Our Editors & Staff
Since 1988, we have specialized in offering high-quality editing, proofreading, indexing, typesetting, and writing services. As your partner and as a member of your team, we can oversee and manage your publication from working with your authors through all the production steps including typesetting and presenting files for print or electronic publishing.
Our highly capable staff works with clients to meet their editorial needs. All editorial staff members, as well as independent contractors on our roster of freelance editors, must pass a 3-hour battery of tests.
Barbara B. Hart
CEO & EDITORIAL ADVISER
Entrepreneur, educator, editor
Barbara founded Publications Professionals LLC in 1988 in her basement. Over the years, she has steadily grown the company while teaching numerous editors, writers, proofreaders, and other publications professionals in the Washington metro area. Semi-retired and living on the West Coast, she provides critical guidance to the staff of Pubs Pros. Having spent her lifetime working with the English language, she still loves working on small projects.
Linda Stringer
PRESIDENT & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Developmental & substantive editor, quality specialist
As the president of Publications Professionals LLC, Linda does everything from working with clients to facilitating projects to ensuring the daily operations of the company. Linda enjoys editing books, policy papers, and reports. In 2000, Linda came to Pubs Pros from Deloitte, where she managed a series of International Tax and Business Guides. Linda is married with two sons, whom she raised to understand the importance of the serial comma.
Anniea Clay
OFFICE MANAGER & BOOKKEEPER
Ashley Young
SENIOR EDITOR & TYPESETTING MANAGER
Copyeditor, project manager, InDesign specialist
Ashley edits and manages projects for a wide range of clients. She specializes in typesetting fact sheets, briefs, newsletters, reports, journals, and books. She is adept at designing, redesigning, and modifying templates to match clients’ branding guidelines and visions. She also oversees freelance typesetters and designers and works side by side with editors. Ashley has more than 20 years of experience with Publications Professionals. When not playing around in InDesign or
Illustrator, she enjoys spending time with her family, crocheting and sewing, and reading the next fun book.
Marcy Gessel
SENIOR EDITOR & PROJECT MANAGER
Copyeditor, substantive editor, proofreader, writer
Marcy edits and proofreads reports, books, articles, and brochures. She provides project management and quality support. She also provides read-behind, developmental, and substantive editing services. Marcy started out as a newspaper reporter and then changed careers, earning a master’s degree in city and regional planning at Cornell University, where she learned to use the Oxford comma. Her experiences as a journalist and planning consultant inform her work as an editor. After working as a contract writer and editor for advertising sections at The Washington Post and freelancing for Publications Professionals LLC, she became a staff editor at Pubs Pros in 2015. Marcy is married and the mother of three grown sons and one adorable dog.
Karen Ingebretsen
SENIOR EDITOR & PROJECT MANAGER
Copyeditor, substantive editor, proofreader, writer
Karen edits and proofreads brochures, articles, reports, and books. She provides project management and quality support, read-behind, developmental editing, and substantive editing services. After freelancing for Publications Professionals LLC, Karen became a staff editor in 2015. Karen is also a published author of juvenile nonfiction, and she blogs on cultural geography, with a spotlight on the DC metropolitan area. Karen likes to say that her publishing career really began when she was in second grade. She and her classmates traded papers to grade spelling assignments, and she was happiest when she got to correct the papers of the worst spellers. Her passion for saving the world from bad writing has only grown since then.
Sara Proehl
SENIOR EDITOR & PROJECT MANAGER
Copyeditor, substantive editor, proofreader
Sara edits and proofreads newsletters, articles, reports, and books. She provides project management and quality support, read-behind, developmental editing, and substantive editing services. Sara started her career as a proofreader for a nonprofit tax organization. From there she took on a communications/publications role with American Management Systems. While in that role, she helped launch Catalyst, a magazine providing executives the information necessary to gain a competitive advantage in the digital economy. Sara stepped away from full-time editing to focus on her family. However, she couldn’t put her red pen down for long and soon she found herself editing again—in between running to her daughter’s Irish dance competitions and her son’s baseball games. After freelancing for Publications Professionals LLC, Sara became a staff editor in 2021.