Reina Duarte (Barcelona, Spain) was elected to the EC at the 31st IBBY General Assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark and serves as Vice President 2008-2010, after serving as an member of the EC from 2006-2008.

After finishing her studies in Hispanic Languages and Literature at the Central University in Barcelona, Reina Duarte (1964) began working for various publishing houses and the Carmen Balcell Literary Agency. For the past fifteen years she has worked at Edebe, a publishing house with branches throughout Spain as well as in Latin America. She manages the Publications Department, which focuses on fiction and non-fiction for children and young people up to the age of 18. She also teaches a course in editing children’s books at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona and supports a fortnightly radio programme related to children’s books. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Catalonian Publishers Association and is currently the Vice President of the Catalan Branch of Spanish IBBY.

rduarte@edebe.net

Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) was elected to the EC at the 31st IBBY General Assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark and serves as Vice President 2008-2010, after serving as an member of the EC from 2006-2008.

Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin, (43) is a businessman by profession and currently holds various positions in private companies. He obtained his MBA from Ohio University, USA in 1996, a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from RMIT University, Australia (previously known as Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in 1993 and Diploma in Investment Analysis from MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia in 1986. 

He has been actively involved in publishing especially in the national publication of children’s books. He loves reading and is passionate about the education of children especially in the areas of children’s books and other media. Due to his passion in education he was appointed as the Vice President of the Majlis Buku Kanak-Kanak & Remaja Malaysia (MBBY) and Executive Committee of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Universiti Teknologi Mara, Advisor for the Students in Free Enterprise Team (SIFE) at local universities and panel Judge at SIFE competitions at National level and World Cup final and also Pro Tem Chairman in SIFE Malaysia Business Advisory Board.

aredza@gmail.com

Anastasia Arkhipova (Moscow, Russia) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010.  She previously served as a member of the 2006-2008 EC.

Born in 1955, she graduated from the Moscow Surikov Academy of Fine Arts in 1978. She began working for the publishing house Detskaya Literatura, illustrating many classical and modern children’s books. She has had her works exhibited in several countries, and contributed to a UNICEF project, where various artists illustrated a book about children’s rights, published in 1989.

In 2003 she received the award Best Illustrator of the Year at the Moscow International Book Fair. She has illustrated many of the works of Hans Christian Andersen and is currently at work on illustrations for A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Anastasia Arkhipova was nominated by the Russian Artists’ Union as an Honoured Artist of Russia.

arkhipova.a@gmail.com

Elisa Bonilla (Mexico City, Mexico), was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010.

Although Mexican she was born in Madrid (1956) and is the daughter and granddaughter of Spanish Civil War refugees. Elisa has a degree in Mathematics (UNAM) and an MPhil in Education (Cambridge). She has been a teacher, an educational researcher and a civil servant.

She worked at Mexican Ministry of Public Education for 14 years, where among other things she lead The National Literacy Programme (2001-2007) which provided all public schools with book collections for school and classroom libraries.

She is currently working for Fundacion SM as Director for Institutional Liaisons where she continues her efforts to promote literacy and books for children. Bonilla belongs to several professional committees and academic boards, such as the Expert Committee on Literacy and School Libraries of the Iberoamerican States Organisation (OEI).

For the past four years, she was actively involved in the civil group that worked towards the authorization of a Law for Literacy and Books, which was finally approved in July 2008. She has recently helped organise the commission for children’s books at the Mexican Publishers Association (CANIEM) to expand the market for children’s literature, particularly outside the capital. She is the author of several publications and is often an invited lecturer in Mexico and abroad.

elisa.bonilla@fundacion-sm.com

Hannelore Daubert (Frankfurt, Germany) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010.  She previously served as a member of the 2006-2008 EC.

She is currently a lecturer of children’s literature and didactics at the Institute of Research in Youth Literature at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, with emphasis on contemporary children’s and adolescent literature, reading promotion projects and research into young reader’s interests.

She studied German, English and Educational Sciences and her doctoral thesis dealt with changing childhood reflected in contemporary youth literature. After finishing her studies, she worked for several years as a schoolteacher and for a publishing house. She is a book critic for several German newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine, Süddeutsche Zeitung, etc.; author of various scholarly publications with topics reflecting changing family and gender roles; editor and expert in the use of children’s books in schools; and, an editor of anthologies.

Since 1996 she has been the editor-in-chief of the series Lesen in der Schule mit dtv junior (Reading in the school with the series dtv junior). She also lectures and acts as a critic for children’s and youth literature for the German Association of Publishers and Booksellers. She has served on numerous juries, including the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Youth Literature Award), and has given many lectures at conferences in Germany and abroad, often at local Goethe Institutes.

Between 2000 and 2006 Hannelore Daubert served as President of the Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur, which is the German Section of IBBY.

daubert@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Wally de Doncker (Hamme, Belgium) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010.

Children’s literature is deeply tied to his professional and personal life. He began his career as a teacher in 1979, and for the last six years he has served as a special teacher of children’s literature.  As a writer he tries to react to the behaviour of people around him. Several of his books have been adapted for stage, musical, animation and dance movies, several have been translated into different languages. He is the founder of a pre-reading and initial reading method under the name: Leesdraak (Reading dragon), which is now used in over 200 schools.  He writes articles about the international dimension of children’s literature for several Belgian and Dutch specialized magazines. He has interviewed different icons of the international world of children’s literature.
Wally is an active promoter of the close relations between the French speaking and the Flemish branch of IBBY Belgium and keeps contact with IBBY Netherlands and the German Friedrich Bödecker Kreis. He was also a member of the IBBY Fundraising Subcommittee during the transitional period (2004-2005). Since 2004 he is a member of the editorial board of the American critical journal of children's literature The Lion and the Unicorn.
 

wally.de.doncker@telenet.be

Nikki Gamble (Braintree, UK) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010. 

