John Sargent, President - Chief Executive Officer St. Martin's Press. John Sargent is President of Holtzbrinck Publishers. Holtzbrinck owns five U.S. trade houses; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt, Picador, St. Martin's Press, and TOR Combined they publish over 2,300 titles a year. Previously, John was President and CEO of St. Martin's Press, notable for a varied list of authors including James Herriot, Rosamunde Pilcher, Gerry Spence, Stephen Coonts and Robert Ludlum. Before that, John was President and CEO of Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc. an international publisher of illustrated reference books, videos and CD-ROM products for the entire family. Prior to Dorling Kindersley, he served as President and Publisher of the Simon & Schuster Children's Book Division and was Chairman of the AAP Children's Book Committee. He is Vice Chairman of the Board at Graham-Windham, a non profit foster care agency which provides a variety of services to children and their families in the New York metropolitan area. John graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics and received an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University.

Marjorie M. Scardino is chief executive of Pearson plc, the international media group whose primary business operations include Pearson Education, (incorporating Addison Wesley Longman and Simon & Schuster Education), the Financial Times Group, the Penguin Group and Pearson Television. Pearson also owns a stake in The Economist and the Lazard investment banking houses in London, New York and Paris. Until January 1997, she was chief executive of The Economist Group, which, in addition to The Economist magazine, publishes a range of publications and services including the worldwide publishing and conference businesses of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Prior to 1985, she was managing partner in a Savannah, Georgia law firm and publisher and founder, with her husband, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper The Georgia Gazette. Mrs. Scardino is on the Board of Directors of ConAgra, Inc. and WH Smith Group plc, and also a number of charitable and advisory boards. She has been made an Honorary Fellow of the London Business School, as well as being awarded The Maria and Sidney E. Rolfe Award by the Women's Economic Roundtable, and the New York City Partnership's 1997 International Commerce and Leadership Award. In May 1998 she was named Veuve Cliquot Business Woman of the Year. Mrs. Scardino is married to Albert Scardino, a journalist. The Scardinos have three children.