Why Content Rules
When it comes to content operations, experience matters. At Content Rules, we’ve refined our approach over decades of working with organizations facing challenges just like yours.
Over the years, we have helped some of the world’s most respected brands, including Google, Novartis, Wells Fargo, and AstraZeneca, connect with their audiences through content that drives real results.
We’ve been content experts at the forefront of our field since 1994, helping clients stay ahead of what’s next. Led by founder Val Swisher, our team is known for anticipating key content trends—from global-ready content to inclusive, AI-driven strategies—and sharing that insight on stages around the world.
Why our expertise stands out
As technology has evolved, we’ve built proven approaches to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time, anywhere in the world. We help leading enterprises shape smarter content strategies, optimize content ecosystems, and create content that gets results.
We are trusted advisors
We pair real-world experience with state-of-the-art tools to help you reach your content goals. We stay fluent in the latest platforms and emerging technologies. Every engagement is tailored to your audience and designed to move your business forward.
Our clients see us as trusted advisors who help them navigate the complexities of an ever-evolving content landscape. We build long-term partnerships—some spanning decades—because our clients know they can rely on us for consistent, high-quality results.
The Foundation is family — in business and in life
A recent The Wall Street Journal feature on young professionals choosing to work for their family businesses really hit home for us. It spotlighted a movement we’re proud to be part of—and a story that starts close to our own.
Founded by family, with Max and Val at the heart of it, Content Rules was built on shared values, trust, and a commitment to doing things the right way. But for us, family goes beyond DNA. It’s how we show up for one another, how Max and Val lead together, and how we treat our clients as true partners. That’s the culture behind Content Rules—and it’s what drives everything we do.
Meet our executive team
Val Swisher
CEO
Val Swisher, founder of Content Rules, leads our team and oversees content strategy, global content strategy, and content optimization. With more than two decades of experience, she’s a recognized expert in global readiness, intelligent content, and content technology—and a frequent speaker at industry events, webinars, and podcasts. Her guiding belief: content should be clear, efficient to manage, and cost-effective to scale globally.
Val serves on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas and is the author of four books on content, technology, and personalization. Outside of work, she’s an avid quilter and makes a hummus that rivals her sharp sense of humor.
Leslie Farinella
President
Leslie Farinella joined Content Rules as President in October 2024. With 25 years of experience in engineering, software development, content strategy, and instructional design, she has helped Fortune 1000 companies solve complex challenges—most recently as Chief Strategy Officer at Xyleme, a leading CCMS for Learning.
Leslie focuses on creating value by pinpointing the core problem, understanding the user experience, and executing practical solutions with precision using business processes, change management, and technology. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, gardening, and long walks on the beach.
Toni Mantych
VP, Content Operations Strategy
Toni Mantych serves as VP, Content Operations Strategy and Solutions helping global enterprises modernize content practices at scale. She is a content strategy leader with over 20 years of experience driving large-scale content and technology transformations. At ServiceNow, she grew the Product Content team from 40 to 160 globally, connecting people, processes, and tools across regions. Since 2024, she has consulted across industries including pharmacy, medical devices, publishing, and restaurants.
She blends corporate leadership, coaching, and change management expertise to create practical, human-centered solutions that deliver lasting impact.
Regina Lynn Preciado
VP of Content Strategy Solutions
Regina Lynn Preciado is the VP of Content Strategy Solutions at Content Rules, Inc. She leads content strategy teams to help organizations optimize content workflows and maximize the business value of their technology investments. Regina works with the most innovative companies in the world, representing verticals such as life sciences, financial services, high tech, manufacturing, and global franchises. Regina is an industry expert with more than 25 years of experience in structured content authoring, component content management, AI readiness, personalized content, and content reuse and automation. She lives a dogspotting lifestyle.
Gaela Schlak
Director of Operations
Gaela Schlak is the Director of Operations and project success maven for Content Rules. Gaela keeps the company ticking, managing all operations functions. She also develops ongoing relationships with customers and provides account management for selected content development projects.
Gaela is dedicated to customer happiness. She has been part of the Content Rules team since 2010. When not sitting behind her desk, Gaela can be found taking a CrossFit class, enjoying a ride on her roller blades, or exploring a new hiking trail.
Max Swisher
Director of Technology
Max leads the implementation of technology solutions at Content Rules, helping customers streamline their content workflows and tools. With a background in content strategy and a deep understanding of enterprise systems, he supports clients across industries including finance, high-tech, manufacturing, medical devices, and pharma. When he’s not optimizing systems, Max enjoys restoring his car, playing the pipe organ, and spending time with his two cats, Nova and Suki.
Charles Cooper
Chief Strategy Consultant
Charles Cooper is Chief Strategy Consultant at Content Rules. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, he’s interested in what happens at the junction between people, processes, systems and content and how to transform a content organization through improvements in local best practice processes, governance, including the taxonomy and metadata that sets everything up for success.
He works with companies to help them understand their content and processes ensuring that it can be created, managed, and published quickly and consistently, while still meeting the needs of their users around the world. He is co-author of Managing Enterprise content, DITA 101, and Ebooks 101.
Mike Rice
Senior Solutions Architect
Mike Rice, Senior Solutions Architect at Content Rules, brings over 25 years of structured content expertise to our team. Mike leverages his background as an information architect, an ethnographic practitioner, and an award-winning contributor to the field of user-centered product design. This experience gives him a broad perspective, seeing the strategic changes needed to enhance content creation, management, translation, and user experiences.