Nikki Gamble has worked in education and reading promotion for over 25 years, Formerly a teacher (secondary and primary) and teacher educator, she is lecturer, writer and education consultant. Following the completion of an MA in Language and Literature in Education at the University of London, Nikki taught literacy and children’s literature courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students. She is Director of Write Away UK and runs the Write Away website www.writeaway.org.uk

Nikki is serving committee member on the British section of IBBY and Director of the 2012 IBBY World Congress. She is also on the current Executive Committee of United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). Recent Publications include Family Fictions (2001) (with Nick Tucker); Exploring Children’s Literature (2008) (2nd edit) Paul Chapman (with Sally Yates) Guiding Reading (2006) (2nd edit) (with Angela Hobsbaum and David Reedy) and Writers Secrets (2008).

nhgamble@aol.com

Jehan Helou (Ramallah, Palestine) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010. 

Jehan was born in 1943 in Haifa – Palestine, and was uprooted in 1948 when she left with her family for Lebanon then to the UK at the end of eighties. She returned to Palestine in 2000.

She has long experience in social work, children’s literature and non-formal education.  She gained a BA and M.A. in Political Science and Public Administration, minor Literature, from the American University of Beirut 1964-73.  She then studied for two years, (part-time) towards a Ph.D. in Politics and Sociology at London University.

She worked as editor at the Arab Press House, in London between 1990-98. From 2000-2006 she worked as Director of the Tamer Institute & as Editor of Taif Journal on Children’s  Literature. She became a consultant for Tamer between Feb- May 2006. She also works as a consultant, on Palestinian Women for UNESCO 2007-
Jehan has a long history in voluntary work: President of the Palestinian Section of IBBY, 2002-; Coordinator for the Arab Region on the theme of Education in Situation of Poverty, Armed Conflict and Occupation, 2005-06; Assistant General Secretary for Information Culture & Studies Committee of General Arab Women Federation: 1979-88.
She was also an EC member of General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW), as its International Relations Officer: 1974-88.  She has participated in many international conferences: on children literature, child rights and women.

jehanna@gmail.com

James Tumusiime (Kampala, Uganda) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010. 

James (1950) graduated with a BSC from Makerere University Kampala and then studied journalism in the UK.  He went on to gain an MBA from the East and Southern Africa Management Institute (ESAMI). He is currently the Managing Director of Fountain Publishers Ltd, a company he founded in 1988.  Fountain Publishers Ltd is the largest indigenous publishing house in Uganda.

He is also the founder chairman of the National Book Trust of
Uganda (NABOTU) the umbrella body for various organizations
involved in book development and reading promotion in the country.

He was formally chairman of the East African Book Development
Association (EABDA) 1997-2000; and vice-chairman of the African
Publishers Network (APNET) 1997-2002.

jtumsiime@fountainpublishers.co.ug

Mingzhou Zhang (Beijing, China) was elected at the 31st IBBY General Assembly  to serve as an EC member 2008-2010.

Born in Heilongjiang Province, China in 1968, Mingzhou has a Bachelor’s Degree in Foreign Affairs Management from the Shanghai International Studies University and an MBA from the University of East London. 

He is currently Vice President of CBBY and President and General Manager of Bridging Consulting Co., (Beijing) Ltd.  He worked at the Overseas Department of China Youth Travel Service and was Civil Servant of Asia Bureau of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of P. R. China. 

In 2003 he joined  CBBY as Deputy Secretary General.   He set up the first Model District for China Children’s Reading Promotion in Decheng District, Dezhou City, Shandong Province, the first Model Library of China Children’s Reading Promotion—Beijing Capital Children’s Library, expanding the Chinese  IBBY section into Education and Library field in China.  

He was the organizer of the 30th IBBY world congress held in Macau in 2006.

mingzhouzhang68@yeah.net

Zohreh Ghaeni (Tehran, Iran) was elected President of the Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury, serving until 2010.  She was previously elected as Jury President for the 2008 Awards.

Zohreh Ghaeni (1954) studied at the National University of Tehran and received her MA in Library and Information Science from the Open University of Tehran. Her dissertation was on the responses of 4-6 year-old Iranian children to picture books.

Since then she has worked as a teacher, editor of a newspaper for young people, a translator, English tutor, book critic, an instructor at workshops for children’s book illustration and history of children's literature in Iran, as an editor of children’s books bibliography covering 1965 to 1978. She has given lectures worldwide and organized different workshops on illustrators.

Zohreh is currently the director of The Institute for Research on the History of Children's Literature and co-writer of a research project on the History of Children’s Literature in Iran. www.chlhistory.org

She was a member of the Hans Christian Andersen Jury for the 2002 and 2004 Awards. 

z_ghaeni@yahoo.com

Ellis Vance (Fresno, USA) was confirmed as IBBY Treasurer at the 31st IBBY General Assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark.

After receiving a Master's Degree in Education, Ellis Vance (1940) worked as a teacher and school administrator for 40 years in the Fresno area in California.

He supervised library services to children in 38 school districts in the country for a number of years before retiring. He has also taught reading methods, library service to children's literature courses at three universities in the Fresno area. From 2004-2007, he was Project Director for the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) reviewing resources for educators to use with children. CLRN's website is used throughout the US and in 80 countries. 

After 42 years in education, he is currently an education consultant and devotes most of his time to USBBY and IBBY.  He has received numerous awards in the fields of education and reading. He has been an active member of USBBY for many years, and since 2000 has been its treasurer. Ellis is also treasurer of Bookbird Inc.

Ellis served as Vice President of IBBY 2006-2008 having been elected at the 30th IBBY General Assembly in Macau, China.

vev40@comcast.net