The Board of Directors
PLOS is a non-profit organization on a mission to drive open science forward with measurable, meaningful change in research publishing, policy, and practice. We believe in a better future where science is open to all, for all. Building on a strong legacy of pioneering innovation, PLOS continues to be a catalyst in open science, reimagining models to meet open science principles, removing barriers and promoting inclusion in knowledge creation and sharing, and publishing research outputs that enable everyone to learn from, reuse, and build upon scientific knowledge. Our work is supported by a highly skilled global in-house team, partnerships with local scholarly organizations, and the valued contributions of a diverse, international community of scientific researchers.
Alastair Adam
Chair of the Board
Co-CEO, FlatWorld
Amanda Armour
Founder, All Together Everyone
Suresh Bhat
CFO and Treasurer,
Hewlett Foundation
Israel Borokini
Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, United States
Fernan Federici
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and iBio Millenium Institute
Alison Mudditt
Chief Executive Officer
Emily Sena
Chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh
Steven Tom
Senior Vice President, Adtalem Global Education
Simine Vazire
Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Katherine White
CTO, Spencer Stuart
Keith Yamamoto
UCSF, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy
Board of Directors
Alastair Adam
Chair of the Board; Co-CEO FlatWorld
Alastair Adam received his MA in Law from Cambridge University in 1993. He worked in corporate finance and M&A for Cazenove & Co. in London, before following his wife back to Boston in 1998, where he joined The Parthenon Group, a strategy consulting firm. In 2002, he co-founded The Callidon Group, providing growth strategy and transaction advice to businesses and investors in the Information and Publishing space, including in scientific and scholarly publishing. In 2007, Callidon joined OC&C Strategy Consultants, a multinational firm. In 2014, Alastair led the sale of the business to Oliver Wyman, part of the Marsh & McLelland Companies. He left Oliver Wyman in 2015, to pursue direct investments in Information and Publishing. In August 2016, he and his long-time business partner, John Eielson, acquired FlatWorld with a mission to bring college textbook prices back down to earth. FlatWorld’s high quality, affordable titles are now used by professors in over 1,900 institutions across North America.
Amanda Armour
Founder, All Together Everyone
Amanda Armour is the founder of All Together Everyone (ATE), a leading management consultancy dedicated to transforming organizational culture so that vision, values, and outcome align for the greatest success. Through ATE, she and her team guide non-profit and corporate organizations through regulatory and interpersonal complexities to build sustainable, innovative internal ecosystems.
Based in LA, Amanda brings over two decades of experience in people and organizational management to her consulting work. Prior to being appointed Chief People Officer at Versus Systems in 2021, where she was instrumental in taking the company public while also scaling employee operations across four countries and 28 states, Amanda’s work focused on guiding policy implementation for underserved populations in the public health sector and running longitudinal research studies and teams across several states.
Beyond her consultancy, Amanda’s commitment to education, policy, and fostering inclusive spaces for scientific and technological innovation is evidenced through her Board positions with the Public Library of Science (PLOS), Thrive Scholars, and the Digital Diversity Network. Her academic credentials include a Master of Science in Social Psychology from Yale University, various fellowships focused on health advocacy and policy (Stanford University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), and a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology.
Suresh Bhat
CFO, Hewlett Foundation
Suresh Bhat received his B.A. and M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. He is currently CFO and Treasurer at the Hewlett Foundation, prior to that, he was CFO at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Previously, he headed business finance for the Institutional Client and BlackRock Solutions businesses at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, overseeing all aspects of financial planning, budgeting, forecasting and analysis. He has held senior roles in financial management and financial planning at Barclay’s Global Investors, where he helped lead its sale to BlackRock, and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., where he served as division CFO for retail distribution, retirement service and international businesses. He began his career at Deloitte & Touche and served in various finance roles at Bank of America.
Israel Borokini
Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, United States
Dr. Israel Borokini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, Montana, United States. His research focuses on combining ecological, geospatial, genomic, and phylogenetic data to elucidate the patterns of plant community assemblages and biodiversity across multiple scales and the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that generate and maintain them. He heads the Conservation Ecology and Biogeography lab at MSU where students and postdoctoral scholars are mentored to carry out relevant scientific investigations and grow their careers. Dr. Borokini completed his Ph.D. in the Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Originally from Nigeria, he has published over 60 papers focusing on conservation and landscape genetics, species distribution modeling, invasion ecology, conservation science, and Indigenous and local knowledge. He also listed two species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is a co-author of the IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species global assessment. He is an Associate Editor for two scientific journals and he has peer reviewed over 100 manuscripts for several journals.
