Information Designer and Writer

 Favorite book:  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman 
 Favorite decadent food: Dark chocolate
 Little known fact about my childhood: As a teenager I worked in a steel mill in Cleveland, Ohio. I was the brakeman on the train that hauled enormous concrete vats of molten steel out of the blast furnace. It was an insanely dangerous job, but it paid well!

Cliff has worked at the intersection of publishing and digital technology for over 25 years, first as a technical writer and interactive publishing designer, and later in a variety of product development, evangelism, strategic planning, and business development positions. Cliff has held senior positions at industry leading companies such as Apple, Quebecor, and Microsoft.

At Microsoft, Cliff managed the Encarta Reference Productivity Products group where he led the teams responsible for Microsoft Small Business Planner, the Encarta World English Dictionary, and Encarta Interactive English Learning. He also helped launch, and managed the Microsoft Reader eBook platform, the industry’s first large scale e-reading initiative launched in partnership with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

Among Cliff’s notable recent accomplishments is the creation and launch of The Panorama Project—a cross publishing industry initiative focused on understanding the impact of public libraries on title and author discovery, and retail sales.

Cliff holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing from Columbia University in New York, New York.