Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) has announced the appointment of Tom West as its new Chief Executive, effective from November 1, 2023. Tom, who is currently serving as PLS’s Chief Operating Officer, will be taking over from Chief Executive, Sarah Faulder, who retires from PLS at the end of October.
Tom joined PLS in 2001 and has been an integral part of the organization since then, becoming Head of Operations and, in 2017, PLS’ first-ever Chief Operating Officer. During his time at PLS, Tom led the responsibility for developing and managing PLS’ collective licensing operations and played a key role in the diversification of its services in recent years, including the award-winning permissions service PLSclear.
Tom will succeed Sarah Faulder, PLS Chief Executive since 2010. Over her 13 years in the role, Sarah has overseen several significant developments at PLS. These include forging a new licensing channel for magazine publishers with NLA Media Access, enabling free access to over 40 million academic articles in public libraries through the Access to Research service launched in 2014, the first ever rights valuation which now governs the shares in licensing revenues between authors, visual artists and publishers and, in 2015, the Independent Publishers Guild became the first new member of PLS since its formation by the Publishers Association, the Professional Publishers Association and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers in 1981.
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