The #1 conference for localization professionals, networking, and industry innovation
Our Current Program Committee Members
Localization World is supported by high profile professionals in the language business from various geographical and industrial markets.
The following members have helped to build very successful conferences:
LocWorld51 Dublin Program Committee 2024
Adriana Acevedo is passionate about the intersection of language and technology. For over a decade, she has been immersed in the dynamic localization industry, initially as a translator and most recently as linguistic team manager (LATAM) and leading the localization vendor and quality management programs at HubSpot. Before her journey in localization, Adriana actively collaborated with publishing houses, magazines, and newspapers. Originally from northern Mexico, she has proudly acquired a global perspective and embraced diverse cultures, the product of having lived in Argentina, the USA, Spain, and currently in Germany. Adriana remains committed to the ever-evolving landscape of localization.
Kathleen Bostick is a localization industry strategist and senior consultant. Prior to her current role, she spent seven years as executive vice president of SDL North America, managing the sales and operations teams focused on helping global companies deliver world-class digital experiences to their customers. For more than 23 years, Kathleen has worked with hundreds of top brands in high-tech, financial services, government, life sciences, retail, online media, travel, and more. She has seen firsthand the critical role global content plays in today’s competitive landscape and uses this understanding to help SDL customers accelerate time-to-market and increase global market share. Kathleen has an MBA in marketing and is a highly respected speaker and published co-author on topics such as global business strategy and global social media.
Anne-Marie Colliander Lind is a recognized force in the global language industry landscape. She has spent almost 30 years helping multinational organizations solve their language issues, serving in executive sales and management positions at leading service, technology and market research companies. She is the CEO of Inkrease, a management consulting company based in Sweden that assists companies in their growth and development strategies. Anne-Marie is a sought-after speaker and is engaged part-time as marketing director for LocWorld. She is also the co-organizer of the Nordic Translation & Interpretation Forum (NTIF).
Caroline Crushell is a senior technical program manager leading localization engineering efforts at Warner Bros Discovery. Her special areas of interest include automation of workflows and working cross functionally with teams to ensure quality from source. Caroline is also an advocate for the Irish language, writing articles frequently about what is being done and what can be done to keep it as a living language.
Esther Curiel is a global content and localization expert. Her mission is to help brands achieve international growth objectives by integrating localization, content strategy, and global user experience. She is currently the globalization manager at Zoetis, an animal health company operating in over 100 countries.
Founder and CEO of Bureau Works, Gabriel Fairman is the father of three and a technologist at heart. Raised in a family that spoke three languages and having picked up another three over the course of his life, he has always been fascinated with the role language plays in identity and the creation of meaning. Gabriel loves to cook, play the guitar, tennis, soccer, and ski. As far as work goes, he enjoys being at the forefront of innovation and mobilizing people and teams together toward a mission.
Carrie Fischer is the globalization services manager at Subway, headquartered in Milford, CT, and Miami, FL. She is responsible for all globalization-related strategies for the company. She has over 30 years of localization experience and has held previous localization positions at Bodybuilding.com, Hyperion/Oracle, and Transparent Language as the managing editor. She owns her own consulting company, Carrie Fischer Consulting, LLC which helps businesses with their localization needs. She is also the 2023 President of Women in Localization and a mentor.
Daniel Goldschmidt is a consultant in software internalization and localization. Prior to that, he served as a senior internationalization project manager at Microsoft in the Cloud and Enterprise Division and led the internationalization team. Before joining Microsoft, Daniel cofounded RIGI Localization Solutions, a venture in the domain of visual localization, and he served as a senior software engineer for the Google internationalization team. He serves as vice-chair of the LocWorld program committee and as a member of the Internationalization and Unicode Conference review committee. Daniel presents frequently at international events. He holds a BS in computer science and mathematics (cum laude) and an MS in computer science, both from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
Ulrich Henes is the founder and president of The Localization Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based consulting and event organizing company. Already in his early years, Ulrich was fascinated by language, cultural differences, and global business. He spent the first decade of his career organizing international campaigns against the arms race and apartheid; and promoting global social justice. For the past 25 years Ulrich has channeled his passion for all things global into promoting awareness and respect for differences among people, countries, and languages in the international business community.
