Publishers Weekly reports that Kate Wilson is leaving her position as group managing director of Scholastic UK. She’s been with the company for four and a half years, and is leaving to “pursue other plans” which she’ll discuss in the near future. Alan Hurcombe, the company’s director of finance, operations, HR, and IT, will become acting group managing director on 16 March.
Scholastic UK was already the publisher of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy, but Wilson grew the company by bringing in, among others, the prize-winning author illustrator team Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, as well as reshaping the clubs and school book fair business, and developing new business and initiatives. Wilson joined the company in 2004 from Macmillan Children’s Books, where she discovered Donaldson and Scheffler, publishing their The Gruffalo, as well as Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries and Frank Cotrell Boyce’s Millions.