Leadership Team

David Drake is President of the Crown Publishing Group, overseeing one of the most diverse and dynamic portfolios of publishing imprints in the industry. A twenty-five-year veteran of Penguin Random House, he has spearheaded the global publication strategy for numerous national and international bestsellers, including Becoming and The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama, A Promised Land by Barack Obama, and Spare by Prince Harry. He serves as the North America representative on Bertelsmann’s Creativity Advisory Board.

Susan Livingston joined the Crown Publishing Group as Senior Vice President, Finance and Strategy, in 2023.  In this role, she leads a team of three, and together the team is responsible for modeling and analyzing the division’s various growth strategy investments, handling special projects, supporting the title acquisition process, developing divisional budgets and forecasts, and providing regular reporting and analysis of the division’s financial results.  Prior to her role at Crown, Susan served as Senior Vice President, Strategic Business Planning, leading the finance team for the PRH Audio Publishing Group as well as for several corporate departments, including Consumer Marketing.  In this role, she also worked on multiple high-profile corporate strategic projects and led the finance team supporting Out of Print and the PRH Speakers Bureau. A native of Virginia, Susan spent ten years with Random House, and Penguin Random House, in New York, but since 2015, she has lived and worked remotely from the U.K.  She holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In her free time, Susan enjoys travel with friends and family, live music, hiking, cooking, documentaries of all types (sports, true crime/con artist, music/bands, other bio/memoir, etc.!), black Labradors, and, of course, reading.

Madison Jacobs, Associate Publisher for the Crown Publishing Group, serves as the project manager for high-profile publications and campaigns across Crown and Penguin Random House, including the global publication of Spare by Prince Harry and books by former First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama. Madison also manages Crown’s division-level operations, AI strategy, and events, and she works closely with the publishing office on business development projects and marketplace analysis across the nonfiction and lifestyle imprints. Madison is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied cognitive science and Spanish literature.

Gillian Blake is Executive Vice President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Crown and Crown Currency. Previously she was Editor in Chief at Henry Holt. She acquires and edits select titles with a focus on narrative nonfiction, history, memoir, science, current events, popular culture, and biography. She has edited many prizewinning and bestselling authors, including President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Matthew McConaughey, Rachel Maddow, Ina Garten, Elizabeth Kolbert, Rick Atkinson, Tina Brown, Naomi Watts, Susan Cain, Senator Bernie Sanders, Dame Jacinda Ardern, Gretchen Rubin, Warren Zanes, Andy Cohen, Stephen Johnson, Ethan Kross, Ian McGuire, A. J. Jacobs, Ai Weiwei,  Jaron Lanier, Brandi Carlile, Lucinda Williams, Elton John, Rob Lowe, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, Anthony Doerr, William Boyd, and Harold Bloom. 

Amy Einhorn, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Fiction, has published and edited many New York Times bestselling fiction authors, including #1 bestselling author Liane Moriarty, Chris Whitaker, National Book nominee Min Jin Lee, Virginia Evans, Jeanine Cummins, Kathryn Stockett, Laurie Frankel, Alice Feeney, Yangsze Choo, Kristin Harmel, and Fran Littlewood, as well as nonfiction authors such as Jenny Lawson, Amy Sedaris, and Isaac Mizrahi. Amy was President at Henry Holt & Co. and Publisher at Flatiron Books, where she directed the acquisition and publication of New York Times bestselling authors Alison Espach, S. A. Cosby, Amy Tintera, Charlotte McConaghy, Jane Harper, Chandler Baker, Stephanie Garber, and Melissa Albert. She previously had an eponymous imprint, Amy Einhorn Books, at Penguin Random House. A mother of three, she is a newly obsessive dog mom (shout-out to Ziggy Stardust).

Annsley Rosner is Senior Vice President and Deputy Publisher of Crown and Crown Currency. As Deputy Publisher, she works on all aspects of the Crown and Crown Currency programs, overseeing frontlist and backlist strategy and operations, to launch books, position them in the marketplace, and set them up for long-term success. She works closely with cross-functional teams in editorial, marketing, publicity, sales, consumer insights, and inventory to create impactful, innovative campaigns. Annsley has been at Penguin Random House for more than twenty-three years—with prior positions including senior publicity roles at Crown, Dutton, and Vintage Books—and has worked with a wide range of bestselling authors including former President George W. Bush, former President Barack Obama, Erik Larson, Matthew Desmond, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Ben Macintyre, Gillian Flynn, Sally Rooney, Rebecca Skloot, Liane Moriarty, and Chris Whitaker, among many others.

Aaron Wehner is Executive Vice President and Director of Business Development for the Crown Publishing Group, and Publisher of Clarkson Potter and Ten Speed Press. During his time in the Crown group, he has served as publishing lead on the acquisition and integration of Rodale Books and Compendium, co-founded the award-winning digital publication PUNCH (sold to Vox in 2021), launched the division’s illustrated licensing business, founded Ten Speed Graphic—the first dedicated adult graphic novel program within Penguin Random House—and launched Crown’s children’s imprint, Ten Speed Young Readers. Aaron oversees the publishing programs of such luminaries and brands as Ina Garten, Yotam Ottolenghi, Martha Stewart, Dolly Parton, Matty Matheson, Marie Kondo, Bryant Terry, Death & Co, and Dungeons & Dragons. On the executive team of Crown, he works closely with the group to shape ambitious, cross-imprint, and multi-book collaborations with the division’s incredible roster of authors.

As the Vice President and Deputy Publisher, Windy Dorresteyn plays a leadership role in list development and publication strategy and execution, working closely with the editorial, design, production, and sales teams. Windy began her career in publishing working on both the editorial and production sides of the business. She subsequently became a well-regarded retail merchandiser, acquiring more than a decade of experience leading business units at high-profile brands such as Old Navy, Walmart.com, and Williams-Sonoma, where she spent four years as the book buyer and co-developed a highly successful private-label publishing program. Returning to publishing in 2016, Windy served as the marketing lead for the Clarkson Potter and Ten Speed Press imprints before joining the Random House team as Marketing Director in 2022, ultimately returning to the expanding Crown division in 2025. She has worked closely with such renowned authors as Yotam Ottolenghi, Bryant Terry, Sam Sifton, Ina Garten, George Saunders, Emma Cline, Yuval Noah Harari, Michael Cunningham, Patti Smith, David Chang, and Jimmy Chin, and with organizations/brands including the New York Times, Food52, and the Stanford d.school. Windy is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied English and art history.

Jill Flaxman, Senior Vice President and Deputy Publisher of Clarkson Potter and Ten Speed Press, oversees frontlist strategy and operations for the Potter and Ten Speed book programs. Prior to this role, her nearly thirty years at Penguin Random House have included six years as Director of Publishing Operations for the Crown Publishing Group, three years as Executive Director of Marketing for the group, and six years as Group Sales Director. She has worked on bestselling books from authors such as Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, George W. Bush, Ina Garten, Gillian Flynn, Deepak Chopra, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Marie Kondo, among many others.