Gary Lefman is a chartered engineer, internationalization evangelist and educator, passionate about software globalization. He is a Fellow and chair of the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, with nearly two decades of authority and leadership in software localization. Gary gained his master of science in multilingual computing and localization from the Localisation Research Centre (University of Limerick), where he is now a visiting lecturer. He is a STEM ambassador and Code Club leader, enthusing children across England in the subjects of science, engineering and computational thinking. Talk to Gary about internationalization and continuous localization.
Johan Lourens’s educational journey started off with a BS degree in computer systems from the University of Heriot-Watt. He began as a release engineer but his career took an unexpected turn when during a company restructure he became a localization engineer. It was during this time that Johan stumbled upon his true calling – the fascinating world of localization. Three years into his career, Johan made a deliberate and transformative decision to fully commit himself to the realm of localization. His dedication and expertise eventually led to his appointment as the sole translations coordinator for the rapidly growing global company. Today, he oversees a flourishing team, which comprises both an operations division and a development team and that delivers translations and localization services to over 40+ studios.
Donna Parrish is co-organizer of the LocWorld conferences. She was publisher of the magazine MultiLingual for 18 years. Prior to her work at MultiLingual Computing, Inc., she was a computer programmer for 25 years. Donna holds a degree in mathematics from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She is presently the secretary of CLEAR Global (Translators without Borders) and CLEAR Tech.
Florian Sachse is the production manager for Kilgray, where he controls product planning, development, quality assurance, release and documentation. He has been working for Kilgray since 2013 and previously managed its software development team. One of his first development projects dating more than 30 years back was to get the German umlaut into an English word processor application. In 1998, Florian started working with language technology when PASS Engineering introduced the leading software localization solution PASSOLO to the market. As managing director of PASS Engineering, the initial focus was the development of mission critical software for clinical analyzers.
As part of the Phrase Marketing team, Francesca leads the localization program and the Loc Leaders community program. Francesca has been in localization for over 13 years in both client and vendor roles and she continues to be passionate about languages, curious about technology, and committed to implementing efficient processes.
Agnieszka Szarkowska is an audiovisual translation researcher and media localization trainer. She works as a university professor at the University of Warsaw, where she is also the head of the AVT Lab research group. She is also an honorary research associate at University College London. Drawing on her passion for teaching, Agnieszka has co-founded AVT Masterclass, an online platform for professional audiovisual translation education.
As the chief sales 0fficer at Vistatec, Unn Villius draws inspiration from the passion she has always had for language in all its forms. She is an avid reader, movie watcher, and radio listener. She sees working in the language industry for well over thirty years as a gift that keeps on giving. Her passion for sales grew out of onsite work with clients. Experiencing localization challenges from the client’s perspective made her fully understand the power of bringing practical solutions that address complex business problems. She deeply enjoys working with her team to solve the puzzle that each opportunity presents, and delighting clients with the customized programs that they build.
Peng Wang has been teaching, researching and practicing localization on three continents. She is the convener for EDUinLOC, a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, and a freelance conference interpreter with the Translation Bureau of the Canadian government. Peng began conducting corpus-based translation studies at the University of Liverpool and later she worked in the Corpus Research Lab at Northern Arizona University. She is an expert in approaching technology in the context of culture and humanities. Peng’s current research interests include human learning vs. machine learning, machine translation risk management, terminology and multilingual data analysis.
