The senior team

Ian Hudson is Managing Director of Bloomsbury Consumer Publishing and an Executive Director.

Ian Hudson joined Bloomsbury in January 2021 as Managing Director of the Consumer Division, which includes the Adult, Children’s and Sarah J. Maas sub-divisions. Ian is a hugely experienced publishing leader and his focus is on developing and executing new strategies to profitably grow the Consumer Division.

Prior to joining Bloomsbury, Ian was a member of the Supervisory Board of global media group Bertelsmann, a member of the Global Executive Committee of Penguin Random House and Global CEO of Dorling Kindersley Publishing,  

Ian began his career at magazine publisher Marshall Cavendish, subsequently joining Random House in 1992 where he went on to hold the role of Group Commercial Director before becoming Managing Director of Random House Children’s Books. With the merger of Random House and Transworld in 1998, Ian became Group Managing Director and Chairman of TBS Distribution and joined the Random House Global Board. He was a member of the Bertelsmann team, which negotiated the Penguin Random House merger in 2012/2013. Post-merger, he sat on the Global Executive Committee of Penguin Random House and was appointed to the roles of CEO of Penguin Random House International and Deputy CEO of Penguin Random House UK. Once the global integration of the two companies was completed, Ian was appointed Global CEO of Dorling Kindersley.

Ian is a former President of the UK Publishers Association and currently a Non-Executive Director of Which?

Jenny Ridout is Managing Director of Bloomsbury’s Academic, Professional, and Specialist Publishing which includes Bloomsbury Digital Resources. She is executive group sponsor for Artificial Intelligence and a member of the Publishers Association AI Taskforce. She is also a Board Trustee for Yale University Press London.

Jenny joined Bloomsbury in 2004. Prior to her current role, Jenny had global responsibility as Global Head of Bloomsbury’s Academic publishing, where she oversaw the integration of several acquisitions. She has many years of experience in Digital Resource publishing, being responsible for the creation and rapid growth of Drama Online as Project Director, for which she won the Futurebook Digital Achiever industry award. Jenny was previously the Editorial Director for the Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare lists.

She started her career in publishing at Elsevier (RELX), where she was the global Publishing Director for the specialist trade and professional media imprint, Focal Press.

Kathleen Farrar is Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing across Bloomsbury’s global divisions and territories. She has over 25 years’ experience working across lead brands for Bloomsbury including the Harry Potter series and Sarah J. Maas titles. Kathleen has previously held Executive Committee sponsor roles, most recently for Sustainability.
Kathleen joined Bloomsbury in December 1998 as International Sales Manager and quickly rose to be the youngest member of Bloomsbury’s Executive Team. She began her publishing career working in leading independent bookstores in Sydney, Australia before moving to Allen & Unwin as Sales and Promotions Manager. She has held a number of senior sales and marketing roles at Bloomsbury including Managing Director of Bloomsbury Australia based in Sydney. In January 2013 she returned to the UK to take up the position of Group Sales and Marketing Director, responsible for global sales, operations and marketing for the four Bloomsbury Divisions, across print and digital. In 2019 Kathleen set up the Audio Division at Bloomsbury leading significant digital audio growth for the Company.

Karl Burnett is Group Director of People and Engagement. Karl previously worked at Hearst Networks EMEA, where he was Senior Vice President of Human Resources EMEA. Over eight years he oversaw huge cultural change for the Company’s 300+ staff, articulating Hearst Networks EMEA future direction and purpose. Through extensive consultation with employees, Karl and his team forged the network’s vision and mission. The company won the media journal Broadcast’s award for Best Places to Work in TV in 2018 and was shortlisted in the Most Inclusive Company of the Year category in the IABM awards, hosted by the industry body in 2021. In 2022, the company achieved the prestigious accolade of Great Place to Work certification.
Before joining Hearst Networks EMEA in 2015, Karl was HR Director of BBC News and Radio, heading a team of 60 professionals responsible for 8,000 journalists around the world. Prior to that, Karl held senior HR roles at Nickelodeon and Channel 4 Television.

Stephen Esson is Group Production Director.  Stephen is passionate about books having produced them for 42 years. He delights in the operational and commercial challenges of doing so, domestically and globally, against a backdrop of constant technological change and development.

Stephen was Group Publishing Operations Director and Executive Committee member of Penguin Random House UK, an organisation that he was with, in its various forms, for 37 years until his retirement in March 2023. He was responsible for a divisionally focussed central operational department of 90+ encompassing print & ebook production and inventory management, and oversaw a global supply chain with a £100m p/a budget. He was also production advisor and negotiator for the PRH companies in India, Australia and South Africa. 

Over the years, Stephen initiated the first print-on-demand (POD) programme for consumer publishing, introduced ‘just-in-time’ printing to reduce inventory and stock write-offs, headed the development of the Biblio publishing management system which is now the most used software in the industry, successfully influenced paper suppliers and printers to manufacture 1m books free for World Book Day, and led Random House to become the first publishing house to gain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification.

Happily lured out of retirement, to become Group Production Director in 2024 and member of the Executive Committee on the 1st March 2025 for a new and unexpected opportunity to make a difference in a remarkable and entrepreneurial global company successfully straddling both consumer and academic publishing.

Cristina Cappelluto is Managing Director of Bloomsbury Australia and joined Bloomsbury in March 2022. Cristina has worked in the Australian industry for over 25 years, with experience in marketing and publishing roles across a number of different genres. Cristina has successfully led the ANZ sales and marketing strategies for both contemporary and classic brands and, prior to joining Bloomsbury, was Publishing Director for HarperCollins Children’s Books, Australia.

Rahul Srivastava joined Bloomsbury Publishing India in February 2025. He brings 30 years of experience across the Indian publishing industry including Simon & Schuster Publishers, Random House, Penguin Books, and India Book House. Rahul joined Bloomsbury from Simon & Schuster, where he has been the Managing Director, South Asia for the past 13 years.  

Sabrina McCarthy is President of Bloomsbury US and also serves on the Bloomsbury’s global Executive Committee.

Sabrina is President of Bloomsbury Publishing USA and joined Bloomsbury in April 2024 from Ingram Publisher Services where she was Vice President and General Manager leading domestic and international sales, digital strategy, client services, and the business operations team. She brings a wealth of experience of trade and academic publishing to her new role.
Sabrina began her career as the fifth employee of the Perseus Books Group where she went on to become the President of Perseus Distribution client services and then the Senior Vice President of Sales overseeing sales and inventory planning. Sabrina was featured in Publisher’s Weekly’s “50 under 40” Rising Star highlights in 2008. She holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for the Association of American Publishers.