Known affectionately as The Content Wrangler, Scott Abel is an internationally recognized intelligent content strategist and cognitive computing evangelist who specializes in helping organizations deliver the right content to the right audience, anywhere, anytime, on any device. He is the coauthor of Intelligent Content: A Primer and The Language of Content Strategy (XML Press). Scott is the founder, CEO and chief strategist at The Content Wrangler, Inc. He coproduces Information Development World Conferences, produces a popular series of content strategy books and is the host of the San Francisco Content Strategy Content Marketing Professionals Meetup. Scott is also a highly sought-after keynote presenter, moderator and a frequent contributor to content industry publications. He manages one of the most widely-viewed webinar channels on the BrightTALK network, producing over 100 content-focused webinars a year. Scott’s alter ego, The Audio Wrangler, is a popular DJ and dance music mashup artist.

Dr. Belén Agulló García is a strategic localization professional with 15 years of experience in the localization industry in various roles at multiple companies and organizations, including LSPs, consultancy firms, TMS providers, and universities. In her professional career, she has worn multiple hats and gained all-hands experience in the operationalization of complex workflows, the development and implementation of advanced language technology, and business strategy. She knows her deal about NMT, synthetic voices, and, more recently, she is learning about LLMs. In her current role as Executive Consultant of Innovation at Terra, she supports customers in devising the best workflows and implementing technology to achieve their business goals while keeping human creativity at the heart of everything. She’s also an animal lover, yogi, French learner, poetry enthusiast, and a believer that being kind matters more than anything!

Simon Andriesen is CEO of MediLingua, a 100% medical language service provider, specializing in the translation, localization and testing of many types of medical information in all European and many other major languages. He has been a member of the advisory board for the LocWorld Life Sciences preconference day since 2005. Simon also served on the board of Translators without Borders (TWB), with a focus on Africa. He set up the TWB Health Translation Center in Kenya and his Introduction to Health Translation course has trained hundreds of language-talented Africans to serve as health translators.

Cristina Anselmi is a video game localization expert with 15 years of experience. She has covered many roles in the industry, starting by translating video games, to managing complete localization cycles of several AAA titles and managing teams of localization specialists. For the past 8 years she has specialized in AI implementation in localization workflows, building a team and a strategy from the ground up, and successfully implementing machine translation at Electronic Arts.
She’s also very active in the industry, sharing her knowledge and expertise at conferences and organizing workshops and events to connect people and talk about localization technologies. Her current focus is on helping companies integrate AI technologies in the localization workflows, with clear and well structured plans, to make the most out of this technology without jeopardizing quality and keep sharing insights and knowledge in the industry.

Sharon Austin is an enterprise program manager at Sajan who has over 15 years of localization experience across marketing and operations roles. Her passion is in creating and implementing solutions for different international companies in various multilingual disciplines from onsite search, multilingual SEO, transcreation, web marketization and crowdsourcing to independent language review services. Sharon holds a BA in languages and an MBA in international business and marketing.

María Azqueta Arizcun has over 13 years of experience in the multilingual services sector. In 2005 she joined SeproTec Multilingual Solutions, a multilingual service provider that has experienced rapid growth over the past several years and is now ranked among the top 30 language service companies in the world. During this period of change, María has built an international localization team from the ground up. Currently she is committed to designing and implementing new processes and solutions to drive business growth with a focus on client satisfaction. María is a graduate of the translation program at Universidad Europea of Madrid.

Michael Bahles is international brand strategist and assistant professor at the University of Economics, Prague. He studied international business at the University of Cologne, at the University of Economics in Prague and at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. In addition, he studied psychology and philosophy in Cologne and Prague. Michael has been engaged in the international marketing practice for 15 years and was responsible for international network agency clients such as: Beiersdorf/Nivea, L’Oreal, SKODA, Volkswagen, Renault, Allianz, Zurich Insurance and Bertelsmann. His professional foreign stations were London, Barcelona and Prague.

Diana Ballard is dedicated to global account management. She brings 20 years’ experience to the localization and content creation industry. In the early days, as technical publications manager in a fast-paced Japanese manufacturing environment for over six years, Diana quickly understood the culture of “right first time, every time.” She has engaged in countless conversations committed to matching customer need with localization service solution. Graduating from the University of Liverpool with Joint Honours in languages and a major in English, Diana spent her early career years in management consulting gaining an insight into how businesses manage process improvements across the enterprise.

Diego Bartolome is the founder of sintetic.ai, a start-up that helps companies achieve more with Generative AI.

Talia Baruch is a senior manager, international products, at LinkedIn. She has 20 years of experience in the localization industry, driving localization and internationalization initiatives and customizing products for worldwide consumption. Her former international record includes Google’s Maps and Earth products, Starbucks, VMware, Blurb and others.

Angelina Bayer currently works as localization project coordinator on Goodgame Empire, Goodgame Studios’ flagship title. After studying intercultural communication and East Asian studies, she decided to specialize in localization project management, also supporting product management efforts and localization quality assurance coordination. Angelina started her gaming industry career at Kabam and since then has shipped the localized versions of more than ten browser and mobile games, such as Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, The Hobbit and Fast and Furious 6. When she is not busy being an evangelist for localizability, she enjoys playing League of Legends and learning funky languages.

Localization visionary and professional contrarian, Renato Beninatto has done it all – freelance translation, vendor management, sales and marketing, CEO, and everything in between. He has a passion for passing on his extensive industry knowledge to others and helping companies grow. Renato is a co-author of  The General Theory of the Translation Company, an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey (MIIS), and a co-founder of Nimdzi Insights, a market research and advisory firm specializing in the language industry, and co-owner of MultiLingual Media, publisher of MultiLingual magazine.

Miguel Bernal-Merino believes passionately in great quality game localization and has been working nonstop to raise awareness of issues within the game and localization industries as well as academia and translation studies. He is convinced that research into these topics will improve quality, player satisfaction, turnover and return on investment. Miguel holds a doctorate in the localization of video games and is currently lecturing at the University of Roehampton in London. He is a sought-after speaker and prolific author on audiovisual translation and game localization. Miguel was instrumental in the creation of the Localization Summit within the Game Developers Conference and is one of the advisors. He is also a member of the International Game Developers Association and cofounder of the Game Localization Special Interest Group.

