From the Accreditation Board

In April the Accreditation Board (AB) welcomed new member Dr Louise Merrington AE. Louise replaces Dr Linda Nix AE as the NSW delegate. Linda will stay on as our budget officer until July and will continue to be involved with the accreditation exam.

Sadly, our Tasmanian delegate, Dr Eve White AE, recently resigned for personal reasons. We thank Eve for her valuable contribution to the AB since her appointment in September 2021. Stay tuned for news of a new Tasmanian delegate.

Below are brief profiles of the eight current members of the AB. (Please note a correction to our February Gatherings article where we welcomed Liz Beattie AE, the Aotearoa New Zealand delegate: Liz does not have a doctorate.)

ANZ delegate: Liz Beattie AE

Liz is one of seven AEs in the ANZ branch. Her journalism and teaching experience led to a writing and editing career that has been mainly in New Zealand’s educational sector. She has worked for the past 10 years at Victoria University of Wellington. Liz is a huge fan of Ottolenghi’s recipe books and, when not in the kitchen, will be found reading, sewing or gardening.

NSW delegate: Dr Louise Merrington AE

Louise is a freelance editor and writer specialising in complex content and plain English for government, businesses, universities and non-profits. She sits on the Standards Australia Plain Language Working Group, promoting and localising the forthcoming international plain language standard. Diagnosed with autism in 2022, Louise is an advocate for greater awareness of neurodiversity in the editing profession.

Qld delegate (and AB chair): Charlotte Cottier AE

Charlotte has a background in business and research administration and enjoys working with academics, research students and independent authors of fiction and non-fiction through her freelance editing business. When she’s not sharpening sentences or wrestling formats in Word, she loves dancing, reading and honing her skills with cryptic crosswords and sudoku.

SA delegate: Amanda Webster AE

Amanda is an academic editor; she also enjoys reading, writing and editing fiction. Amanda passed the accreditation exam in 2020, volunteered as an exam coordinator for the 2022 exam and joined the AB in August 2022. In her spare time, she enjoys sudoku, roller skating and video games.

Vic delegate: Susan Pierotti AE

Susan has been a member of IPEd for over 10 years and an AE since 2014. She joined the AB in 2020. As a freelancer, she works with many first-time authors, helping them express their stories with structural editing, copyediting and publishing advice. She plays the violin and leads Australia’s oldest orchestra.

WA delegate (and IPEd Director): Dr Catherine Macdonald AE

Catherine completed her doctorate on social change among woman-headed households in Tanzania in 1996. For more than 30 years, she has been consulting in the community development field, mostly in Asia and Africa. Her main areas of editing are social impact assessment reports, doctoral dissertations and self-published memoirs. Catherine loves to travel, although she’s always sad to leave her beloved rescue dogs behind.

Skills-based member (ACT): Ted Briggs AE

Ted is an Honorary Life Member of IPEd, the 2021 awardee of the Janet Mackenzie Medal, and was joint coordinator of the IPEd Mentoring Program from its inception in 2015 until 2021. His editing experienced has been in the government/corporate domain, but he is making forays into fiction editing. Ted is passionate about theatre and is a judge for the Canberra Area Theatre Awards.

Skills-based member (NSW): Dr Linda Nix AE

Linda worked in a variety of roles for large and small publishers before going freelance. Her business offers a full range of editing and design services, but she specialises in legal editing, fiction and book design for all formats, including accessibility features. She has degrees in English, history and computing, and enjoys gardening, swimming and reading a good book.

AE renewal applications open on 1 May

By Charlotte Cottier AE, Accreditation Board chair

A reminder to accredited editors (AEs) who sat the exam in 2008 and 2018 that you are due to renew your accreditation this year, and applications for renewal open on 1 May. You’ll receive an email on or soon after 1 May with a link for paying the renewal fee, after which you’ll receive a link to the application form. If you are in either of these cohorts and do not receive the email, please contact Charlotte Cottier at ab.chair@iped-editors.org.

The Accreditation Board looks forward to receiving and processing your renewal applications. The assessors love reading about what you have all been up to during the previous five years.

More information about renewal requirements – including the membership requirement introduced in 2021 – is available on the Renewal of Accreditation page of the IPEd website.