Duke’s Allison Belan to Succeed Brian O’Leary at the Book Industry Study Group
Belan succeeds Brian O’Leary, who will retire from the role on June 30th.
The Book Industry Study Group has announced that Allison Belan has been named the organization’s ninth executive director, succeeding Brian O’Leary, who will retire from the role on June 30th. While Belan will formally join the organization on June 22nd, BISG reps said a transition plan is already underway.
“Allison joins BISG with hands-on knowledge of our core topics, including supply chain, metadata, rights management, accessibility, distribution, and standards development,” said BISG Board Chair Matt Kennell of Versa Press, in a release. “She also brings the experience and credibility necessary to engage with C-suite decision makers and other stakeholders across the supply chain.”
Belan comes to BISG after a 22-year career at Duke University Press, where she was most recently Director, Strategic Innovation and Services, where she was responsible for technology operations and publishing infrastructure at the press, as well as the day-to-day management of the Scholarly Publishing Collective, a publishing services business within the press that provides content hosting, sales, and fulfillment to nonprofit scholarly publishers.
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) is the leading U.S.-based trade association dedicated to solving shared challenges throughout the publishing industry supply chain, including the advancement of standards, best practices, education, and communication across the publishing ecosystem. BISG’s five core practice areas are metadata, rights, subject codes (BISAC), supply chain, and workflow.
“I’m honored and excited to be a part of the transformations that BISG will lead in the future,” Belan said in a statement. “For the past 50 years, BISG has led the industry in working to solve problems and build interoperability across book publishing. Its contributions are foundational to the modern supply chain: the creation of the BISAC subject codes standard, the launch and development of metadata standards, and the transition to the 13-digit ISBN are just three examples. BISG’s recent focus on ‘Book Publishing Next,’ an ambitious plan to update how the supply chain functions, shows that its vibrant legacy continues.”
'A Fresh Perspective'
Meanwhile, O’Leary will step down in June after a successful 10-year run at BISG, where he was widely credited with revitalizing the organization. In November 2025, the Book Manufacturers’ Institute recognized O’Leary for his decades of service to the publishing by naming him to his its “Cased-In Club” an honor reserved for professionals who have served the book industry for more than 20-years with distinction.
A month later, in December 2025, O’Leary was honored by Publishers Weekly with the magazine’s Frederic G. Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award. O’Leary told PW‘s Jim Milliot that his stint at BISG was the “the capstone” of his career.
Earlier this year, O'Leary, who also serves on his local library board in New Jersey, penned an original essay for Words & Money.
Brian O’Leary
O’Leary said that “the restoration of BISG’s committee and working group structure” was probably one of the highlights of his tenure. “It provides the right framework to surface, study, and solve problems that affect multiple parts of the industry. It is also the source of our ability to see around corners and offer programming that reaches the industry before a topic is fully baked,” he said.
Among the challenges lingering challenges for BISG: resources.
“We remain lightly funded and very dependent on membership for operating funds,” O’ Leary said. “The industry wants and deserves more research and development, and we need to find resources to fund that work.” He added that Book Publishing Next will likely remain a priority in the coming years, calling it “central to establishing BISG’s value for the industry,” and an opportunity “to modernize the supply chain in ways the drive growth and profitability.”
As for his next act, O’Leary said he is looking forward to a quiet summer, and to training for his next challenge: hiking the Appalachian Trail. “I’ll remain available to BISG and Allison where needed,” he said, “but I also look forward to what a fresh perspective will bring to the organization and the industry.”
