Vivian Makhmaltchi spent 20 years at Macmillan (now McGraw-Hill) as an editor, supervisor, and vice president of mathematics, science, and music. There she made major contributions to Macmillan’s successful “lettered” programs: Series M: Mathematics, Series E: English, and Series R: Reading. She then joined McClanahan and directed Addison Wesley Mathematics K–8, McDougal-Littell’s Literature and Language Teacher’s Editions, and many other projects. She advanced to become Chief Operating Officer. When Pearson Education bought McClanahan, Vivian became president of the in-house Pearson Education Development Group (PEDG).

In 2005, Vivian left PEDG to establish a more efficient and affordable development group, pubSMARTS. Vivian continues to be hands-on on all projects, an excellent approach to getting jobs done well.

Poonam Nande-Stevenson brings to her role at pubSMARTS a deep knowledge of educational product development combined with business development acumen.

Poonam was most recently at Laserwords, U.S, where she worked as Executive Director of the company’s publishing services division in New York. Prior to joining Laserwords, Poonam worked at Baseline Development Group, where she served first as Editorial Director of ESL & Spanish Language Development and later as General Manager of the company.

Poonam's varied career includes a seven-year editorial tenure at Houghton Mifflin (School Division); four years spent working for the embassies of Mexico in Zimbabwe and South Africa; and stints freelancing as a translator, EFL teacher, and manager for various companies in Spain. Poonam holds a B.A. (double major) in Economics and International Relations & Diplomacy.

Peter Sacks was in graduate school and teaching as an adjunct professor at New York University when he began work as a writer and editor for McClanahan and Co. in 1993. When Pearson Education purchased McClanahan a few years later, Peter became a managing editor for the newly formed Pearson Education Development Group (PEDG). While at Pearson, Peter supervised the development of products such as Pearson’s World Explorer, Civics, Literature, and Reading programs.

In 2005, Peter left PEDG to join Vivian at PubSmarts. Since then, he has contributed his expertise in social studies, science, and language arts, as well as his deep commitment to producing rich, dynamic content, to a wide range of subjects for a variety of educational publishers.

Although his degree from Yale is in art history, Bill Henning has spent almost his entire career in publishing. He co-authored, with Daniel B. Baker and Sean O'Brien Strub, Cracking the Corporate Closet (1995, HarperCollins), a comprehensive guide to major corporations' employment policies, business practices, and charitable giving with regard to LGBT issues and HIV/AIDS. From books, Bill moved into magazines, rising from senior editor to deputy editor at POZ and eventually serving as editor in chief at both HX and Genre.

Bill joined Vivian and Peter at Pearson Education Development Group (PEDG) as a freelance editor in 2002. While at PEDG, he contributed to several programs including Pearson iOpeners and Prentice Hall Literature. Hired by PubSmarts as development editor in February 2006, Bill has worked on a wide range of products including Scott Foresman Reading Street, Pearson Interactive Science, Prentice Hall Mathematics, and Marshall Cavendish's Math in Focus: Singapore Math.