Matthew Kissner is Wiley’s 15th President and CEO, a role he’s held since July 2024. He has been with Wiley in a leadership, board, or consulting role for over 20 years, including as Group Executive and Board Chair. He also served previously as Interim CEO in 2017 and 2023-2024.
His extensive experience includes leadership positions with Pitney Bowes, Bankers Trust, Citibank and Morgan Stanley, and he has been a private equity operating partner focusing on business, financial and healthcare services.
Matt is also a member of the Board Executive Committee of the Regional Plan Association, a non-profit urban research and advocacy organization. Matt earned both a Bachelor of Science in Education and Master of Business Administration from New York University.
Wiley, founded in 1807, is a global leader in research and education, providing innovative solutions and services that help individuals tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. With a rich history spanning over two centuries, Wiley produces books, journals, and encyclopedias in both print and electronic formats, alongside a wide range of online products, services, training materials, and educational resources for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students.
Committed to advancing knowledge and fostering success, Wiley empowers learners and professionals to transform complex challenges into opportunities for growth. Around the world, Wiley breaks down barriers for innovators, enabling them to drive discoveries, adapt workforces, and inspire future generations.
With over 20 years of experience at Wiley, what personal and professional principles have guided your leadership approach, particularly now as the permanent CEO?
Building a broad perspective has always been important professional principle of mine. Early in my career, I did two things that really helped me.
First, I tried to test myself in areas where I wasn’t comfortable – I actively got out of my comfort zone. I was trained in finance and accounting, but when I got into the business world, marketing looked really interesting to me, so I got involved in it to see if I liked it. That approach helped me test my assumptions and learn more about myself.
Second, I volunteered for a lot of projects as a way to learn about other parts of the company. That gave me a chance to learn about all the areas that I didn’t see normally in the course of my job. It also gave people in other areas a chance to meet me. So, I not only learned a lot of new things, but I also built a network. And that served me well. (As an aside, at Wiley, we recently rolled out an internal ‘talent marketplace’ that mirrors my experience. It matches colleagues looking for development opportunities beyond their day jobs with managers across the company looking for a fresh perspective or extra pair of hands, and it’s been quite a success.)
As I developed into more senior leadership roles, maintaining personal connections has been a guiding principle of mine. I do some of my best learning when I’m out talking to our customers, hearing from our colleagues firsthand, and connecting with experts. I think being available, open, and curious is essential for leaders as they navigate an increasingly complex landscape.
I also have always tried to drive into the teams and organizations I’ve led a bias for action. People can get bogged down in planning. I’ve encouraged colleagues to get comfortable with imperfect data. Assuming you’re not making a decision that’s massively risky, if you have 80% of the information you think you need, make the decision, then be prepared to learn and respond.
For me, I guess it boils down to this: always be learning. From other people. From your direct experience. From trying new things. And from taking some calculated risks.
Wiley has a 200+ year legacy in publishing. What do you see as the key challenges and opportunities for integrating modern AI solutions while respecting this rich history?
As one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly research, Wiley has been pivotal from the industrial revolution to the information age over our 217-year history. We have successfully adapted to changing markets and various economic cycles over the past two centuries. Evolving the company while respecting our history is nothing new to us. No company exists for that long without being resourceful and resilient.
Now, Wiley is beginning to play a critical role in the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Over 80% of our revenue today comes from digital content, so we have already largely transformed our product. Our AI strategy focuses on developing licensing and application revenue opportunities, improving productivity, and driving publishing innovation. Regarding AI licensing and applications opportunities, our high-quality content and data in science, learning, and innovation are foundational for training large language models and in demand for vertical-specific models in industries like tech, pharma, and information services. In terms of productivity, we’re leveraging AI to drive efficiency in our office operations and customer service. Through AI-based tools, we are transforming how we publish by shortening authoring time and effort, increasing editorial productivity, and improving workflow. Safeguarding research integrity is clearly a bigger challenge now, but we have deployed AI into our research publishing platform at the point of article submission to identify any potentially compromised content that may require further investigation.
Could you elaborate on Wiley’s AI Partnership Program? What makes this co-innovation approach unique compared to other AI initiatives in the publishing industry?
This initiative aims to develop new AI applications, assistants, and agents in partnership with innovative companies. Our goal is to empower researchers and practitioners, driving the pace, efficiency, and accuracy of scientific discovery. A new Wiley survey revealed that 69% of researchers want to keep up with or be ahead of the curve in AI adoption in their field. At the same time, they require better tools to streamline their research and are looking for guidance and training about how to use AI responsibly and effectively. This new program is designed to address these challenges. Our approach is unique because we combine Wiley’s authoritative content, expertise and market access with start-ups and scale-ups’ capacity and technology resources to deliver specialized AI solutions, ultimately improving the efficiency and quality of research worldwide.
With researchers seeking AI solutions tailored to their specific needs, how does Wiley work with its partners to develop and implement these specialized tools?
The data we gathered indicated researchers require better tools to streamline their work. Our new AI Partnership Program exemplifies how we are addressing this challenge. It combines Wiley’s high-quality scientific content, global academic and institutional partnerships, market research, and brand strength with cutting-edge AI applications from partner companies. Each partner brings unique expertise, and, combined with Wiley’s vast database of knowledge and experience, we believe we can create the specialized tools researchers need for AI solutions.