Fernando Blasi holds a degree from the University of Venice and has over 20 years in the localization industry. He has experience with multinationals and international organizations in the US, Ireland, Continental Europe and the United Kingdom. Fernando has managed large-scale multilingual projects designing and influencing processes, assisting in and promoting globalization solutions and in recent times has been involved in establishing and developing the Asian operations for Alpha CRC.

Peter Bourgonje is a computational linguist who started his career about five years ago at Q-go, a Dutch natural language processor company that was eventually acquired by Oracle. Unable to escape the grasp of the corporate world, Peter is now working on machine translation at Infor, a US-based software company specialized in enterprise resource planning software. He holds an MA in linguistics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Jonathan Bowring graduated in computer science and worked for the UK Ministry of Defence and Hewlett-Packard before joining Canon. As Canon’s EMEA localization director, he built an independent services division with its own profit and loss of £15 million. Jonathan trained as a mentor and coach and founded Riversight in 2016. Riversight unlocks the potential within leaders, teams and organizations. It provides coaching and facilitation to small and medium-sized enterprises and corporate clients.

As principal internationalization and localization architect, Henk Boxma provides solutions to his clientele to solve problems that are related to documentation and localization of their products. He is hands-on and works together with people in various roles within an organization. One of Henk’s specialties is (visual) software localization. Many blue chip companies use his Rigi localization management platform to streamline overall localization processes.

David Čaněk is the founder and CEO of Memsource, a software company providing cloud translation technology based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is a graduate in translation and comparative studies, received his education at Charles University, Prague, Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Vienna. David’s professional experience includes product management and business development roles in software and translation industries. He has delivered a number of presentations on innovation and trends in the translation industry including the growing use of machine translation post-editing and cloud translation software.

Alessandro Cattelan is chief operating officer at Translated.net, one of the first and largest internet-based translation companies. He is an experienced top manager in the translation industry with a strong focus on technology, automation and process optimization. Having worked in translation since 2004, Alessandro has hands-on experience in all aspects of the industry, from freelance translation to executive roles. He is also responsible for product management and strategy for MateCat, the open source online computer-assisted translation tool developed by Translated.net.

Chi-Wei Chang joined Opower in 2013 with a background in international relations and experience on the language service provider vendor side. She was tasked with building a localization process for the company, then started to expand beyond the English-speaking international market. Since then, Opower has designed and refined a localization process that leverages behavioral science and captures the unique cultural aspects of each community, and has launched multiple international programs along with their first multilingual programs in the United States and Asia.

With more than a decade of consulting experience, Daniel Chin brings a wealth of technical project management, business strategy and localization experience to Spartan. He started his career on the custom automation of existing WorldServer deployments for many large enterprise companies where he quickly learned that successful deployments rely on custom automation of existing business processes. With his extensive background in translation technology and project management, Daniel quickly became a seasoned veteran of the localization industry. He is an ONTRAM expert and has delivered countless implementations of various automated localization and translation management systems. Daniel was also the founder of SeamApp and holds a BS degree in computer science from San Francisco State University.

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).

Karen Combe recently retired from her position as vice president of localization at PTC, where she was responsible for product localization as well as for localization support for PTC University, technical support, and marketing. Since its inception, she has been a member of the GILT Leaders Forum, a community of peers in the localization industry. Previously, Karen was senior vice president at International Language Engineering, where she managed client services, sales, and marketing. She holds a BA in linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley and a post-graduate degree in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Karen served in the Peace Corps in Senegal and in International Voluntary Services in Algeria. In addition, she worked for eight years on a ranch in northwestern Colorado training horses and looking after a large herd of cattle.

Charles Cooper has over 20 years of experience in quality assurance and over 15 years of experience in eContent, user experience, taxonomy, workflow design, composition and digital publishing. He teaches, facilitates modeling sessions and develops taxonomy and workflow strategies. Charles has assisted companies by analyzing their content, current workflow and taxonomy systems, helped to create new ones and worked to ensure that they are maintained on a consistent basis. He not only understands process, he understands the production tasks and can design a process that works for everyone in an organization.

Simone Crosignani is the CEO of Jinglebell, an audio production and video game localization company based in Italy. Simone started his career in the game industry working as a journalist for 15 years before moving to the PR department of Sony Computer Entertainment. At Sony he handled enthusiast and online media, working on the launch campaigns of PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3 and over 100 games. In 2006 Simone moved to Binari Sonori, a localization company now part of Keywords Studios. In 2016 he joined Jinglebell. From 2013 to 2020 Simone has been the vice-chair of the International Game Developers Association localization group.

Laurence Dansokho, senior manager, program management, is responsible for content process optimization and content engineering within the global content organization at eBay. Throughout her different roles at eBay the past 14 years, she acquired a strong expertise in operations management, global content strategy and content engineering. From 2012 to 2014 Laurence led a transformation program designed to implement DITA and a new content technology for the eBay content organization. She graduated in journalism and since then has specialized in quality management and operational excellence, including a Six Sigma Green Belt and certification in ISO 9001:2008 quality management.

Kathy DiCenzo loves her career as a freelance German to English translator and translation project manager. She has worked as a project manager at several translation and localization companies since 1997 and is an active member of both the American Translators Association and the Colorado Translators Association.

Tea Dietterich is the CEO of Australian language service provider 2M Language Services and president of the Australasian Association of Language Companies (AALC). Recruited by the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Sydney, Tea went to Australia in 1997 and founded 2M in 1999. She was also the director of the Kimberley Aboriginal Interpreter Service for four years. In 2012 Tea opened the 2M Europe office in Paris and works closely with her export clients operating in West and Central Africa. She sits on several boards including the Rosetta Foundation, GALA, AALC, NAATI RAC and ABIE France.

