Gaby Appleton
Chief Digital Product Officer
London, United Kingdom
I joined RELX in 2010. It’s an exciting place to work because our businesses have ambitious missions to support our customers in their fields, which I believe we can achieve because of our global perspective, our ability to scale and our amazing people.
I have a new role at RX, where I help the business to develop new digital solutions for both ReedPop, which comprises ComicCon and Gamer Network, and the B2B events business. I am very excited to have joined the business at a time when the world is looking to recover from the pandemic and build back in ways that are better than before. And I am sure that digital innovations can make a huge contribution to helping people connect successfully alongside getting back together in person. I am thrilled to be part of a very dynamic global team at RX and hope to be able to bring all of the digital experience I gained at Elsevier to support a different group of RELX's customers.
Before this role, I worked in several positions for Elsevier, which provides information and analytics to help scientists to make new discoveries, and health professionals to make better clinical decisions. Most recently I was managing director for Researcher Products, which meant that I led Elsevier’s ScienceDirect and Mendeley online platforms. These are global digital websites used by millions of researchers, and my daily mission was to help researchers to use information more effectively. I spent my time understanding researcher needs, and bringing together product managers, user experience design people, software engineers, data analytics and marketing people to create the best possible product solutions to researcher problems.
Before that, I led global strategy for Elsevier. In that role, I had a very broad view over all the activities Elsevier undertakes, so I learned about almost every business function. I developed a deep understanding of how our customers work, and I became increasingly interested in how we can build products that help our users on a daily basis. I worked with all parts of our business to help them consider how technology like big data platforms and machine learning could improve and speed up the execution of our business strategies.
I felt privileged to work in a business that has an important societal mission. Elsevier is a global business operating in over 170 countries, so I met researchers and health professionals in many different places, and it is always inspiring to see the many different ways they are contributing to society.
I have benefited from several world-class training courses in my time at RELX. These have been great, but I have learned even more from colleagues I have worked with who have very deep expertise in all kinds of topics in science and health, and also in functional areas like technology, marketing and pricing. They have shared their expertise to help me solve problems and taught me along the way.
Elsevier links its core business strengths to our corporate social responsibility work. I have worked with leading universities to increase the participation of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) research activities and I also support and mentor women internally.
I joined RELX in 2010. It’s an exciting place to work because our businesses have ambitious missions to support our customers in their fields, which I believe we can achieve because of our global perspective, our ability to scale and our amazing people. I’ve managed to balance doing demanding work with interesting travel, looking after my two kids and playing touch rugby.