One of your first AI collaborations is with Potato, an AI research assistant. Can you share insights on how this partnership supports Wiley’s vision for AI-driven innovation in scientific discovery?
Potato is an AI research assistant powered by peer-reviewed literature, enabling high-quality science. They help researchers plan and run experiments using chat-based, generative-AI tools built from large language models, refining them to improve accuracy by incorporating scientific literature references. Wiley’s extensive portfolio of publications will significantly expand their available references. Our goal is to collaborate with Potato to advance the application and reproducibility of science with tools that deliver well-defined research protocols. Wiley has also invited additional partners to join the program, with preference given to those targeting Wiley’s strongest disciplines: life sciences, pharmaceuticals, health science, food science, engineering, chemistry, materials, and veterinary science. Initial AI applications or tools we anticipate developing with new partners may include research assistants, information extraction and analysis applications, and analytical decision support tools, among others.
Wiley’s AI Development Principles focus on human oversight, trustworthiness, and accountability. How are these principles upheld within the practical aspects of your AI initiatives?
Our principles were developed specifically to guide our AI initiatives and assure our authors, partners, customers, and stakeholders that we take these matters very seriously. We apply these principles throughout our AI initiatives. We believe publishers have a responsibility to create standards, processes, and tools that work with integrity, bridging the gap between AI innovation and publishing authenticity. To that end, we’re working to establish a responsible marketplace for AI licensing. We’re also focused on creating practical guidelines that ensure researchers disclose AI tool usage, evolve peer review processes, and maintain the integrity of scholarly work. Our approach involves proactive collaboration, establishing clear ethical frameworks, and ensuring that AI serves the scholarly community’s values of rigor and trust.
How does Wiley plan to ensure its AI tools are fair, transparent, and inclusive, especially regarding bias and ethical considerations in publishing?
One of the four AI principles that we’ve laid out as grounding our AI journey is “Transparency and Trustworthiness.” That is a core element of our AI use and development.
We are dedicated to protecting intellectual property and identifying piracy and copyright violations. We actively collaborate with other organizations to define standards and tackle AI-created content integrity challenges. Our goal is to align with industry best practices and contribute to a shared culture of ethical AI use in scholarly publishing. We are also committed to being transparent with our AI use and development, subject to the terms of agreements we have with others.
We’re working to ensure AI tools enhance rather than replace human research capabilities. This involves creating collaborative ecosystems across publishers, institutions, and regulatory bodies that support the goals of open science, transparency, and reproducibility while addressing concerns such as data privacy and potential algorithmic bias.
As the industry rapidly adopts AI, where do you see Wiley’s role in shaping AI best practices and ethical standards across the publishing landscape?
Research integrity is driving significant transformation in scientific and scholarly publishing. Wiley is at the forefront, developing next-generation detection software, creating ethical frameworks for AI-assisted authoring, and establishing processes to maintain the integrity of scholarly work. We are engaged in policy thought leadership around the world, working actively to help regulators and legislators develop sensible, dynamic, and forward-looking AI policies that strike the right balance on issues ranging from ethics to intellectual property. As the lines between human-authored and machine-created content blur, evolving regulatory and policy positions are required.
In your view, how can AI reshape the future of academic publishing? What specific trends or technologies do you think will be most impactful?
AI is poised to significantly reshape the future of academic publishing by enhancing various aspects of the process, from research to dissemination.
AI is driving efficiency and innovation. In research, it excels at processing and analyzing large volumes of data, uncovering patterns that would be nearly impossible for human researchers to detect. In academic publishing, AI is streamlining the publishing process by helping improve the efficiency of processes such as plagiarism detection, peer review and reference checking.
AI-powered tools are also enhancing the accuracy and accessibility of research. For example, AI can help ensure that academic publishing remains unbiased, objective, and transparent by addressing ongoing concerns about fairness.
Through AI-based tools, Wiley is transforming how we publish by shortening authoring time and effort, increasing editorial productivity, and improving workflows. Wiley has also been evaluating the potential applications of generative AI tools that can support authoring by helping evaluate writing quality, rewriting manuscripts for better readability, suggesting research topics, and producing initial drafts of plain language summaries for discoverability.
Finally, for emerging researchers and authors, what message would you share about Wiley’s commitment to using AI to support and enhance their work?
Wiley was one of the first movers in the AI space for publishers. Before we made that move, we debated it, looking at it from all aspects, particularly the risks. And we concluded that AI was going to be here, with us or without us. We couldn’t stop it—it would be like trying to stop a wave. So, we determined the best course of action was to lean into it and learn. We’ve committed to that for the sake of our customers, and we’ve made tremendous progress.
But we know we must move even faster because the next wave of AI is going to give us an opportunity to enhance the interaction with our content. So, we’re working to shorten our cycle time, using AI internally for editorial and research fraud detection, and giving all colleagues access to AI to make their jobs easier. The next step is moving into new product development and experimenting with ways to improve the interaction with our content and see how we can use AI to reinvent some of the products we have.
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