Anne-Cécile Dousson-Lhéritier is a manager of content management at Amazon. Her strengths and focus areas are process optimization, business efficiency, and lately data forecasting. Prior to joining Amazon in 2019, she gained professional credentials by building and running the content department of GetYourGuide GmbH, a Berlin-based travel unicorn. Anne-Cécile started her career at translation agencies and tech companies in Silicon Valley. Her content and business strategies, localization expertise, and technical innovations are the basis of her thought leadership. Anne-Cécile is an occasional contributor to MultiLingual magazine and industry conferences, and also participated in the localization community expansion by managing the Women in Localization, Germany chapter.

Loïc Dufresne de Virel, a 20-year industry veteran, is currently the localization strategist with Intel’s in-house localization team. On top of managing advanced localization projects involving language models and multilingual speech recognition engines, Loïc also has direct ownership for functional areas such as innovation and business operations. In particular, he is the sponsor of a recent initiative to deploy a localization-focused enterprise service bus, making it easy and efficient for customers across Intel Corporation to access localization capabilities provided by his team, today and in the future.

Chris Durban is a freelance translator based in Paris, where she translates business texts from French into English for demanding clients and enjoys it immensely. She has published many articles, is the author of Translation, Getting it Right, and regularly gives lectures and workshops on writing, specialization and working with direct clients. Chris is a member of ATA and SFT, and a Fellow of ITI (UK). She was awarded ATA’s Gode Medal in 2001.

Petra Dutz holds a degree in applied language studies and translation from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. In her current role as key account manager for SDL Language Solutions, she works closely with key customers and partners in the DACH region. Petra has over 15 years of experience in the translation/localization business and for more than ten years has taught courses on translation, terminology and software localization tools at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz.

Alberto Ferreira has worked extensively in globalization services and product development with his key interests lying in user experience (UX) as well as content optimization technologies and processes. He specializes in aiding companies to redesign their digital presence and determine the user’s real needs with a global perspective. He has over seven years of experience in agile methodologies and corporate change, and is a cross-disciplinarian by nature. Alberto is also the author of Universal UX, to be published by Morgan Kaufmann in 2016, and often speaks and writes on design, localization and branding.

Roger Fienhold Sheen is an independent information architect based in Potsdam, Germany. He provides consulting services to start-ups and global corporations, advising clients on content reuse strategies, XML-based publication processes and authoring environments, version control solutions and organizing information with a sound structure that helps users find what they need.

David Filip is chair (convener) of OASIS XLIFF OMOS TC; secretary, editor and liaison officer of OASIS XLIFF TC; a former cochair and editor for W3C ITS 2.0 Recommendation; advisory editorial board member for MultiLingual magazine; and co-moderator of the Interoperability and Standards WG at JIAMCATT. His specialties include open standards and process metadata, workflow and meta-workflow automation. David works as a research fellow at ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Before 2011, he oversaw key research and change projects for Moravia’s worldwide operations. David held research scholarships at universities in Vienna, Hamburg and Geneva, and graduated in 2004 from Brno University with a PhD in analytic philosophy. David also holds master’s degrees in philosophy, art history, theory of art and German philology.

Daniel Finck is an independent consultant who learned his trade setting up and managing localization processes and teams for free-to-play/mobile games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games on the publisher side — an experience he has shared in presentations at previous LocWorld round tables. This made him develop a particular interest in seeking and trying out new language technology and service provider models that allow for economic and quality continuous translation workflows. Acting as a bridge between game companies and the language industry, he now supports businesses in selecting and implementing the right processes, tools and partners based on the actual needs and particularities of their products.

Klaus is a terminology aficionado who helps global companies harmonize and control their multilingual data and content. His company Kaleidoscope provides the collaborative workflow platform Quickterm, which manages, distributes and enforces corporate terminology. Quickterm is integrated into all major translation management systems, MT engines and more recently GenAI platforms, making it the central enterprise terminology hub.

As a localization producer at Blizzard Entertainment, Arthur Flew has contributed to the global release of a number of critically acclaimed games — most recently, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. He has been at Blizzard for ten years.

With more than two decades of experience in the software industry, Karen Fowlie has held several executive positions at Cognos and IBM and has recently joined Qlik as senior director of R&D growth, globalization, product content and education. As part of her role at Qlik, Karen is responsible for driving internationalization standards across the organization, defining globalization strategy and delivering a portfolio of business intelligence products in multiple languages. She has been a member of the advisory board for the Localization Institute’s Management Roundtable and has participated in The Leadership Forum (Telfer School of Business, Ottawa) where local leaders discuss challenges and best practices in the industry. Karen has also participated in the International Women’s Forum.

Costantis Galatis was born and raised multilingually in Greece. Academic interest led him to study comparative literature as well as comparative linguistics at the University of Mainz in Germany, and after two years he switched to studying translation, linguistics and cultural science. Constantis graduated in 2011 and has since gathered experience in many positions in the linguistic field, including localization, translation, interpretation and dubbing

Inna Geller has over 20 years of experience managing localization on the client side. She joined Rockwell Automation in 2012 to lead the development and implementation of a uniform translation strategic framework including a selection of the technology platform to handle a distributed translation supply chain. Before Rockwell, Inna was a senior localization manager at Medtronic, a global medical device company. She is an evangelist of Lean Six Sigma methodology and terminology management to ensure high quality translations. Inna continues to be a trainer on a variety of localization topics at the Localization Institute as well as a speaker and a panelist at localization conferences worldwide. She holds an MBA in general management and a BA in linguistics.

Daniel Goldschmidt is a speaker and educator with software internationalization and localization expertise. He also teaches computer science and physics to middle and high school students, driven by his belief that investing in the next generation is vital for humanity’s future.

