Executive Changes at ProQuest

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest has named Rich Belanger as senior vice president and general manager of its Books business unit. Roger Valade has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer. Kevin Sayar, co-founder of ebrary and leader of the ProQuest Books team since 2011, is taking on an advisory role where his expertise will continue to help ProQuest's Books business grow and thrive.

Mr. Belanger joined ProQuest in 2012 as the company's Chief Information Officer, leading the company's global product development, user experience (UX), content operations, security, internal applications, and all global technology infrastructure teams. His many achievements include significant platform improvements, including the nearly seamless migration of the ProQuest platform to Apache Solr running in the Amazon public cloud, and migration of libraries around the world to Ebook Central. He strengthened IT infrastructure and pioneered new public cloud, security and privacy initiatives while also delivering a new award-winning UX framework that has unified the ProQuest user experience. Further, Mr. Belanger delivered content and technology initiatives that have transformed editorial processes and doubled the amount of new content being ingested.

Mr. Valade has been with ProQuest since 2013, serving as its vice president of engineering. During that time, he worked with Mr. Belanger to migrate the ProQuest platform to the Amazon cloud and led the consolidation of legacy platforms on to more strategic, user-oriented ProQuest platforms. After the acquisitions of Alexander Street and Pi2, Mr. Valade led the integration of their engineering teams into ProQuest's Global Product Development organization. Additionally, he was instrumental in streamlining ProQuest's product development operations, improving platform availability and speed-to-market for new releases.

"I'd like to thank Kevin for his invaluable contribution to ProQuest. A visionary leader in his area since co-founding ebrary in 1999, Kevin's contributions have changed the way in which libraries and patrons discover, select, acquire and use ebooks," said Matti Shem Tov, ProQuest CEO.

"I'm very delighted to have Rich and Roger step up to lead in new roles. An innovative, business-oriented leader with profound technical expertise and extensive experience heading high-performing teams, Rich will ensure our Books program continues to set new market standards that benefit libraries and their communities. Similarly, Roger's 25 years leading successful platform migrations, new product rollouts, and revised development processes will be applied to ProQuest's technology initiatives, moving them forward in exciting and creative ways. I look forward to the advancements ProQuest will deliver to our customers."

Mr. Belanger and Mr. Valade are based in ProQuest's Ann Arbor headquarters. They assumed their new roles on February 1.

About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)

ProQuest is committed to supporting the important work happening in the world's research and learning communities. The company curates content that matters to the advancement of knowledge, assembling an archive of billions of vetted, indexed documents. It simplifies workflows so that people and institutions use time effectively. And because ProQuest connects information communities, complex networks of systems and processes work together efficiently. With ProQuest, finding answers and deriving insights is straightforward and leads to extraordinary outcomes.

ProQuest and its companies and affiliates – Ex Libris, Alexander Street, Bowker -- stand for better research, better learning, better insights. ProQuest enables people to change their world.

Visit us to learn more. www.proquest.com.

SOURCE ProQuest

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