Fernan Federici
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and iBio Millenium Institute
Dr. Fernan Federici is an assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and iBio Millenium Institute. He studied two years of Agricultural Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, received his B.S. in Biology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Fernan has worked as a junior research assistant at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and as an international visiting fellow at OpenPlant Centre at the University of Cambridge. His main interest is understanding emergent pattern formation in biological systems. His group and collaborators apply synthetic biology tools and biophysical modeling to address these questions in bacterial populations. He has been a champion of Open Science in a number of areas including protocols and reagents, where he contributes to Reclone (the Reagent Collaboration Network). Fernan’s research group also works on the promotion and development of Free/Libre Open Source technologies for research and education in molecular biology and bioengineering. The group is part of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware community (GOSH) and the CYTED-reGOSH network for open technologies in Latin America.
Alison Mudditt
Chief Executive Officer
Since June 2017 Alison has been Chief Executive Officer of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), an organization dedicated to advancing equitable, open science for the benefit of everyone everywhere. Prior to PLOS, Alison served as Director of the University of California Press and as Executive Vice President at SAGE Publications. Alison serves on the Board of the Center for Open Science, the MIT Libraries Visiting Committee, and the American Chemical Society’s Governing Board for Publishing. She is a regular speaker at industry meetings and contributing “chef” to the Scholarly Kitchen blog. Her more than 30 years in the publishing industry also include leadership positions at Taylor & Francis and Blackwell Publishers.
In the past, Alison has also served on the board of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, the Scientific Publications Committee and the Open Science Committee of the American Heart Association, the Authors’ Alliance, NISO, and the Executive Council of the PSP Division of the American Association of Publishers; and as Co-Chair of the Dean’s Leadership Council at California State University, Channel Islands.
Emily Sena
Chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh
Professor Emily Sena holds a personal chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in the validity of preclinical research and is a passionate advocate for open science. Her research interests are in the use of meta-research approaches (research on research) to drive improvements in the validity, transparency, reporting and reproducibility of primary research using laboratory models of human diseases. Her work has informed laboratory practice guidelines, editorial policy and clinical trials design. Emily was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Open Science and is on the managing board of PCI Registered Reports and convenor of CAMARADES – an international collaboration that supports, advances and undertakes systematic reviews of preclinical research. She also co-founded and was co-convenor of the Edinburgh Race Equality Network, now convenes the University of Edinburgh Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee. She is highly committed to engendering and facilitating an anti-racist culture across campus, and diversity and inclusivity in academia.
Steven Tom
Senior Vice President, Adtalem Global Education
Steven Tom is a senior vice president, chief customer officer at Adtalem Global Education. In this role, Steven partners with Adtalem’s institutions to optimize student experiences, develop differentiated learning offerings and solutions, build strategic employer partnerships, and harvest data and analytics to further drive value-added insights across all of the company’s institutions. In addition, Tom oversees information technology including application development, infrastructure operations and enterprise architecture. Prior to joining Adtalem, Steven was most recently chief transformation officer and senior vice president, student experience for Walden University. He obtained a Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management and his bachelor’s degree in both information technology and marketing from the University of Maryland. He serves on two non-profit boards, the International Youth Foundation and the World Trade Center Institute in Baltimore.
Simine Vazire
Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Dr. Simine Vazire is a professor in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has two lines of research. One examines people’s self-knowledge of their personality and behaviour and another line of research examines the individual and institutional practices and norms in science, and the degree to which these norms encourage or impede self-correction and credibility. She is Editor in Chief of Collabra: Psychology and has served as an editor at several other journals. She is a board member of the Public Library Of Science and the Berkeley Institute for Transparency in the Social Sciences, was a member of the US National Academy of Science study committee on replicability and reproducibility, and co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS).
Katherine White
CTO, Spencer Stuart
Katherine White is Chief Talent Officer at Spencer Stuart, a global leadership advisory firm, where she is responsible for leading the firm’s global talent strategy, including recruitment, engagement, learning & development and HR. Previously, she worked with Boston Consulting Group where she led a broad range of talent management, human resources and other global initiatives after a career on the consulting side of the house. During her career as a consultant, Katherine worked primarily on R&D in healthcare, working with big pharma, biotech and the international nonprofit drug development industry, where her clients included government entities, international philanthropic organisations and public-private partnerships.
Katherine is based in London but throughout her career, she has served in a number of global roles and has worked in a number of different markets including the US, UK and Eastern Europe. She earned her M.B.A. with a concentration in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with high honours. She graduated with a degree in engineering from Magdalene College, Cambridge, and also holds a diploma in organizational behaviour from Birkbeck College at the University of London. She currently serves as Trustee and Deputy Chair for the UK-based charity DEMAND Design & Manufacture for Disability.
Keith Yamamoto
UCSF, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy
Dr. Keith Yamamoto received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University. At UCSF, he has served in several significant leadership roles including chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, vice dean for research in the School of Medicine, and vice chancellor for research. Yamamoto has also chaired or served on numerous national committees focusing on a wide range of policy and education efforts for researchers and the public. He chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences and sits on both the National Academy of Medicine Executive Committee and the National Academy of Sciences Division of Earth and Life Studies Advisory Committee. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.