Beyond his professional life, Mike enjoys outdoor adventures camping and backpacking. But, he feels equally at home whether he’s visiting Brooklyn or the Adirondacks.
Our partners
Congree Language Technologies GmbH offers a software platform for content optimization. Congree help writers create great, consistent and compelling content. Linguistic intelligence provides writing guidance and feedback according to company unique style, branding and terminology guidelines. In addition, the Authoring Memory alerts writers to opportunities to reuse existing content instead of creating new, similar content. This saves time for your writers and can significantly reduce your translation costs. Congree seamlessly integrates and works within the most popular editors on the market, so there’s no need for writers to switch to a new environment.
Founded in 1981, Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) provides data and content transformation services and solutions. Using the latest innovations in artificial intelligence, including machine learning and natural language processing, DCL helps businesses structure data and content for modern technologies and platforms. With expertise across many industries, DCL uses advanced technology and US-based project management teams to solve complex conversion challenges and is a recognized leader in XML, DITA, and S1000D conversions.
Datazone is the developer of MiramoPDF, the intuitive, GUI driven PDF formatter for DITA or any structured content. Easily integrated with any CCMS or editing environment, MiramoPDF delivers all the power and sophistication in one tenth the time of programming-based formatters. Miramo software is used worldwide in the financial, manufacturing, government and healthcare sectors.
Founded in 1996 (spun off in 2017), Docuvera provides AI-powered structured content authoring and management solutions for the life sciences industry. Purpose-built for regulated content, Docuvera enables pharmaceutical organizations to create, reuse, and govern validated documentation efficiently across global markets. Supporting standards such as eCTD 4.0, KASA, and ICH M11, the platform combines modular content, metadata governance, and GenAI-assisted authoring to accelerate compliance and reduce risk. Now part of Cormeo, Docuvera continues to advance intelligent content management for regulated industries.
Structured content authoring made easy. We let subject matter experts create, edit and review mission-critical documents. Flawless, fast and efficient. Fonto Editor works directly from the browser and can be easily integrated into your current (C)CMS. Fonto Editor is configurable with XML, DITA, S1000D, bespoke schemas and can be connected to unlimited data sources. Through our partner network, Fonto is used by 1,000’s of experts (occasional writers) on a daily basis.
Fonto is mostly used in Finance, Life Sciences, Pharma, Standardization, Legislation, Technical documentation, Aerospace & Defense and Publishing. In organizations like Toyota, Starbucks, VMware, ABB, Roche, BBC, The United Nations, Huawei, ISO, Texas Instruments, PwC and Spotify you’ll find people who create, edit and review mission-critical documents with Fonto.
Fluid Topics transforms product knowledge into strategic assets via its AI-driven Product Knowledge Platform (PKP). Initially launched in 1999 as a Content Delivery Platform, Fluid Topics evolved to unify technical documentation, API references, support content, and more—delivering smarter, context-aware search and interactive user experiences. Supporting Generative AI, collaboration, and deep product insight, the platform enables organizations to elevate customer support, field service, and content reuse. With two decades of R&D in semantic search and AI, Fluid Topics is trusted by Fortune 500 clients across software, high tech, manufacturing, and healthcare industries.
Graphwise provides knowledge graph and data intelligence solutions that help organizations connect, visualize, and understand their information ecosystems. Leveraging semantic technologies, AI, and natural language processing, Graphwise enables enterprises to unify structured and unstructured data into meaningful insights. With expertise in taxonomy design, ontology development, and graph-based analytics, Graphwise empowers clients to enhance search, automate content enrichment, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Heretto’s cutting-edge CCMS, Deploy API, and Portal toolset empowers users to independently resolve product issues, streamlining support and elevating customer experiences. Their clients include world leaders across diverse industries, from high-technology software to manufacturing, insurance, medical devices, and many others. Heretto is a global company headquartered in Rochester, New York, with offices spread across the USA and Poland as a distributed team.
IXIASOFT has been making a global impact since 1998. As trusted leaders in component content management software, their signature product IXIASOFT CCMS provides innovative and enterprise-class solutions for mission-critical applications. IXIASOFT CCMS, an award-winning, end-to-end component content management solution (CCMS) is used by industry leaders like Mastercard, SAP®, ADP, Ericsson, and Komatsu.
MadCap Create and Syndicate are enterprise content solutions that help organizations build, manage, and deliver mission-critical content at scale. Through modular authoring and unified content delivery, these platforms streamline complex content workflows, ensure consistency across channels, and support global personalization and governance. Together, Create and Syndicate empower teams to accelerate updates, maintain compliance, and deliver up-to-date learning and knowledge experiences wherever they are needed.
MetaPercept is an information solutions company specializing in technical documentation, DITA-XML implementation, content migration, and AI-ready content engineering for modern enterprises.
Quark knows content! With over 40 years of experience, they provide content automation, intelligence, and design software for end-to-end content lifecycle management. Across the globe, customers rely on Quark to modernize their content ecosystems, enabling the seamless automation of omnichannel publishing of mission-critical documents. Quark empowers enterprises to dissect production data and engagement metrics, yielding optimal returns on their content investments.
RWS is a world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and IP services. Through content transformation and multilingual data analysis, our unique combination of technology and cultural expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they are understood anywhere, in any language.
The Rockley Group is the world leader in the development and implementation of intelligent content strategies and structured content management solutions. The Rockley Group specializes in the Life Sciences, Financial, and High Tech industries.
Let's create amazing content together
Ready to elevate your content operations with scalable solutions to reduce risk, time, and cost? Let’s talk! We’re here to help.
