Bay Area
WOMEN in PUBLISHING
Building an inclusive community for women-identifying and nonbinary publishing professionals
BAWiP’s 2025–2026 MENTORSHIP COHORT
See cohorts from 2024–2025 | 2023–2024 | 2022–2023 | 2021–2022 | 2020–2021
Mentors
Johanna Vondeling
Johanna Vondeling is founder of Vondeling Ventures, a consultancy supporting nonfiction publishers and authors. She was President and Publisher at Berrett-Koehler Publishers through December, 2022. She previously served as BK's Vice President for International Sales and Business Development and as Vice President for Editorial and Digital, after joining the company in 2004. Before that, she worked for Jossey-Bass (a Wiley imprint), W.W. Norton, and Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. In addition to serving on BAWiP’s board, she is on the advisory board of the Publishing Professionals Network and is the proud recipient of PPN’s 2020 Distinguished Service Award.
Raya Rahman​
​Raya Rahman is a bilingual children’s book editor and publisher. She works with authors and illustrators from different countries and communities to bring their stories to life and connect them to a wider audience. Raya believes in the transformative power of picture books to help children build literacy skills, develop a strong sense of self, and inspire compassion for a diverse and multicultural world. She currently wears two hats, running her small children’s press, Guba Books, and working as a content specialist for The Asia Foundation, an international NGO, on their extensive early literacy digital library called ”Let’s Read“.
Rachel Lopez Metzger
​​Rachel Lopez Metzger has been designing books for over twenty years and has a degree in graphic design from California College of Arts and Crafts. Although cookbooks and children's picture books are her sweet spot, her love for design, print, and words inspires her no matter the book type or topic. Working with first-time authors and illustrators is a specialty and passion.
A California native who has never strayed too far from the coast, she currently resides on an island in the San Francisco Bay—though she leaves it frequently for sailing, wine-tasting, and other travel adventures with her husband and kids. When not behind the computer making a book, you might find her knitting, cooking, or trying to figure out how to get a printing press into her small backyard office.
Cheryl Cechvala
Cheryl Cechvala is a longtime acquisition, development and sponsoring editor who has worked for publishers large and small, primarily in nonfiction and educational publishing, since 1997. Her favorite part has always been working with authors to execute a vision, whether for an illustration-driven science title or an interactive ebook. When she’s not reading manuscripts or strategizing with authors and colleagues, you’ll find her hiking, baking, traveling, or watching her favorite history or cooking shows with her husband and two daughters.
Mentees
Aurora Miner
A publishing professional known for wearing many hats, Aurora Miner holds a M.A. in Book Publishing from Portland State University and a B.A. in Linguistics, English, and Professional Writing from UC Davis. This East Bay Area native fell in love with the PNW, where she worked as the PSU Graduate School Format Editor reviewing theses and dissertations, interned with local nonprofit Literary Arts supporting marketing and author events, and spent her master's program as Marketing & Publicity Manager for Ooligan Press. Rory discovered her passion for visual functionality in publishing, combining her interests in marketing and editorial (and freelance photography experience) to assess productive presentation of material; her research in accessible children's publishing was presented at the GW Ethics in Publishing conference in October 2025. She started as a Marketing Coordinator at C&T Publishing in Fall 2025 where she focuses on B2B newsletters, tradeshow coordination, and marketing copy for Creative Spark Online Learning courses. When she's not dogearing paperbacks, you can find Rory slow hiking with her camera or wandering a local farmers market.
Jazmine Agregado
Jazmine (she/her) is a Bay Area native and an aspiring editor with a passion for the publishing and literary community. Recently graduated from California State University, Northridge with a degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing, she worked for the literary magazine, Northridge Review, as Lead Copyeditor and Assistant Managing Editor. During her time in Southern California, she also interned at the Los Angeles Review of Books in the Copydesk position. Jazmine has recently had her work published by the Los Angeles Review of Books. With her experience and ambition pouring into each other, she aims to continue her editorship to serve underserved voices and stories of the Bay Area communities she loves.
Audrey Cadena
Audrey Cadena has long aspired to work in the publishing industry to advocate for diverse books so everyone can feel seen and represented in the stories they read. As someone who is Filipino-Ecuadorian, this is an experience that she greatly lacked as a kid and is why she’s always on the hunt for more diverse books. Audrey is currently an Academic & Library Marketing Intern at Macmillan and a Sales & Marketing Intern at W.W. Norton. She graduated with a BA in English and a concentration in Creative Writing from Sonoma State University. She’s excited to continue working with books and helping people find their new favorite stories.
Sofia Sarmiento
Sofia Sarmiento is an aspiring publishing professional with a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley and a strong background in writing, editing, and communications. With experience as a head copy editor for a student magazine, a communications coordinator, and now a literary agenting intern, she is ready to venture further into the world of book publishing. Sofia is thrilled to be a part of the BAWIP mentorship program and to learn from the wonderful Rachel Lopez Metzger.
Rena Wei
Rena is an aspiring book publisher passionate about bringing diverse stories to life so readers
feel seen and understood. One of the main reasons she wants to enter the publishing industry can be found in the popular James Baldwin quote: “It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had been alive.” After graduating with a Bachelor’s in English from New York University, she became an assistant poetry editor at a non-profit literary magazine, October Hill, where new and unpublished writers are not only prioritized but also celebrated. In her free time, you can find her browsing books at the local library, tackling a New Yorker crossword puzzle, or watching a YouTube video essay marathon.
Simone Zapata
Simone Zapata is a queer poet and editor from San José, CA. She brings over a decade of experience in non-profit youth publishing and arts facilitation, and she's excited to expand her skills within the broader Bay Area publishing landscape. Simone's writing can be found in Beloit Poetry Journal, Dilettante Army, Foglifter, Inverted Syntax, and Brink Literary Journal, where she served as the inaugural Emerging Writer Fellow in Hybrid Writing. As a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association, Simone is the co-coordinator and newsletter producer for the San Francisco/Bay Area chapter. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and is the 2025 Poetry Fellow for Miami Book Fair.