VP - Editorial & Production, SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd,

Payal Kumar was born in Lusaka, Zambia, then spent a couple of years in Fiji before settling down in Manchester, England at the age of 10. After completing her Masters in Religious Studies from SOAS, London University, she pursued a Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire. In 1991 she decided to settle in India and take up journalism as a profession. She worked as a journalist for The Hindustan Times in India for over a decade, more specifically as a senior desk editor.

Thereafter she moved into the corporate sector where she took up the challenge of recruiting 80 editors while setting up proficient systems for a versatile editorial department at the Princeton Review. Today Payal is handling the editorial, production and design departments at SAGE Book publishers, India, where her teams produce close to 120 academic books and 40 journals a year. Tapping her editorial expertise, she has presented several talks on the Art of Academic Writing including at various educational institutions around the country, including IIT, Delhi, XLRI and Lady Irwin college.

Her zest for learning continues and today she is pursuing a doctoral programme from a leading Indian Business School (XLRI), specializing in Organisational Behaviour.