Please introduce yourself:

My name is Alena O’Dell, and I work as an Assistant in the Chemistry Journals Department. I was born in the Republic of Belarus and have been living in Germany for 8 years. I have studied Linguistics and Translation in Germany and obtained both a Bachelor and Master of Arts degree from Heidelberg University. During my studies I also worked part time as an assistant at Heidelberg Engineering GmbH, a company which specializes in manufacturing and distributing medical diagnostic equipment. 

What is/was your relationship with Wiley-VCH?

In my short time with the company, I feel very much at home at Wiley-VCH, both literarily and figuratively. My journey with Wiley began a little over a year ago, a day before the office was closed due to the pandemic. That means my only experience with Wiley so far has been literally “at home”. Of course, I also feel at home (figuratively) with Wiley since it is a very international workplace, where all nationalities are welcome.

Why did you choose to work in academic publishing?

Generally, I have been interested in publishing for a quite a long time. During my graduate studies I sought out an elective publishing course, which resulted in one of my translations being published in a university textbook. It was a very exciting experience which made me think that publishing would be an interesting business to work in. When I began to look for jobs after graduation and saw job postings on the Wiley-VCH website, I got very excited and applied right away!