Before co-founding Avid Reader Press in 2018, Ben Loehnen worked at the Simon & Schuster imprint for eight years, most recently as executive editor. He worked previously at HarperCollins and Random House. He edits books across a range of subjects, including business, economics, psychology, science, religion, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir. The authors with whom he has worked include: Andy Borowitz, Frank Bruni, James Lee Burke, Steve Case, Robert Cialdini, Ross Douthat, Jesse Eisinger, Charles Fishman, Justin Fox, Jacob Hacker, Morten Hansen, Oona Hathaway, Chip and Dan Heath, Virginia Heffernan, Adam Higginbotham, A.J. Jacobs, Ezra Klein, Sarah Lewis, Alec MacGillis, Paul Pierson, Gerald Posner, Richard Rhodes, Michael Riedel,  Jim Rogers, Christopher Ryan, Scott Shapiro, Dan Slater, Benn Steil, Andrew Sullivan, Gillian Tett, and Stephen Tobolowsky. A native of Montana and an avid birdwatcher, he is a graduate of Harvard College.

Before joining Avid Reader Press, where she oversees the imprint’s fiction and memoir program, Lauren spent more than two decades as an editor, first at Grove Atlantic, where she also served as rights director, and then at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since arriving at Avid Reader, she has published two Reese’s Book Club selections—Group by Christie Tate and Infinite Country by Patricia Engel, both New York Times bestsellers. Other notable publications in recent years include Antoine Wilson’s Mouth to Mouth (one of Obama’s favorite books of 2022) and Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir (an Amazon best book of the month and Book of the Month main selection), Adrienne Brodeur’s Wild Game (an Amazon and People Magazine top-ten book of the year), and Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (a New York Times bestseller and an Amazon top-ten book of the year).

Before joining Avid Reader Press, Caroline spent almost 15 years at the Penguin Publishing Group, most recently as editor-in-chief of Avery Books. She has also worked at Random House, Ballantine, HarperCollins, and Houghton Mifflin.  Focusing on nonfiction with a strong takeaway, she has edited many best sellers include The Book of Joy by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The End of Alzheimer's by Dale Bredesen, Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer, The Beauty of What Remains by Rabbi Steve Leder, The XX Brain by Lisa Mosconi, Mastering Diabetes by Cyrus Khambatta and Robby Barbaro, Lessons by Gisele Bündchen, Fat Chance by Robert Lustig, The First 20 Minutes by Gretchen Reynolds,  Mindset by Carol Dweck, and Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley. Her other distinguished authors include Richard Davidson, Daniel Goleman, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Dean Ornish, Tara Parker-Pope, Deborah Tannen, David Kessler, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Andrew Weil. A native New Yorker, she is a graduate of Harvard College, where she studied Comparative Literature.

Before joining Avid Reader Press in 2024, Shannon Welch was Editorial Director of Harper One, a division of HarperCollins. Previously she worked at Penguin Random House, Scribner, and Rodale Books. She edits a broad range of nonfiction with an emphasis on books that expand the mind, enhance the spirit, and foster a greater sense of connectedness. Some of her New York Times bestsellers include: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan, Relentless by Tim Grover, How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber and Julie King, and A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston. Other authors with whom she has worked include Cleo Wade, John and Julie Gottman, Adele Faber, Mary-Frances O’Connor, the estate of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Trevor Moawad, Susan Blum, Rosalynn Carter, Ross Greene, Laird Hamilton, Gabrielle Reece, Dr. Francine Shapiro, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, and Jim VandeHei. Shannon is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Joy joined Avid Reader from Harvard University Press, where she was Director of Belknap Publishing. Before that she spent 9 years as Executive Editor at Viking. She has also worked at The Atlantic and Random House. A nonfiction publisher with a passion for narrative history and big ideas that matter, she has published a number of award-winning, bestselling books including Andrew Roberts’s Churchill and Napoleon, Ned Johnson and William Stixrud’s The Self-Driven Child, Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, Sonia Purnell’s Clementine and A Woman of No Importance,  Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets and The Templars, Julian Jackson’s France on Trial, Mia Bay’s Traveling Black, Tom Zoellner’s Island on Fire, Joe Allen and John Macomber’s Healthy Buildings, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity, Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, Bernard Lewis’s Crisis of Islam, and Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. Other authors she has worked with include Andrea Wulf, Meagan McArdle, Marcus du Sautoy, Lee Hood, Sean Wilentz, Stephanie McCurry, John Guy, V (formerly known as Eve Ensler), Robert D. Kaplan, Richard Holbrooke, Arkady Ostrovsky, and Rory Stewart. Her books have won the Bancroft Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orwell Prize, the Cundill Prize, the Baily Gifford Prize, the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among others. An avid composter, Joy lives with her family in Washington DC. She is a trustee of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation and a member of the Washington Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Prior to joining Avid Reader in 2022, Margo spent eight years at Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and two years as a scout at Bettina Schrewe Literary Scouting. She acquires literary and upmarket fiction along with select memoir and narrative nonfiction. She’s always on the lookout for bold voices, fresh and wild concepts, and books that question the status quo in ways both big and small. At Doubleday she edited the instant New York Times bestseller and Today Show Book Club Pick Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood, both Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ The Man Who Could Move Clouds (a National Book Award Finalist) and Fruit of the Drunken Tree (a national bestseller, a B&N Discover Pick, and an ALA Top Ten Novel of the Year), Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer (Amazon Debut of the Month, winner of the Los Angeles Times Mystery/Thriller Prize, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and longlisted for the Booker Prize), Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch (an Esquire and Vulture Best Book of 2021, Amazon Debut of the Month, longlisted for the PEN Faulkner Debut Novel Prize, and soon to be a film starring Amy Adams), and Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (a Los Angeles Times bestseller and longlisted for the Booker Prize). Other authors she has acquired and edited include Ariel Lawhon, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Julianne Pachico, Paul Mendez, Polly Rosenwaike, Rebecca Watson, Stephanie Scott, and Timothy Schaffert.