About the Cofounders

OakTara was founded by two veterans of the publishing world, Jeff Nesbit and Ramona Cramer Tucker, to step into the marketplace gap to provide dozens of writers with new opportunities—from first-time publication to widening the readership for already-established authors—and to seek those readers who wouldn’t traditionally enter a Christian bookstore but who avidly shop the Web. “Our goal is to provide readers with something different, vibrant, and new—not ‘just the same old thing’ that they’ve seen, time and again, from other inspirational publishers.”

Jeff Nesbit has written 19 inspirational and commercially-successful novels for publishing houses, including his latest blockbusters, PEACE and OIL, for publishing houses such as Tyndale, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Harold Shaw (now WaterBrook/Random House), Victor Books (now part of David C. Cook), Hodder & Stoughton, and Summerside/Guideposts. He was a national journalist with Knight-Ridder and others, communications director to a Vice President of the United States, and director of public affairs for the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration. His public affairs consulting firm represented more than 100 national clients such as the Discovery Channel networks, Yale University, the American Heart Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Red Cross. He writes a weekly science column for U.S. News & World Report called “At the Edge” (www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge) and is the cofounder and Managing Director of OakTara.

Ramona Cramer Tucker has been on the cutting-edge of publishing for over 30 years, in a wide variety of positions, including: Senior Editor, Tyndale House Publishers; Editor, Today’s Christian Woman magazine and Executive Editor, Virtue magazine (Christianity Today, International); Editorial Director, Harold Shaw Publishers (now WaterBrook/Random House); and as a freelance writer, editor, and/or editorial strategist for Simon & Schuster, Random House, Viking-Penguin, Zondervan, Nelson, Baker/Revell, InterVarsity, David C. Cook, Howard, Barbour, Summerside/Guideposts, and other publishers. She is cofounder and Editorial Director of OakTara.