LocWorld50 Silicon Valley Program Committee 2023
LocWorld49 Malmö Program Committee: 2023
LocWorld48 Silicon Valley Program Committee: 2022
LocWorld47 Berlin Program: 2022
LocWorldWide46 Africa Program: 2022
LocWorldWide43 Program: 2021
LocWorldWide44 Program: 2021
LocWorldWide45 Program: 2021
LocWorldWide42 Program: 2020
Kuala Lumpur Program: 2019
Portugal Program: 2019
Silicon Valley Program: 2019
Game Global: 2018
Life Sciences: 2018
Process Innovation Challenge: 2018
Tokyo Program: 2018
Warsaw Program: 2018
Seattle Program: 2018
Shenzhen Program: 2017
Barcelona Program: 2017
Silicon Valley Program: 2017
Game Localization: 2017
Life Sciences: 2017
Game Localization: 2016
Life Sciences: 2016
Montreal Program: 2016
Dublin Program: 2016
Tokyo Program: 2016
Silicon Valley Program: 2015
Berlin Program: 2015
Attracting and Developing Talent: Berlin 2015
Shanghai Program: 2015
Attracting and Developing Talent: Shanghai 2015
Localization Processes Forum: 2015
- Manal Amin (Arabize)
- Sven Christian Andrä
- Françoise Bajon
- Chanin Balance
(VIA) - Dana Barras Franco
(previously with Welocalize) - Jacques Barreau
(Warner Bros.) - Teddy Bengtsson
(RoundTable Studio, Inc. – previously with Idea Factory Languages) - Renato Beninatto
(Moravia – previously with Milengo Ltd.) - Christiane Bernier
(Lionbridge / GALA) - Melissa Biggs
(Informatica – previously with Oracle) - Kevin Bolen
(Innosight – previously with Lionbridge) - Chris Boorman
(Informatica – previously with SDL) - Kathleen Bostick
(SDL – previously with Lionbridge) - Jonathan Bowring
(Canon) - Danica Brinton
(LocLabs) - Beat Buchmann
(Credit Suisse AG) - Barbara Burbach
(NetApp – previously with Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard) - Matthias Caesar
(iLocIT – previously with Locatech) - Rocío Cava
(Argos Translations – previously with SeproTec) - Sung Cho
(previously with Lionbridge) - Karen Combe
(PTC) - Lou Cremers
(Syn-Tactic – previously with Océ Technologies) - Arnaud Daix
(Euroscript Luxembourg – previously with Hewlett-Packard) - Karin Delby
(Scania) - Joseph Dengler
(NetVenture Europe – previously with LinguaNet) - Don DePalma
(Common Sense Advisory) - Vic Dickson
(Translia and Acosys – previously with Transco) - Kristin Dittrich-Kahl
(Roche Diagnostics Ltd.) - Aaron Dun
(Percussion Software – previously with Lionbridge) - Andreas Dürr
(Brandmaker GmbH – previously with Across Systems GmbH) - Kate Edwards
(Englobe Inc.) - Betsy Fallon (SDL)
- Thomas Fenrich
(salesforce.com – previously with Yahoo! Inc.) - Carrie Fischer
(Bodybuilding.com – previously with Oracle) - Karen Fowlie
(IBM Canada – previously with Cognos) - Roberto Ganzerli
(Arancho Doc / ELIA) - Inna Geller
(Geller Translation / Lean Sigma Green Belt) - Laurie Gerber
(Syntes Language Group – previously with Language Weaver) - Daniel Gervais
(MultiCorpora R&D Inc.) - Salvatore Giammarresi
(PayPal) - Leonid Glazychev
(Logrus International) - Nicolas Goh
(Verztec Consulting Pte Ltd) - James Grealis
(Symantec) - Andrew Bredenkamp
(Acrolinx) - David Canek
(MemSource) - David Canek
(MemSource) - Eduardo D’Antonio
(VMware, Inc.)
