Celina "Cindy" Spiegel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, the independent New York publishing house she runs with her longtime partner Julie Grau. Over a 30-plus year editing career she helped launch the literary careers of James McBride, Khaled Hosseini, Bryan Stevenson, Chang-rae Lee and Gary Shteyngart, and edited bestsellers by Yuval Noah Harari, Yann Martel and Dan Pink. After Penguin Random House shut down their acclaimed imprint in 2019, Spiegel and Grau rebuilt it from scratch in 2020 as an independent house publishing 15 to 20 books a year alongside original audiobooks and podcasts.
Cindy Spiegel (born Celina Spiegel) is a New York book publisher and co-founder, with Julie Grau, of the independent press Spiegel & Grau. Over three decades she helped build Riverhead Books and the original Spiegel & Grau imprint, editing and launching authors including Khaled Hosseini, James McBride, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bryan Stevenson, Trevor Noah and Piper Kerman. After Penguin Random House shut their imprint in 2019, the two partners rebuilt the company from scratch in 2020 as an independent house that pairs books with audio, podcasts and a first-look film and television deal.
Cliff Weitzman is the founder and CEO of Speechify, the text-to-speech app that reads anything aloud in natural AI voices and now serves over 56 million users in 200+ languages. Diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade, he taught himself English by replaying a Harry Potter audiobook 22 times, then built the software he wished he'd had to keep up with the reading load at Brown University. What began as a personal hack for one dyslexic student became a Forbes 30 Under 30 company and an Apple Design Award winner.