The senior team

Kathleen Farrar is Managing Director of Bloomsbury Consumer UK. Kathleen is responsible for all editorial reporting across Consumer and Special Interest including Adult and Children’s along with Sales, Marketing and Publicity, Rights and Audio for those divisions. She was previously Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing across Bloomsbury’s global divisions and territories and has over 25 years’ experience working across lead brands for Bloomsbury including the Harry Potter series and Sarah J. Maas titles. Kathleen has previously held Executive Committee sponsor roles, most recently for Sustainability.

Kathleen joined Bloomsbury in December 1998 as International Sales Manager and quickly rose to be the youngest member of Bloomsbury’s Executive Team. She began her publishing career working in leading independent bookstores in Sydney, Australia before moving to Allen & Unwin as Sales and Promotions Manager. She has held a number of senior sales and marketing roles at Bloomsbury including Managing Director of Bloomsbury Australia based in Sydney. In January 2013 she returned to the UK to take up the position of Group Sales and Marketing Director, responsible for global sales, operations and marketing for the four Bloomsbury Divisions, across print and digital. In 2019 Kathleen set up the Audio Division at Bloomsbury leading significant digital audio growth for the Company.

Karl Burnett is Group Director of People and Engagement. Karl previously worked at Hearst Networks EMEA, where he was Senior Vice President of Human Resources EMEA. Over eight years he oversaw huge cultural change for the Company’s 300+ staff, articulating Hearst Networks EMEA future direction and purpose. Through extensive consultation with employees, Karl and his team forged the network’s vision and mission. The company won the media journal Broadcast’s award for Best Places to Work in TV in 2018 and was shortlisted in the Most Inclusive Company of the Year category in the IABM awards, hosted by the industry body in 2021. In 2022, the company achieved the prestigious accolade of Great Place to Work certification.
Before joining Hearst Networks EMEA in 2015, Karl was HR Director of BBC News and Radio, heading a team of 60 professionals responsible for 8,000 journalists around the world. Prior to that, Karl held senior HR roles at Nickelodeon and Channel 4 Television.

Stephen Esson is Group Production Director.  Stephen is passionate about books having produced them for 42 years. He delights in the operational and commercial challenges of doing so, domestically and globally, against a backdrop of constant technological change and development.

Stephen was Group Publishing Operations Director and Executive Committee member of Penguin Random House UK, an organisation that he was with, in its various forms, for 37 years until his retirement in March 2023. He was responsible for a divisionally focussed central operational department of 90+ encompassing print & ebook production and inventory management, and oversaw a global supply chain with a £100m p/a budget. He was also production advisor and negotiator for the PRH companies in India, Australia and South Africa. 

Over the years, Stephen initiated the first print-on-demand (POD) programme for consumer publishing, introduced ‘just-in-time’ printing to reduce inventory and stock write-offs, headed the development of the Biblio publishing management system which is now the most used software in the industry, successfully influenced paper suppliers and printers to manufacture 1m books free for World Book Day, and led Random House to become the first publishing house to gain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification.

Vafa Payman  is Managing Director of APAC and Corporate Development. Vafa is responsible for Bloomsbury’s APAC regional structure and strategy, bringing together Australia, India, Singapore and the company’s joint venture in China under unified leadership, as well as being responsible for Group M&A and corporate development. 

Vafa joined Bloomsbury in 2011. He was appointed the Director of the Information Division in 2015, and then the Managing Director of Bloomsbury Content Services, responsible for large-scale, multi-year publishing, management and content services provided to governments, institutions and corporations. More recently, Vafa led Bloomsbury’s M&A activities including the acquisition of ABC-CLIO, Red Globe Press and Rowman and Littlefield’s academic publishing business. He also established Bloomsbury’s partnership in China, and has overseen Bloomsbury India since 2020. 

Before joining Bloomsbury, Vafa was Director of New Media and Video at Oxford University Press and has worked across publishing, financial services and software industries in the UK and USA.

Cristina Cappelluto is Managing Director of Bloomsbury Australia and joined Bloomsbury in March 2022. Cristina has worked in the Australian industry for over 25 years, with experience in marketing and publishing roles across a number of different genres. Cristina has successfully led the ANZ sales and marketing strategies for both contemporary and classic brands and, prior to joining Bloomsbury, was Publishing Director for HarperCollins Children’s Books, Australia.

Rahul Srivastava joined Bloomsbury Publishing India in February 2025. He brings 30 years of experience across the Indian publishing industry including Simon & Schuster Publishers, Random House, Penguin Books, and India Book House. Rahul joined Bloomsbury from Simon & Schuster, where he has been the Managing Director, South Asia for the past 13 years.  

Sabrina McCarthy is President of Bloomsbury US and also serves on the Bloomsbury’s global Executive Committee.

Sabrina is President of Bloomsbury Publishing USA and joined Bloomsbury in April 2024 from Ingram Publisher Services where she was Vice President and General Manager leading domestic and international sales, digital strategy, client services, and the business operations team. She brings a wealth of experience of trade and academic publishing to her new role.
Sabrina began her career as the fifth employee of the Perseus Books Group where she went on to become the President of Perseus Distribution client services and then the Senior Vice President of Sales overseeing sales and inventory planning. Sabrina was featured in Publisher’s Weekly’s “50 under 40” Rising Star highlights in 2008. She holds an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and is currently on the Board of Directors for the Association of American Publishers.