Previously, Daniel was a senior internationalization project manager at Microsoft, leading the internationalization team in the Cloud and Enterprise Division. Before that, he co-founded RIGI Localization Solutions, a venture focused on visual localization, and served as a senior software engineer on Google’s internationalization team. He is Vice-Chair of the LocWorld Program Committee and has been a member of the Internationalization and Unicode Conference review committee. Daniel frequently presents at international events and leads workshops and roundtables. He holds a BS in computer science and mathematics (cum laude) and an MS in computes cience from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Patricia Gómez Jurado is a global content strategy and localization leader with more than ten years of experience on both the corporate and localization provider sides. She currently works at King as head of content design and previously managed diverse teams of user experience (UX) writers, content strategists and localization specialists at eDreams Odigeo and Google. Patricia’s passion is building bridges between localization and UX writing in order to deliver great digital experiences to users.

Clara Gómez Pérez has been in the video game localization industry for five years and has been leading the localization department at Goodgame Studios since 2011. The department has grown from a one-woman team in charge of everything language-related to a gang of 20+ specialists that delivers agile, high-quality localization for mobile and browser games in up to 26 languages. Before that, Clara worked as a localization manager for Spanish at Mail.ru Games. She holds a BA in translation and interpreting and an MA in specialized translation. Her favorite localization related topics are content management systems, localization tools, process automation and funny localization mistakes.

Matthias Gutknecht is a business development manager at STAR AG. He is a subject matter expert on customer and product communications, marketing execution, communication logistics and knowledge management processes. Matthias has more than 25 years of experience in research, design, development, selling and deployment of knowledge and content management solutions and services. Before joining STAR AG he was in charge of developing the cross-media communications services offering for Xerox Services Europe. Matthias was engaged in many content and knowledge management business and technology consulting assignments and has developed the Xerox Services knowledge management offering in joint cooperation with Xerox Research Centre Europe in Grenoble and Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) USA. Before working for Xerox Matthias was a researcher in artificial intelligence, knowledge based systems and neural networks at the Zurich University AI Lab. He holds a PhD in economy and computer science from Zurich University.

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.

Barbara Hoegler has 20 years of experience in driving localization strategy and operations at companies such as Citrix and Apple. Her current focus at ZEISS is the delivery of medical software and content. Barbara previously served as chapter manager for Women in Localization for Germany and holds an MA in applied linguistics from Kent State University.

Gergely Horváth leads the development team at MorphoLogic Localisation, a privately held language technology and service provider company located in Budapest, Hungary. He has spent ten years in the translation industry and is an expert on tools, formats and processes.

Jasmin Jelača is a localization lead at Nordeus, an award-winning independent gaming company based in Belgrade, Serbia. Being raised in the multicultural environment of Berlin, it was unavoidable to become a specialist in various languages and cultures. Jasmin went on to study German literature in Belgrade and, after some freelancing as a translator, he found his new home at Nordeus. Currently he works with different departments such as marketing and customer relations, making sure Nordeus’ players enjoy top-notch localization quality in every facet of the gaming experience.

With over 15 years of experience, Nadège Josa has worked in various localization roles within Sony. After studying applied foreign languages specialized in translations, she started her career in the first Sony localization quality assurance group before moving on to localization project management. With experience in localizing social small-scale text-only titles to AAA complex and audio-heavy titles, Nadège is passionate about trying to do things differently and thinking outside the box for every game she works on. A senior project manager since 2011, Nadège strives to find smart solutions to the everyday challenges of the industry.

Maria Kania has worked in the localization industry for over 20 years, holding various roles including sales director, account manager, quality ISO manager, and business development manager. Maria is very active in the localization community as a presenter and localization activist. She currently holds the role of board member for strategic global sponsorship. Since 2017, Maria has been leading a team of ten account managers at Translations.com who serve large enterprise clients mostly from fashion retail, travel and hospitality, and other verticals. She is a Polish-Canadian native and has been living in Barcelona, Spain for 15 years.

Fulya Kaplan is a localization manager at Sony. She is focused on providing end-to-end localization solutions, designing localization processes, ensuring quality and implementing best practices for the company. Fulya has more than eight years of experience at Sony, playing different roles in the company from translation specialist to content management team leader, among others. She gained localization experience by working on the vendor side and in the United Nations. Fulya has a degree in translation and interpreting from Bilkent University in Turkey.

Maxim Khalilov is currently head of data science at Glovo, a Spanish on-demand courier service unicorn. Prior to that he was director of applied artificial intelligence at Unbabel, a company disrupting the customer service market with machine translation. Previously, he was responsible for collection and exploitation of digital content for the hospitality market as a product owner in data science at Booking.com. Maxim is also a cofounder of a natural language processing company, NLPPeople.com, has a PhD from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona, 2009), an MBA from IE Business School (Madrid, 2016), and is the author of more than 30 scientific publications.

Ryan King is a senior program manager at Microsoft, in the Operating Systems Group. He works on a team responsible for delivering an enterprise-scale localization platform and service for software and content localization across the division. Ryan has over 20 years of experience devising localization solutions, driving localization innovation and championing localization standards. He drives localization interoperability efforts across Microsoft and is an active member of the XLIFF Technical Committee. Ryan currently lives and works in Seattle.

As service owner for cloud translation at SAP, one of the world’s leading business software enterprises, Anke Kortenbruck is responsible for organizing the translation of the full portfolio of SAP cloud products. She heads a team of account and delivery managers, project managers and quality engineers. Prior to her current role, Anke worked in product translation and coordination for enterprise resource planning at SAP. Before joining SAP eight years ago, Anke worked at a single-language vendor specializing in IT translation. In addition to this, she is a university lecturer who has been teaching courses on translation tools and technical writing for more than ten years. Anke holds a degree in applied language studies and translation from the University of Mainz (Germersheim) in Germany. Sessions

Markus Kuhnert is the founder and managing director of 1io, which builds marketing technology for branding, localization and collaboration. one2edit, it’s flagship product, helps enterprises manage complex challenges in global marketing collateral production more efficiently. It enables full control over content and brand while streamlining workflows among corporate marketing communication departments, creative agencies and prepress services providers, and translation service providers. Markus founded his company in 1999 in the age of 21 with a background in design and technology. Today, 1io and it’s products serve over hundreds of brands, such as Siemens, Henkel, Porsche and many more.

