ASI 2015 Conference—Speaker Biographies
Nan Badgett, dba Wordability, has been providing indexing services to publishers, authors, and corporate clients since 1992. Her work is focused on trade books in a variety of subjects, and her broad experience includes writing indexes for textbooks, periodicals, and technical manuals. Areas of subject expertise include construction and home improvement; health and fitness; nutrition and sports nutrition. Before starting her indexing career, Nan worked as a corporate writer. During her indexing career, she has contributed to several ASI books, including Indexing for Editors and Authors (Information Today Inc., 2008). Her new work, The Accidental Indexer, is forthcoming from Information Today in 2015. A long-time ASI member, Nan has served at both chapter and national levels. She also chaired the 2014 ASI/EIS Publishing Award for Excellence in Indexing (formerly the Wilson Award).
Sarah Beatty is a new indexer with a background in computers. She has both personal and business Pinterest accounts covering a wide variety of topics. Last year, she participated in individual and group Pinterest boards for the ISC/SCI conference in Toronto, and is currently gathering pins for the Seattle conference.
Harry Bego is an independent language engineer and software developer. He has an MA in psychology from Nijmegen University and worked as a researcher at the Center for Knowledge Engineering at the Utrecht Academy of Arts and at the Institute for Language Engineering and AI at Tilburg University. TExtract, initially developed in 1991, attracted immediate attention from the publishing industry and has been under continued development since.
Kevin Broccoli has been creating embedded indexes for 19 years. He has experience indexing using InDesign, FrameMaker, Word and XML. Kevin also embeds existing indexes, originally written for the print edition, into ebooks. Additionally, he has embedded indexes into web pages and enjoys experimenting with new ways of doing so. Kevin teaches the course "Embedded Indexing & Indexing of Ebooks" through UC Berkeley Extension. He can be reached at kevin@bim.net.
Beth Chapple has offered editorial services to a variety of clients since 1990. She is a copyeditor, proofreader, substantive editor, and indexer, in English, Spanish, and German. Her specialties include art, travel, college textbooks, and language education. In May 2014, Beth became sole proprietor of Granite Peak Publications, publisher of the Yellowstone Treasures guidebook. She holds a B.A. in German Studies from Stanford University and an M.S. in Technical Communication from University of Washington. A private pilot since 2004, Beth enjoys hiking and playing trumpet in her free time.
Michele Combs has a BA in History, an MA in Education, and an MS LIS. Michele is Lead Archivist at the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University and has been freelance indexing since 2005. Michele has 20 years' experience with XML, XSL, and data conversion. She is a member of ASI's Board and Digital Trends Task Force as well as a co-chair of the IDPF's Indexes Working Group.
Lisa DeBoer started indexing in 2010 after completing the UC Berkeley course on indexing, and has Master’s degrees in Women’s History and Library and Information Science. She is now the owner of DeBoer Indexing (deboerindexing.com), and also is an associate of Colleen Dunham Indexing (colleendunhamindexing.com).
Karen E. Fisher is a Professor in the University of Washington Information School and Adjunct Professor of Communication, and Visiting Professor at the Dipartimento Ingegneria dell'Informazione, Università di Parma, Italy. Her focus is how people experience information as part of everyday life, with emphasis on the interpersonal aspects, the role of informal social settings or “information grounds,” as well as the broad impacts of information and communication technologies. Karen lives in Seattle’s Fremont houseboat community with her kids, and can be found running the Burke-Gilman Trail with her Golden Retriever when she’s not at barre class, belly dancing at the Visionary Dance Studio or contemplating moving to Tuscany.
Judi Gibbs is an experienced indexer working in the Seattle area. She has an MLS with reference experience in college, special, and medical settings. She currently serves as ASI’s secretary.
Lucie Haskins became an indexer in 2000, after a long career in corporate America, with roles spanning the computer industry and management consulting. She specializes in embedded indexing (FrameMaker, Word, Docbook XML, and InDesign), and in computer- and business-related topics. She enjoys discovering and applying tools that optimize her indexing process. She believes strongly in giving back to a profession that has been so generous to her, and has presented workshops and webinars and published articles ((in Key Words and The Indexer) on various indexing topics. She has also instructed for UC Berkeley’s online indexing course, and served ASI in chapter and national positions as well as on its webmaster team. She is the current EIS Award (formerly Wilson Award) committee chair.
Heather Hedden is a senior vocabulary editor at Cengage Learning, where she has been editing thesauri from 1996 to 2004 and resuming again at the start of 2014. In the intervening 10 years she worked as a taxonomist in various employed and consulting positions and also did freelance back-of-the-book indexing. Heather is a past president of the ASI New England Chapter and a past manager of the ASI Web & Electronic Indexing SIG and the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies SIG. She teaches an online continuing education workshop on "Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies" through Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Heather is also author of The Accidental Taxonomist, Indexing Specialties: Web Sites, and chapters in Indexing Names and Index It Right, Volume 2.
Frances S. Lennie began her indexing career in 1977, working on medical and economics texts for Holt-Saunders Publishing Co. in the United Kingdom. After her relocation to the U.S. in 1982, she continued building her indexing business while developing indexing software for private use that would later be released in 1986 as CINDEX. Her company, Indexing Research, continues to develop and maintain CINDEX and provides indexing and abstracting services in both medicine and the humanities, as well as file conversion services and software training. Fran served as treasurer for ASI from 1992 to 1998 and as ASI president 2003 to 2004 and 2010 to 2011.
