John Wiley & Sons has named Brian Napack its new president and CEO. Napack will begin at Wiley December 4, and succeeds Matthew Kissner, who has served as interim CEO since May of 2017. Kissner, who stepped in when CEO Mark Allin resigned, will remain Wiley chairman.
Napack has held various corporate positions in, and outside of, publishing. He is currently at Providence Equity Partners, a global private equity firm where he has been a senior advisor focused on investments in education and media.
Prior to joining Provence in 2012, Napack was president of Macmillan where he oversaw the company’s education, consumer books, digital media, and magazine businesses. He joined Macmillan after serving as a partner at LEK Consulting, a global management consulting company. Other credits include founding ThinkBox, a digital media company focused on pre K-12 education. He also founded and ran Disney Educational Publishing and was cofounder of Disney Interactive.
Napack also serves on a host of boards, including Blackboard, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ingram, and Recorded Books. Wiley noted that as a result of his new position, he will leave some of those boards.
“I look forward to working with my new Wiley colleagues around the world to tackle the many exciting opportunities and challenges being presented by our markets and, in doing so, continue our tradition of exceeding the expectations of our customers, partners and shareholders,” Napack said in a statement.
Like other educational publishers, Wiley has been steadily moving away from its print textbook roots and now is focused on selling digital products and services for the research and solutions markets. In the fiscal year ended April 30. Wiley reported that while sales to its research and solution segments rose over fiscal 2016, sales in publishing fell due largely to a drop in print book sale.