Andrew Lawless elevates senior executives and business owners to higher levels of managing change, creating growth, building trust and improving communication. Through his coaching and consulting, you will build top-performing teams for your success, sanity and happiness. A pioneer in process automation for translation and localization, he has devoted his entire career to helping people succeed through inevitable changes. Andrew brings a unique blend of experience in behavioral sciences, publishing, localization and education. He served as a trainer and consultant to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit where he helped analyze the mindset of hostage takers. His accomplishments range from managing a corporate turn-around of Berlitz in Central and Eastern Europe to transforming the World Bank’s global approach to localizing its analytical work, from automating content processes in leading life science companies to helping small business owners making critical decisions and strategic pivots. Andrew presented his successes with transforming global teams to the Obama White House and testified before the US Senate on the importance of professional development in localization to the US economy. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.

Lucie Le Naour joined eBay’s machine translation language specialists team in 2014. She holds a master’s degree in bilingual translation, English to/from French, from the University of Westminster, London, and has gained knowledge on post-editing practices and machine translation engine training thanks to her hands-on experience in the localization industry since 2010.

Liesl Leary is focused on leveraging multilingual social intelligence to inform brand health, marketing, strategy and global expansion decisions using data and insight. Over the last 15 years of her career, she has successfully led marketing and sales teams to deliver innovation and revenue at the intersection of language, technology and design. In addition to leading marketing, she serves on the boards of Women in Localization and Intercambio and volunteers extensively for philanthropic projects. She studied at a gymnasium in Germany prior to achieving her undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Kalamazoo College.

István Lengyel is the founder of BeLazy, the project management automation company that makes continuous localization efficient across the entire supply chain. He also works as a technology consultant for Nimdzi Insights. Previously, István cofounded Kilgray, the makers of memoQ, and also worked as a translator and director for customer success for On Global. István holds several degrees in economics and translation including a PhD in translation studies from the ELTE University of Budapest.

Juan Julián León is a professional with more than 17 years in the localization industry. The familiarity of the localization sector, direct involvement and vast understanding of the organization has allowed him to successfully oversee and manage, as CEO of SeproTec Multilingual Solutions, a company with offices worldwide, 300+ employees and a substantially solid infrastructure. Before this position, Juan Julián grew with the company while passing through numerous roles and departments, including operations, sales, finance and human resources.

Gerd Leonhard is a widely known and top-rated futurist, an influential author, an acclaimed keynote speaker and a strategic advisor. He is the coauthor of the best-selling book The Future of Music (2005), and the author of The End of Control, Music 2.0, Friction is Fiction and The Future of Content (2011, Kindle only). Gerd is also the host of TheFutureShow and MeetingOfTheMinds.tv, as well as the founder of GreenFuturists — a high-level group of leading futurists with a focus on developing sustainable business models.

Christian Lieske works for SAP in the area of internationalization and translation. He was or is actively involved in standards activities driven by OASIS, the W3C and others. Due to his background in computer science and computational linguistics, he enjoys internal consulting related to these areas.

Kaho Lo has been involved in localization engineering for over 12 years, first at Macromedia and then, after it was acquired, at Adobe. During that time he has worked on globalization solutions for desktop, web and mobile platforms, on products such as Acrobat.com, After Effects, Connect, Creative Cloud Ecosystem, EchoSign and many others. Kaho is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and speaks Cantonese.

Maxim Lobanov is a localization expert with over 15 years of experience in localization quality management, translator training and process development. For the past seven years, as Google’s quality manager first for Russian and then later Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak and Ukrainian, he has led and driven efforts across localization vendors, marketing, public relations, engineering and sales teams to ensure that Google’s voice sounds natural and authentic for users in these markets. Maxim is also part of the Google quality evaluation (QE) taskforce, leading development of the linguistic side of QE. Additionally, he authored Google’s Style Training process for translators and reviewers. Prior to joining Google, Maxim spent nearly seven years with CBOSS, a leading telecommunications software development company. He holds degrees in philology and civil law.

Arle Lommel is a senior analyst with independent market research firm Common Sense Advisory (CSA Research). He is a recognized expert in quality processes and interoperability standards. Arle’s research focuses on technology, quality assessment and interoperability.

Originally from London but now living in the Netherlands, Karen Loughrey has been working in localization since 2008. With a background in content creation and management, she’s passionate about global content strategy and giving Spil Games’ huge international user base the best possible experience.

Paul Mangell has a lot of experience at the cutting-edge of localization. His career has spanned all aspects of the localization industry, and he has been at the forefront of both the creation of agile processes and creative content management. Paul is passionate about localization, cultural adaptation and language transformation for product marketing, brand management, campaigns (TV, film and web) and advertising.

As vice president, globalization and localization, Teresa Marshall drives globalization and localization-related efforts across Salesforce, including internationalization, localization management and development of features designed to enable global Salesforce deployment. In 2009 she joined Salesforce as senior localization manager and led all product localization through a period of intensive growth. Since 2015 Teresa has led both globalization and localization for Salesforce. Teresa started her career as a German linguist and has been working in localization for over 15 years. She has held program and operational management positions at a number of Silicon Valley companies, including leading the Google localization team. From 2010 to 2014 Teresa was an adjunct member of the faculty at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and taught in the translation and localization management program of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation and Language.

Steve Maule is a business development director at Welocalize, based in Manchester, UK. He started his sales and management career in 1997, joined the localization industry in 2009 and holds a BA (Honors) in business studies from the University of Sheffield. Steve’s clients are in technology, consumer and engineering. They often have large and complex needs, expect a long-term and transparent relationship and are committed to accelerating through the localization maturity model.

Patrik Mazanek was initially involved with localization and CAT tools as part of the reseller/development team at Moravia. He joined SDL in 2006 as support engineer and soon after moved to the position of product manager. Since 2010 Patrik has been taking care of multiple products as product owner in the Translation Productivity group. As one of his main areas of expertise, he takes care of creation of the file type support, low level frameworks used in all SDL products and translation memory technology.

