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, Nora Roberts, Rainbow Rowell, Louise Penny, Walter Mosley, Lisa Scottoline, and Brandon Sanderson.

Hayley Wagreich is the Co-Director of Slowburn, Zando’s industry-leading romance imprint and publisher of the New York Times bestsellers Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver and Lights Out by Navessa Allen, and Zando’s Director of Original Development, developing original IP in collaboration with Zando’s publishing partners and spearheading the launch of Zando’s film and TV projects. Hayley was previously Head of Content at top scripted podcast company Realm, where she produced many hit shows, including the award-winners If I Go Missing the Witches Did It, Roanoke Falls, and The Haunting of Beatrix Greene. Prior to that, Hayley was an editor at Alloy Entertainment and Disney Hyperion, where she shepherded multiple New York Times bestselling books, 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 created new stories for beloved 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.

Erin Wicks is a Senior Editor acquiring literary and upmarket fiction, as well as narrative nonfiction, for Zando. Her list emphasizes underrepresented and multicultural voices exploring a range of themes, including identity, family, sexuality, trauma, community, and power. Her publications for Zando include NPR Critics’ pick, Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher pick, and GMA pick, A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang (SJP Lit); finalist for an NAACP Image Award, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, and the Crooks Corner Book Prize, Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote (SJP Lit), which was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize; and the Orwell Prize shortlisted The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant (SJP Lit). Her forthcoming publications include Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis (Hillman Grad Books), I Am You by Victoria Redel (SJP Lit), Glass Girls by Danie Shokoohi (Gillian Flynn Books), and Hungerstone by Kat Dunn.

Prior to joining Zando, Erin spent 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.

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 and upcoming publications include Democracy or Else by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn, The Big We by Hali Lee, When We’re in Charge by Amanda Litman, and The Can-Do Mindsetby Candace Parker.

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 as a foundational member of the editorial team and acquires upmarket and literary fiction and select narrative nonfiction for the adult list. Caolinn is most drawn to culturally incisive and thematically driven writing that interrogates the concepts of transnational home and belonging, capitalism and identity, and what happens when we fall outside of society’s prescribed lines. Acquisitions include Cole Brown and Natalie Johnson’s Black Love Letters (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), Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain’s World Without End (Zando), and Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Separate Rooms (Zando). 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.

Marina Padakis Lowry joined Zando with 20+ years of publishing experience, where she oversees managing editorial, production editorial, manufacturing, and publishing operations. She was most recently Executive Managing Editor of Union Square & Co., the publishing arm of Barnes & Noble. She held prior positions at HMH Books & Media, HarperCollins, Oxford University Press UK, Penguin Random House, and Scholastic, where she had the pleasure of working with a diverse range of authors, series, and brands including Martha Stewart, Jacques Pépin, Joni Mitchell, Mark Bittman, Dorie Greenspan, Property Brothers, Mo Willems, Dav Pilkey, Harry Potter, Betty Crocker, and Better Homes & Gardens. She serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors of Eagle Island, Inc., an organization inspiring and empowering young people to be confident, collaborative, and courageous.

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.