Janet Perlman has been providing quality indexes as Southwest Indexing for more than 25 years. Her dual specialties are science and engineering books, and books in Spanish. Janet has served the American Society for Indexing for more than 20 years, both at the chapter and the national level. She has been ASI Treasurer since 2010 and was awarded the Hines Award for Service in 2006. Janet is a frequent workshop presenter and an author. Besides articles in professional publications, she edited Running an Indexing Business (Information Today Inc., 2002) and Index it Right, Vol. 2 (Information Today Inc., 2009, with Enid Zafran). Another indexing book is in progress, due for release in the fall of 2015.
David K. Ream is Leverage Technologies’ chief consultant for publishers. He has a M.S. degree in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University.He has spent over 30 years working with publishers in the areas of typesetting design and production, database creation, editorial systems, and electronic publication design and production. Dave is a co-chair of the IDPF's EPUB3 Indexes Working Group and chair of ASI's DTTF.
Gale Rhoades is the North American distributor of the Macrex Indexing Program. She is also an instructor at Woodland (CA) Adult Education and, since 1981, a leading expert in helping users gain control over their computers.
Scott Smiley is a freelance indexer who has been an ASI member since 1999. He is a long-time CINDEX user and the author of the chapter on patterns in Index It Right, Volume 3. For the past seven years he has taught the Basic Indexing course offered by The Graduate School USA (formerly USDA). Scott is active in the Pacific Northwest Chapter and has been a speaker at both ASI and Chapter meetings.
Do Mi Stauber is the author of the classic Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing, and winner of the 2007 Wilson Award for Excellence in Indexing. She has been indexing scholarly books, textbooks, references books, and government documents in the social sciences and humanities since 1985. She is a popular and beloved presenter on indexing and many other topics.
Margie Towery has focused on indexing scholarly texts for two decades. She won the H. W. Wilson Award for Excellence in Indexing in both 2002 and 2008. Margie also indexed both the 15th and 16th editions of the Chicago Manual of Style. Among her recent essays are “The Quality of a Scholarly Index” (in Indexing Specialties: Scholarly Books), “Creating Elegant Subheadings” (with Victoria Agee, in Index It Right: Vol. 2), and her ongoing series, “Creating Better Indexes” in the Heartland Chapter newsletter. Margie has been noted for her enthusiastic and energetic presentations and her passion for quality indexing.
Madge Walls took up indexing in 2007 after many years in real estate, after hearing about it at a writers’ conference in Denver. It's the perfect "retirement" career, she often says. Madge has served as Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Chapter, and is currently President of the Pacific Northwest Chapter. She was raised in Hawaii, raised her children on Maui, and now lives just south of Portland, Oregon, where she happily wakes up to a "mainland" experience every day. She also writes novels, which keeps her off the streets and out of the stores.
Carrie Wicks has been proofreading since she graduated from college as an English major, which was a long time ago. Since 2008 she’s been freelancing as a copy editor/proofreader for book publishers (fiction and nonfiction: art books and cookbooks), graphic design firms, and anyone else who asks. She appreciates the fine detail of proofreading indexes; her largest project in that arena so far was the 60-page Modernist Cuisine index. She’s spoken about proofreading for the UW Editing Certificate program more than a couple of times and has served on the board of the Northwest Independent Editors Guild as secretary as well as co-chaired its biannual conference twice. She is also a member of the Association of Art Editors. When she’s not proofreading/copyediting, she sings jazz and originals and walks in the woods.
Pilar Wyman, Chief Indexer, Wyman Indexing, has been writing indexes as a successful freelancer and consultant for 25 years, since 1990. She works in English, Spanish, and French in public health, clinical medicine, med-tech, and other areas of personal interest. She was the lead consultant for the AMA Manual of Style 10th edition chapter 13 “Medical Indexes,” edited the American Society for Indexing (ASI) booklet Indexing Specialties: Medicine, has published numerous articles and other works on indexing, and gives presentations and workshops as her time allows. Pilar has served as ASI Board member, President, and editor of Key Words. She is currently a member of the ASI DTTF task force, and Chair of the Publications Committee.
Enid L. Zafran, a winner of ASI’s Hines Award for outstanding service to the indexing community, has been an active indexer for over twenty-five years, specializing in legal and scholarly texts. Her company, Indexing Partners, located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, uses a team of indexers as subcontractors. Enid managed ASI’s publications program from 1994 to 2014, producing at least one book per year and often two or three. She has managed one of the largest in-house indexing departments for the Bureau of National Affairs in Washington, DC. Enid writes and edits articles for ASI’s publications, including the “A to Zafran” column in Key Words. She was instrumental in the development and initial organization of the ASI training course. Enid has long mentored a series of newcomers to indexing, providing them with training and often their first paid work, and she has worked tirelessly to promote ASI at every opportunity. Enid has served on the board of ASI for numerous terms, starting in the mid-90s, in the capacities of secretary, president, and director. She has also presented programs at many national conferences. At the chapter level, Enid has served as an officer of the Mid- and South Atlantic Chapter and has been a guest speaker at many of ASI’s chapters.
Julie McDonald Zander worked a decade as a reporter and nine years as a newspaper editor before launching Chapters of Life, her personal history publishing business, in 1999. Since then, she has published more than 50 individual, company, community, and organizational histories, creating basic indexes for the larger books. She also does freelance editing for clients and writes a column once a week for The Chronicle in Centralia, Washington. She served as Northwest regional co-coordinator for the Association of Personal Historians for five years and organized the 12th Annual Association of Personal Historians Conference in Portland in 2006. She has also helped organize the Oregon Christian Writers Summer Coaching Conference, Southwest Washington Writers Conference, and Cascade Writing Contest and Awards. She has taught workshops on tackling large and small projects, memoir writing, and creating ethical wills at APH and Oregon Christian Writers conferences. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in communications and political science.
Important: The speaker lineup is subject to change; be sure to check for updates closer to the conference dates.
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