Shane McCarthy is a development director for Electronic Arts with over 15 years of experience in localization project management. Working in games localization since 2008, his credits include FIFA, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, StarWars and Titanfall. He has also been responsible for accurate localization forecasting with partner studios as well as investigating the potential of culturalization for mobile titles in Asia. Prior to joining Electronic Arts, Shane managed localization programs in the life sciences and energy sectors for a global language services provider. He has a keen interest in the evolution of games localization and enjoys watching and playing Rugby.

Gisbert Meyer is responsible for translation management and translation of relevant topics in the medical and microscopy business at Olympus Europa SE & Co. He worked at different language service providers for 11 years as a project manager for translations and was responsible for translation memory systems.  Gisbert supervised the implementation of the Across CAT tool and is responsible for the internal support of that software. He graduated as a technical translator from Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.

Michelle Miller manages Wordbank’s freelance network spanning over 90 countries. After studying English and history, she went into teaching, but her fascination with the nuances of language drew her to the world of localization. People are her passion and she strives to help both internal staff and freelancers develop and grow in a way that leads to mutually beneficial relationships. Wordbank’s strategic commitment to promoting the value of language alongside sustainable business practices, has allowed Michelle to develop a resource model based on quality, collaboration and caring. When she’s not advocating for people, she enjoys reading, hiking and traveling.

Marc Mittag is the head of MittagQI – Quality Informatics and project lead of translate5, an open-source cloud translation system. He started developing software in 2000 and has worked in language industry IT since 2002. In 2009 he founded MittagQI, which focuses on software and technical consulting for the language industry. Prior to 2009 he worked as head of translation IT at Transline.

Wafaa Mohiy started her career more than 25 years ago as a software engineer in the internationalization and localization industry then moved to localization project management in 1995. Since that time she has managed and helped to manage many localization projects for clients across the world. Wafaa’s areas of expertise cover management (account management, project management and resources management); automation and process enhancements; internationalization and localization; and translation automation and tools. She is currently a member of Saudisoft’s board and has been a board member for Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) since being elected in 2016.

John Moran is the developer of iOmegaT, a state-of-the-art analytics suite developed in collaboration with Welocalize to help some of the world’s largest buyers of post-editing services measure and improve translator productivity. After graduating with degrees in computer science, linguistics and German from Trinity College Dublin, John lectured in technical translation at the same university. He is the co-owner of Transpiral, a boutique technical translation agency he founded in 1998, and has over a decade of experience in software application development. Currently he is in the final phase of a PhD at the Centre for Next Generation Localisation where he developed a method to field test the impact of computational linguistic technology on translator productivity.

Dragos Munteanu is currently managing the end-to-end development life cycle of SDL’s statistical machine translation products, with a focus on continuous translation quality improvement via innovation in algorithms and advancement in scalability. He has extensive knowledge in statistical machine translation, machine learning and natural language processing. Dragos has over ten years of experience in the translation industry with significant contributions as both scientist and product manager. He has a PhD in computer science from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the University of California Los Angeles.

Luke Niederer is native of Stuttgart, Germany, but has lived far away from his “home” for most of his adult life. He has been working in the translation and interpretation industry since he was a student in Berlin in the 1990s. For two years Luke worked as an escort interpreter for the Federal Press Office (Bundespresseamt) accompanying foreign guests of the federal government on trips through the new federal states and Berlin. After he moved to the United States and graduated from the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) in 2000, Luke started working for eBay in San Jose, California, helping to build the localization department from scratch. In July 2007 he became the European language lead for the language specialists located in Europe (Belgium and Poland) and then in October 2007 Luke moved to Germany to work from the eBay office there, working closely with the other European eBay offices. In March of 2011 he became localization manager Europe, initially responsible for 14 languages. In 2014 the new field of machine translation (MT) was added to Luke’s responsibilities and he is currently managing three MT language specialties — French, Italian and German — and potentially adding more in 2015.

Kevin O’Donnell is the fractional leader and advisor for international expansion and revenue growth at Global10x. He help B2B SaaS companies expand internationally, grow their international revenue and modernize their localization processes. He has 20+ years in product and international leadership roles at Microsoft, Dropbox, and Nitro.

Tony O’Dowd is the founder and chief architect of KantanMT.com, a cloud-based custom machine translation solutions provider. He is a serial entrepreneur and localization veteran with more than 25 years’ experience working in the localization industry. He has previously held senior positions at Lotus Development Corporation, Symantec Corporation, Corel Corporation and Alchemy Software Development, which he founded in 2000. Tony holds a BS in computer science from Trinity College Dublin, and a fellowship from the Localization Research Institute at the University of Limerick. He is currently a member of the governance board of the ADAPT Research Centre at Dublin City University.

Sarah O’Keefe is the chocoholic president and founder of Scriptorium Publishing and a content strategy consultant. Scriptorium offers content strategy services to help customers solve business problems and achieve strategic goals. Since founding the organization in 1997, Sarah has worked with numerous organizations to assess content issues, develop solutions and implement new technologies that unlock content value. Sarah is fluent in German, reads voraciously and enjoys swimming, kayaking and other water sports along with knitting and college basketball. She has strong aversions to raw tomatoes, eggplant and checked baggage.

Iris Orriss serves as a vice president of internationalization, product quality, and product experience analytics at Meta. She has been with Meta since January 2013 and is passionate about eliminating the internet language and cultural barriers, and improving the overall user experience. Her work focuses on growing Meta in international markets. From 2012-2019, Iris was a member of the board at Translators without Borders, a nonprofit organization that provides vital information in the right language at the right time. Prior to Meta, she was a director at Microsoft, working on product internationalization and development process in the enterprise and language technology divisions. Iris is a native of Germany, speaks four languages, and was educated at Freie Universität Berlin.

