Sage Appoints Khal Rudin as Chief Commercial Officer
Khal Rudin will be appointed to the newly created Chief Commercial Officer role at Sage, accelerating the independent academic publisher’s customer-centered approach to business operations and further aligning the business amongst global customers and end-users. Rudin was formerly managing director at the Sage subsidiary AM and is currently a senior vice president at Sage. He will begin his new role in January 2025.
“I am thrilled to be taking on this new role and see it as an opportunity to dig deeper into the needs of customers across the globe and align and improve their experience with Sage, our products, and our tech,” said Rudin. “I find it incredibly disheartening when quality research and teaching materials created by the world’s top thinkers are not accessed and not used by students and researchers. In this new role, I’m looking forward to working with customers to find economically viable ways to increase their access.”
Rudin’s new role is a natural and necessary evolution for Sage. “Sales and marketing are deeply intertwined and it's fitting to have a global lead working with our many teams to ensure they have maximum alignment and impact for our customers,” commented Ziyad Marar, Sage’s president of global publishing. “Khal brings tremendous experience, ability, and expertise to the role and is the right person to strategically address organizational design and resource allocation within the company and the evolving needs of library and faculty across the globe.”
Rudin joined AM (formerly Adam Matthew) in 2002, which was acquired by Sage a decade later. He began at AM when the company was in its early days and fulfilled multiple roles in sales, marketing, and product development; became a director in 2007; and eventually became the company’s managing director. Rudin helped the company go fully digital with the launch of 14 tech products in 2007, enter the US market in 2010, and saw it through the transition to Sage in 2012.
“When AM was first brought to Sage, I was told that we would receive added support and investment while still growing independently,” Rudin recalled. “Now, more than a dozen years later, AM is a thriving Sage company that operates independently with two incredible leaders – Martha Fogg as managing director and Jennifer Kemp as COO – who have flourished with Sage’s backing.”
As managing director, Khal helped AM grow from 30 staff to over 100 and from offering 26 products to 130, including Quartex, a ‘software as a service’ product that allows libraries to digitize and showcase their institutions’ own archived materials.
In 2022, Rudin began an expanded role at Sage as senior vice president, where he oversaw sales and marketing for both Sage and AM’s library business. Now as chief commercial officer, he takes on global responsibility for sales and marketing for Sage’s global journals and library divisions, as well as its college (books) division outside of the US.
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Sage is a global academic publisher of books, journals, and library resources with a growing range of technologies to enable discovery, access, and engagement. Believing that research and education are critical in shaping society, 24-year-old Sara Miller McCune founded Sage in 1965. Today, we are controlled by a group of trustees charged with maintaining our independence and mission indefinitely.
Our guaranteed independence means we’re free to:
Do more – supporting an equitable academic future, furthering disciplines that drive social change, and helping social and behavioral science make an impact
Work together – building lasting relationships, championing diverse perspectives, and co-creating resources to transform teaching and learning
Think long-term – experimenting, taking risks, and investing in new ideas