Supreme Court In-plant Manager Honored by PIA

Printing Industries of America has selected an in-plant manager to receive its 2010 Naomi Berber Award, which recognizes a woman in the printing industry who has an outstanding record of accomplishments. Wilma Grant, who heads up the U.S. Supreme Court’s publishing and in-plant printing facility in Washington, D.C., was presented with the award last month in San Francisco at PIA’s fall administrative meetings.

Born to a coal-miner father and a mother who was a registered nurse, Grant spent the first 17 years of her life in her native Scotland. Wanting to see more of the world, she enlisted in the military and worked at the Royal Air Force Signals Command Headquarters for three years. She later married a U.S. Air Force corporal and moved to the U.S.

Her first printing job was at a newspaper in Virginia. She later held several jobs in commercial and newspaper printing before accepting a position with the U.S. Government as a phototypesetter in 1980. A few years later she became the Supreme Court’s “Secure In-Plant Manager” of the Publications Department/Office of Information Technology. She has worked there for the last 30 years and has directed the legal book publishing/typesetting and production of reports, preliminary prints, bench opinions, slip opinions and related products. She also has responsibility for all other in-plant printing, design/graphics, print on demand, data conversions and electronic product delivery of Court documents for the Court’s Hermes telecommunication transmissions and for the Court’s Web site.

Protecting the security of all such documents on site and backups going off-site fall under her management responsibility, as does disaster recovery for print, an important task for many print managers. In addition, Wilma Grant is responsible for the safety and security of all documents handled by her department.

Following her graduation from George Mason University’s Executive MBA Program in 1995, Wilma pioneered the reengineering of the Court’s Publications Unit with the addition of networked print-on-demand and color technology; an open architecture system; expanded data conversion services; Hermes telecommunications and BBS support; imaging support; extending composition and binding services; and creating an ergonomically attractive printing department.

IPG congratulates Wilma Grant for this honor.