Selçuk Özcan who has over five years of experience in the language industry, is one of the founders of Transistent Language Automation Services. He holds two degrees in mechanical engineering and translation studies. Selçuk has a keen interest in linguistics, natural language processing, language automation procedures, agile management and technology integration. He is mainly responsible for building high-quality production models including quality evaluation and deploying “train the trainers” model. Selçuk teaches computer-aided translation and total quality management at Yeni Yuzyil Universitesi, Translation and Interpreting Department in Instanbul.

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.

From Milengo, Deepan Patel has been in the localization industry for just over five years, and in that time has helped Milengo develop custom machine translation (MT) and post-editing as one of its key localization services. The key focus of Deepan’s work relates to testing and evaluating MT-based workflows for Milengo’s clients.

Hélène Pielmeier is a senior analyst at CSA Research. She focuses on LSP business management, strategic planning, sales and marketing strategy and execution, project and vendor management, quality process development, and interpreting technologies. Before joining CSA Research, Hélène was division president at Iverson Language Associates, a TransPerfect company.

Communication has always been Stefania Piva’s poison. Loquacious, eloquent and flamboyant, she wanted to be a psychoanalyst, which took her to Vienna for college studies where her passion for languages became manifest. Stefania never strayed from the path and kept her connections between anatomy and physiology of communication, language comprehension and neuropsychology/neuroimaging, translation and localization. Finding a point of intersection made it spicy, transforming it in everyday life as a translator then and a sales manager now made it fun. The year she started was 1988.

Jessica Rathke has 30 years of localization sales experience and is currently the principal at FluentSales LLC, a London-based consultancy that helps translation industry leaders around the world increase revenue through training and consulting services. She holds an MBA and a bachelor of arts in foreign affairs and in German from Miami University in Ohio, USA. Jessica completed post-graduate German studies at the University of Salzburg. She has also been recognized as a translation industry influencer for the past several years.

Rebecca Ray has focused on designing, testing, adapting and marketing software outside of the United States since 1980. She has managed worldwide product design, localization and marketing for successful products sold internationally by IBM, Netscape Communications, Remedy Systems, Symantec Corporation and Sun Microsystems. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish and proficient in Portuguese and Turkish. In her work at Common Sense Advisory, Rebecca’s primary focus is enterprise globalization, social media, multilingual SEO and global product development. Her other coverage areas include outsourcing, testing, multimedia localization and internationalization. A former Rotarian scholar and Silicon Valley veteran, Rebecca was most recently managing editor for the Localization Industry Standards Association. During her tenure, she oversaw all of the association’s research and publications. She also coauthored a book for global high-tech companies on doing business in the United States. Based in Turkey, she has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America for many years.

Sufian Reiter started his career as business development manager at Plunet Berlin in the spring of 2008. A global economy expert, he is responsible for the North American market as vice president of sales. Sufian studied international business administration at the University of Applied Sciences (FHTW) in Berlin and has long-term experience in consulting and project management in the field of marketing and IT.

Antoine Rey, senior vice president, customer development at Argos Multilingual, started his career in localization in 1997 and has held various technical, sales, and management roles in the industry. His main area of focus is to consult, develop, and implement mature operational and business globalization models with clients across various industries. Antoine is a French native and holds a MS in information technology and a BA in international business and communications. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Phil Ritchie directs research, development, and process innovation activities at Vistatec. His technical expertise covers software development, commercial enterprise workflow and content management systems, AI, machine translation, and collaboration portals. Phil is a recognized industry expert and often a speaker at international events.

Ann Rockley is CEO of The Rockley Group. She has an international reputation for developing multichannel content strategies and digital publishing solutions. Ann has been instrumental in establishing the field in content strategy, content reuse, intelligent content strategies for multichannel delivery and content management best practices. She is a frequent contributor to trade and industry publications and a keynote speaker at numerous conferences in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Ann has a master’s of information science from the University of Toronto and is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.

Michael Rosinski is the CEO of Astoria, A Transperfect Company. He has led a dynamic 25-year career as a technology executive in the enterprise application software industry. Before joining Astoria, A Transperfect Company, Michael was a founding member of American Software’s management team, where he was executive vice president of sales — growing revenues to over $100M and responsible for the company being named to “Forbes Best 200 Small Companies.” At American, he completed one of the first initial public offerings (IPOs) in the enterprise resource planning market segment, and later was responsible for the company’s successful spin-off IPO of Logility, Inc. in the supply chain management space. Michael also served as senior vice president of worldwide sales and business development at Avolent, where he grew sales over 140%. Prior to Avolent, he leveraged his international experience as president of Augeo Software, a French/Dutch company in the professional services automation space. Under his direction, the company instituted marketing, sales and funding partnerships with J.D. Edwards, Daimler Chrysler and ABN Amro resulting in Augeo being named by Computerworld as one of the “Top 100 Companies to Watch in 2000.” Michael also held key executive positions at Nestle USA and Johnson & Johnson. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management and organizational behavior from Rider University and has completed a graduate MBA study at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Tommaso Rossi has worked in the translation and localization industry for almost 20 years. After earning a degree in interpreting and translation in 2003, he worked as a freelance interpreter for a year, mainly for the UN and other international organizations, then started a career in translation. Tommaso first worked as a project manager for an Italian translation company then as a vendor manager in Brussels. He currently lives in London and works for Expedia Group as the head of the localization department. Thanks to his experience in various localization domains such as freelancing, project management, machine translation, translation management systems, and translation supply chain management, Tommaso has developed skills that provide an extensive and global overview of the localization industry and is now leading the multilingual localization strategy for one of the leaders in the online travel industry.

Dave Ruane started his 25-year localization industry journey in technology and solutions roles, followed by operations management, consultancy, and then designed globalization business solutions for enterprises. He is a regular moderator and speaker at industry events, and runs the Process Innovation Challenge at LocWorld. He is a self-confessed techie, based in coastal Spain and more often than not can be found near fly fishing water.

Libor Safar is the vice president of growth at Argos Multilingual. He has localization and translation industry experience spanning over 20 years. Libor joined Moravia in 1995 and held various translation, production, sales, marketing and other management responsibilities in Europe and Japan during the company’s growth. Libor holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Brno University of Technology, and an MBA from the Open University in the United Kingdom.