- Allan Hall
(SDL) - Kim Harris
(text & form GmbH / GALA) - Thomas Hecht
(Siemens Healthcare) - Christina Helmke
(Hewlett-Packard) - Andres Heuberger
(ForeignExchange Translations) - Carolyn Hickman
(Hewlett-Packard) - Alex Ho
(Acronis International) - Fred Hollowood
(Symantec) - Henry Huang
(Pactera Technology International Limited) - Kaimeng Huang
(Adobe Systems) - Jochen Hummel
(ESTeam AB – previously with TRADOS) - Gordon Husbands
(Wordbank) - Sylvia Idström
(Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications) - Ulrike Irmler
(Microsoft) - Richard Ishida
(W3C) - Aki Ito
(TOIN Corporation) - Katerina Janku
(Moravia) - Jeewon Kim
(Oracle Corporation) - Carsten Kneip,
(Microsoft – previously with Cisco Systems, Sinometrics) - Hui-May Koh
(Autodesk Asia Pte Ltd) - Richard Korn
(St. Jude Medical) - Wei-Tai Kwok
(Suntech America – previously with Molecular, Ion Global) - Terry Lawlor
(Confirmit – previously with SDL) - Rain Lau
(Google) - Julio Leal
(Ciena Corporation) - Fred Leierzapf
(Philips Healthcare) - Rose Lockwood
(LangTechNews – previously with TAUS) - Salome Lopez-Lavado
(Sony Europe) - Nicholas McMahon
(VIA – previously with Jonckers Translation & Engineering) - Michael Metzger
(Apple, Inc. / Northern California Translators Association) - Dirk Meyer
(Adobe Systems) - Peijing Mo
(Palm, Inc.) - Göran Nordlund
(previously with Maquet) - Minette Norman
(Autodesk) - Ultan Ó Broin
(Oracle) - Tony O’Dowd
(KantanMT – previously with Alchemy Software Development) - Michael Oettli
(nlg GmbH) - Iris Orriss
(Microsoft) - Fayeq Oweis
(Google) - Kenji Ozawa
(Jonckers Translation & Engineering) - Véronique Özkaya
(Moravia) - John Papaioannou
(Bentley Systems) - Sergey Parievsky
- Sergio Pelino
(Google) - Donald Plumley
(Elanex, Inc.) - Andrew Lawless
(Rockant, Inc.) - Frank Lin
(CareFusion) - Maxim Lobanov
(Google) - Gráinne Maycock
(Sajan)
- Conrad Pokorny
(previously with Semantix) - André Purnot
(Medtronic, Inc.) - Chris Pyne
(SAP) - Oleksandr Pysaryuk
(Achievers Corp.) - Arturo Quintero
(previously with Moravia) - Bettina Reichart
(Oracle) - Peter Reynolds
(Kilgray Translation Technologies – previously with Idiom, Inc., GALA) - Stephen Ryan
(previously with Moravia) - Florian Sachse
(SDL Passolo) - Isha Sahu
(Braahmam Net Solutions Pvt. Ltd.) - Phanitanan Sanitprachakorn
(EQHO Communications Ltd.) - Hajnalka Sarvari
(Microsoft) - René Savelsbergh
(RSCS – previously with TOIN Corporation, Welocalize) - Rashmi Schaefers
(SAP) - Reinhard Schäler
(The Rosetta Foundation – previously with LRC and TILP) - Anna Schlegel
(NetApp) - Aaron Schliem
(Glyph Language Services) - Loy Searle
(Google) - Paula Shannon
(Lionbridge) - Richard Sikes
(TellSpec Inc., Localization Flow Technologies – previously with MultiCorpora R&D Inc.) - Nitish Singh
(St. Louis University) - Don Sirena
(General Motors) - Peter Smith
(SDL) - Peter Stumpf
(STAR Group) - Bill Sullivan
(IBM) - Kirsten Sutton
(SAP Labs Vancouver – previously with Business Objects) - Renée Sztabelski
(previously with Hitext S.A., GALA) - Triin Tähema
(Skype) - Lew Tarnopol
(Intel Corporation) - Lori Thicke
(LexWorks / Translators without Borders) - Alison Toon
(Hewlett-Packard) - Elisa Tormes
(Practical Marketing – previously with Tek Translation) - Francis Tsang
(Adobe Systems) - Natalya Volkova
(Kaspersky Lab) - Dennis Waltman
(Harley-Davidson) - John Watkins
(ENLASO Corporation) - James Wei
(EC Innovations, Inc.) - Dion Wiggins
(Asia Online Pte Ltd.) - Shirley Yeng
(EC Innovations, Inc.) - Angelika Zerfaß
(zaac) - Jost Zetzsche
(International Writers’ Group) - George Zhao
(Boffin Language Group) - Sarah Zweir
(Trek Bicycle) - Martin Guttinger
(Yahoo! Inc. – previously with Cisco Systems) - Ghassan Haddad
(Facebook) - Markus Meisl
(SAP) - María Gabriela Morales
(Rosario Traducciones y Servicios) - Antoine Rey
(Welocalize) - Uwe Stahlschmidt
(Microsoft) - Faiza Sultan
(Translation4all, Inc.)