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2023 ACES Board of Directors election results

March 2, 2023 By Gigi Sutton

ACES: The Society for Editing is pleased to announce the results of the election to fill positions on the Board of Directors.

Alysha Love was elected to serve as Treasurer, her first time in an officer position. Mark Allen was re-elected to his position, Secretary. Both these are two-year terms.

Board of Directors member Crystal Shelley was re-elected to serve another two-year term, while Sharyn Flanagan and Erin Servais will join the Board of Directors for two-year terms.

The new terms begin March 25, 2023. The next election begins with nominations for open seats accepted beginning in December 2023.



Alysha Love is an incurable journalist and accredited executive coach. She heads up her editorial agency, Payette Media House, from beautiful Boise, Idaho. She spent years in Washington, D.C., as an editor at CNN and POLITICO, then led Intuit QuickBooks’s editorial content marketing team. Alysha has bachelor's degrees in journalism and psychology from the University of Missouri and is pursuing a master's in leadership and organizational development at the University of Texas. Alysha is a volunteer coach for Poynter's Digital Women Leaders and a director on the board of ACES: The Society for Editing.


Mark Allen is an editor, consultant, and teacher with 35 years professional experience working with words. After a career on newspaper copy desks, he became a freelance editor in 2009 and was elected to the ACES board of directors in 2012 and appointed secretary in 2022. He has spoken about copy editing for private companies and at conferences, workshops, and webinars, and he hosts a regular Zoom chat on all things lexical, That Word Chat. He writes about words from time to time at markalleneditorial.com and elsewhere, and he shares tips on Mastodon as @EditorMark@mstdn.social.


Sharyn L. Flanagan: Whether it’s editing for international news outlets, such as AP and USA TODAY, or daily platform diving at The Philadelphia Tribune – I’m in it. As an editor for 32 years, I've worked 12 at The Tribune and 15 at USA TODAY. I've also edited at the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times, Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat and Lansdale (Pa.) Reporter. I'm a proud Philadelphian and U.S. Marine who uses her time and editing powers for good through service to the Society of Professional Journalists-Keystone, National Press Club, MediaBistro, Philadelphia Writers Conference and National Association of Black Journalists and various ABJ affiliates.


Erin Servais is a book editor, author coach, and educator. She is the founder of Dot and Dash, a boutique company helping women tell their stories, and the Editors Tea Club, an online space where editors come together for friendship, education, and support. In her fifteen years as an editor, she has helped to bring hundreds of titles to print. She has also presented about editing and entrepreneurship for ACES: The Society for Editing, the Professional Editors Network, Editors Canada, and others. Erin lives in Minnesota with her hockey-playing husband, nineteen-year-old cat, odd-shaped dog, and gaggle of weird plants.


Crystal Shelley is the owner of Rabbit with a Red Pen, where she provides editing and authenticity reading services to fiction authors. Drawing on her background as a social worker, she unites her love of language and her passion for social justice by pushing for writing and representation that is more dignified, intentional, and just. She is the creator of the Conscious Language Toolkits for Editors and Writers, serves on the board of ACES: The Society for Editing, and is an instructor for the Editorial Freelancers Association. When she's not working with words, she's probably swearing at a video game.

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