Who Is Caravan?
Peter Osnos
Executive Director
Peter Osnos was a correspondent around the world for The Washington Post and the newspaper’s foreign and national editor. He was Associate Publisher and senior editor at Random House and publisher of Random House’s Times Books division. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs, an independent publishing company specializing in books of journalism, history, biography and social criticism. Among the authors he published at PublicAffairs are Wesley Clark, Dorothy Height, Vernon Jordan, Wendy Kopp, Robert McNamara, Andy Rooney, Natan Sharansky, George Soros, Boris Yeltsin, Muhammad Yunus and journalists from America’s leading publications and prominent scholars. He is executive director of The Caravan Project which is developing a plan for multi-platform publishing of books. He is Vice Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and is active in a number of other journalism and human rights organizations. He writes a regular media column that is distributed by The Century Foundation.
John Donatich
Co-Chair of Publishers’ Committee
John Donatich is the Director of Yale University Press. He previously served as VP, Publisher of Basic Books and has held numerous positions in publishing companies in New York. He earned a BA and MA from New York University. His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Village Voice and many other periodicals. In 2005 he published a book titled Ambivalence, A Love Story. He lives in New Haven, CT.
Kate Douglas Torrey
Kate Douglas Torrey has spent 30 years in non-profit, scholarly publishing and the last 15 years as Director of the University of North Carolina Press. In 2006 she was elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of American Publishers, representing all university presses. Previously, she served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Association of American University Presses, from 1992 through 1998, and was President of that Association in 1996-97. In recent years, Torrey has been a member of several advisory boards for collaborative groups investigating the intersection of non-profit publishing and new technology.
Della R. Mancuso
Production Director
Della R. Mancuso has owned a Production Management consulting firm, Mancuso Associates Inc., since 1997 and worked for many prestigious publishers, among them: The Perseus Books Group, PublicAffairs, Viking Penguin Studio Books, Nest Magazine, Marvel Comics, Holtzbrinck, Barnes and Noble, Sterling Publishing Co, and many others. Prior to venturing on her own, she worked for 18 + years at Random House Inc., her last position there being was VP of Production of the Trade Division., which consisted of 5 imprints. She also spent time as a Production Director Reader's Digest Book Division and McGraw Hill College Division. On the print production side, Della has represented The Stinehour Press in Vermont since 2003, working with a diversity of clients in producing fine art and photography books.
Gene Taft
Publicity and Marketing Manager
Gene Taft owns and operates a Washington DC,based public relations firm, GT/PR, specializing in the promotion of books and authors. GT/PR maintains an intimate client list to preserve the ability to put all the necessary resources behind each campaign. Prior to starting his own company, Taft spent 15 years in New York City working in-house for various publishers ranging from Columbia University Press. and The Overlook Press, to The Free Press at Simon & Schuster and Viking/Penguin. Most recently he was Vice President, Assistant Publisher and Director of Publicity at PublicAffairs.
Richard C. Leone
President, Century Foundation
Richard C. Leone is President of the Century Foundation, formerly the Twentieth Century Fund, a public policy research foundation. His analytical and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation. Mr. Leone was formerly chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and State Treasurer of New Jersey. He also was President of the New York Mercantile Exchange and a managing director at Dillon Read and Co., an investment banking firm. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Social Insurance.