola is a Senior Editor acquiring suspense, mystery, horror, and literary/upmarket book club fiction. Across genres she is seeking smart, deeply relatable, character-driven stories from a variety of perspectives that are just as propulsive as they are thought-provoking. Prior to joining Zando, Lexy spent six years at Dutton/Penguin Random House, where her list included GMA Buzz Pick A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch; national bestseller and LibraryReads pick The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Mathieu; Women’s Prize for Fiction longlister And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott; LibraryReads and Aardvark Book Club pick Eleanore of Avignon, among others. Her recent Zando acquisitions include Ellie Levenson’s Room 706 (SJP Lit), Alexandra Oliva’s The Radiant Dark (SJP Lit), and Sarah Hornsley’s Bad Blood (Zando), as well as new books from #1 New York Times bestseller Alaina Uruquhart (Zando), USA Today bestseller Margot Douaihy (Gillian Flynn Books), and Indie Next author Elaine U. Cho (Hillman Grad Books).

Nicole Otto is a Senior Editor acquiring romance for Slowburn and developing original content for Zando Projects. She is well-versed in multiple genres, including romance, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, thriller, and historical. Nicole gravitates towards reads with commercial hooks that are executed with nuance and rooted in character and emotion. Before joining Zando, she worked at Macmillan, where she acquired Adalyn Grace’s New York Times bestselling debut All the Stars and Teeth and was the associate editor of Leigh Bardugo’s New York Times bestselling King of Scars. She then moved on to Realm, where she developed audio fiction, including three award-winning series: Roanoke Falls, executive produced by John Carpenter; Power Trip, starring Tatiana Maslany; and The Sisters, starring Mae Whitman. Nicole has also collaborated with several studios on franchise series, including HBO and Paramount.

Caolinn Douglas joined Zando in March 2021 and acquires upmarket and literary fiction and select narrative non-fiction for the adult list. Caolinn seeks to prioritize marginalized voices and looks for culturally incisive writing that interrogates themes of belonging and identity, and explores who we are as both individuals and societies. Acquisitions include Liv Little’s Rosewater (Get Lifted Books), Mai Sennaar’s They Dream in Gold (SJP Lit), Johanna Hedva’s How to Tell When We Will Die (Hillman Grad Books), Emily St. James’s Woodworking (Crooked Media Reads), and Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain’s World Without End for the Zando imprint. Prior to Zando, Caolinn worked at Hachette UK at Little, Brown Book Group and then Bookouture.

TJ Ohler is an Assistant Editor at Zando, acquiring across age categories for young readers with a focus on YA and YA crossover as well as adult romance, select adult genre fiction, and IP. They particularly gravitate toward genre-bending stories that challenge our expectations, narratives that amplify queer voices, and blockblusters with heart. They must admit to having a soft spot for horror and thriller and are always excited to see new voices in this space. Prior to joining Zando, they were a literary assistant at Andrea Brown Literary Agency and a bookseller and assistant store manager at the beloved NYC-based children’s bookstore, Books of Wonder.

Natalie Ullman joined Zando in January 2024 to lead social media content strategy & production. She started her career at BuzzFeed as a Social Video Producer, creating viral videos for a wide array of online channels. Prior to joining Zando, she led social content efforts for Banza, and edited video for publications including the New York Times and Shondaland. She is a graduate of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Zoey Cole manages title marketing across Zando’s imprints. Prior to Zando, she worked at Simon & Schuster/Scribner Books, where she most recently led the marketing campaigns for New York Times bestsellers Long Island by Colm Tóibín and A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko and managed social media. Zoey has also led content strategy, social media, and event marketing at Adweek, Nobrow Press, and in the health tech space.

Julia McGarry joined Zando in May 2024. She began her career at Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, where she led publicity campaigns for frontlist titles including The Serpent in Heaven and All the Dead Shall Weep by Charlaine Harris; Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb; Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life by Helen Fisher; The Heart That Fed by Carl Sciacchitano; The Star Trek Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel; The Secret Recipe of Ella Dove by Karen Hawkins; More Perfect by Temi Oh; Thick As Thieves by M.J. Kuhn; and Ten Days in a Mad-House by Brad Ricca and Courtney Sieh. She provided key support on books by New York Times bestselling authors Britney Spears, Patrick Stewart, Stanley Tucci, Stassi Schroeder, Melissa Gilbert, Matt Fraser, Amy Odell, and Rachel DeLoache Williams. Julia is from the greater Boston area and is a graduate of New York University.

Prior to launching her publishing career at Zando, Emily Morris interned in Marketing and Media at Red Hen Press, a non-profit indie publisher in Pasadena, where she worked on social media content, marketing copy, event coordination, and more. Emily is a recent graduate of University of Southern California and the NYU Summer Publishing Institute.

Liz Eriksson comes to Zando with over a decade of experience working in the publishing industry.  Most recently, working in the contracts department at Hachette Book Group.  Prior to Hachette, she managed compliance, licensing and product development agreements for Capstone, a leading educational publisher.   Throughout her career, she has successfully completed agreements with numerous agencies, licensors, and companies including DC Comics, Warner Brothers, Amazon, and more.

Kayla White has been involved in managing editorial since the beginning of her publishing career. She got her first full-time job at Abrams Books as managing editorial assistant after graduating from Hamilton College with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and French. While at Abrams, she had the opportunity to work on several notable titles, including books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. She is excited to continue her career in managing editorial at Zando.

Khalil Commissiong is Zando’s Sales and Operations Coordinator/Executive Administrator. He was previously an intern at Penguin Random House where he worked in Crown Publishing’s marketing department. There he helped develop and implement strategies to grow authors’ online presence and supported various title campaigns by conducting market research and outreach projects. In his current role, he assists with sales reporting and analysis, and helps manage operations at the Zando offices.

Sarah Goldstein is an Editorial Assistant/Executive Assistant supporting Molly Stern and the nonfiction team. She is drawn to writing that centers strong female leads, intricate identities, and historical events from unique points of view. Prior to joining Zando, she held roles at Quarto, Macmillan, and Nancy Yost Literary Agency. Sarah is originally from New Hampshire and is a graduate of Fordham University.