Heather Blasco

Background

About Heather Blasco

Heather Blasco’s 20-year plus scholarly publishing career has focused on continually seeking to understand how data, software, and processes can be implemented to improve performance of systems and the performance of people behind the systems. Heather’s passion is to find the right answer and most logical solution for external and internal clients. She has become an expert on peer review submission software and processes, while gaining understanding of the entire scholarly publishing ecosystem. Software system transitions have been a key area of expertise, where she focuses on guiding clients in the best way to use a new software platform to execute their organizations goals and not simply replicate the processes from the previous system. While her experience began with submission systems, her experience working at a small business and within a large corporation, has enabled Heather to expand her systems expertise to include software for time-tracking, contracting, invoicing, and data visualization. Developing project management and collaboration skills also have been key to her growth as she works within organizations and for clients to deliver not only answers, but solutions. She knows working with and listening to others is essential when delivering a solution that works for all involved. Scholarly publishing is Heather’s third career. After earning a journalism degree, Heather worked for business press publications and a newspaper as a writer and copy editor. During that time, she realized she was more interested in seeking out information than she was in writing about that information, which led her to get a master’s degree in library sciences and to work as a librarian at a university, teaching students how to use library resources. Following a move to North Carolina and giving birth to her first daughter in 2003, her desire for a part-time job that worked with her husband’s evening work schedule led her to a university temp agency. The expectation was short-term coverage opportunities. Instead, she found a career, as her first assignment was to interview for an Editorial Assistant position for a psychology professor who had been named editor of a peer-reviewed journal. She was told that the placement office saw her degrees in journalism and library science and determined she was the right fit. Scholarly publishing, an industry focused on disseminating answers, is the right one for Heather Blasco.