Felix Sasaki joined the W3C in 2005 to work in the Internationalization Activity where he remained until March 2009. In 2012 Felix rejoined the W3C team as a fellow on behalf of DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence). He was cochair of the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group and coeditor of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 specification. Felix is currently engaged in the LIDER project. His main field of interest is the application of Web technologies for representation and processing of multilingual information.

Yves Savourel has been involved in internationalization and localization for more than 28 years and currently works at Argos Multilingual. His main focus has always been on developing tools and solutions for localization processes. Yves has been involved in the creation of various localization-related standards such as TMX, SRX, ITS and XLIFF. He is also the author of XML Internationalization and Localization. Yves is currently part of the team working on the open-source Okapi Framework project. He is a native of Brittany and has lived in France, Africa and in the Indian Ocean before settling in Boulder, Colorado.

Clio Schils has more than 25 years of experience in the translation industry on both the client and vendor sides. She has held several leadership positions in different organizations, with a focus on the life sciences vertical. The nearly 16 years she spent with Medtronic, Lionbridge Life Sciences and Sajan (now Amplexor) gave her the critical experience needed in this highly regulated niche. Since August 2018, Clio has served as the global director of life sciences at CQ fluency. From 2005 until 2018, she organized and moderated the Life Sciences Business Round Table at LocWorld in the different geographies. In September 2016, Clio was elected as an Elia board member and in October of 2018 she assumed the role of president of Elia.

Martin Schneekloth has more than 20 years of experience in the localization industry and is a firm believer in internationalization best practices to achieve high-quality localized products. As globalization manager at RippleWorx, Martin is responsible for product strategy and direction as it pertains to internationalization, localization and quality. Along with his globalization management role, he manages localization into 35+ languages. Martin has obtained PMP certification along with a select number of localization professional certificates. He also holds a bachelor of business administration degree and a master of science degree in management.

Michael Schneider was born in 1964 and has been working in the translation and localization industry since 1996. He is the founder, shareholder and general manager of beo Gesellschaft für Sprachen und Technologie mbH, Stuttgart.

Yael Sela is currently Google’s Hebrew language manager. Prior to joining Google she translated over 100 books, including Eat Pray Love, Atlas Shrugged and the Game of Thrones series, taught literary translation and Translators Tool Box at Tel Aviv University for a decade and delivered dozens of talks about translation and freelancing. At Google she has helped to shape the unique Google style and tone in Hebrew, improve readability (Google’s term for fluency) and operationalize the quality assurance processes. This is Yael’s second talk at a LocWorld conference.

Richard Sikes has been immersed in technical translation and localization for over 30 years. He is passionate about linguistic technologies of all kinds and spends much of his time deploying technology solutions. Richard has managed localization teams at several industry-leading software companies. He contributes frequently to MultiLingual magazine, and is well-known as an organizer, speaker, and moderator at translation industry events.

Rosalind Smith was born in the United Kingdom and went to school in South Africa. She studied fine arts in London and Paris where she graduated from the Sorbonne. Rosalind worked for Babcock Africa as administrator and personal assistant to the director after her return to South Africa. Since 1998 she has worked in Egypt as editor for the Online Media Advertising Agency, as copy editor for the Egyptian Gazette English language newspaper, and for ten years as marketing manager and assistant business development manager at eLocalize. Rosalind has been the country manager at Localize Africa since March 2014. She also translates Egyptology books from French to English.

Uwe Stahlschmidt has worked in the field of internationalization and localization at Microsoft since 1993. He spent most of his career on the Windows team, participating in every major Windows release in various roles including program and project management, engineering and business management. Uwe currently holds a dual role in the Windows and Windows Live division leading the international business management function and managing an engineering team responsible for developing localization systems.

At Translated, Michael Stevens is responsible for growth: finding interesting companies to work with and building a team that values the humans in the ever-growing world of automation. As cohost of The Global Podcast, he explores areas of the localization industry that spark his own curiosity and he then shares it with the industry at large. Over the years, Michael has studied languages, marketing, and searched deeply to understand the mind of God. He has worked successfully with two major language service providers and also consulted in software development. Michael lives in Seattle, Washington with his family.

Willem Stoeller  grew up in Amsterdam where he obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Amsterdam. After many years in software development, he made the move to localization. Willem has over 25 years of experience in translation, localization, and internationalization of marketing materials, software products, and web content. His focus is on project and quality management, and localization strategy/processes improvement. Willem became a PMP® in 2002 and was very involved with the Project Management Institute where he was a board member of the Portland and Silicon Valley chapters. Training for localization is a top priority for him with a focus on project, quality, and risk management. Willem is a former professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the creator and presenter of the Localization Project Management Certification, and a round table leader for the Project Management Round Table and Technology Round Table.

Bill Swallow is a technical consultant with Scriptorium Publishing Services where he helps clients with content strategy development, localization readiness and technology implementation. He has played many roles in his 18 years in technical communication, from writer to thought leader. Outside of work, Bill enjoys cooking, brewing his own beer and studying the art of taekwondo.

Antonio Tejada joined the localization industry in 1992 after studying translation and interpreting at the University of Granada in Spain. His early involvement within the industry was as a language specialist, and he later managed one of the largest Spanish single language vendors (now SDL Spain), defining the language service provider in-country production model. In the late 1990s, Antonio helped international translation and publishing developing solutions for software localization, computer-assisted translation implementation and machine translation. He has combined a wealth of experience to the industry with his management and leadership capabilities, and is now language solutions director at Capita, where he is leading product development and solutions architecture.

Chase Tingley is vice president of engineering at Spartan Software, Inc. He has 15 years of experience developing localization tools, specializing in translation management system development and content extraction. An advocate for the greater adoption of both standards and open source tools within localization, Chase is a core contributor to the Okapi Framework and a member of the OASIS XLIFF and XLIFF-OMOS technical committees.

Bodo Vahldieck is a global localization quality and terminology manager at VMware Switzerland GmbH. He has over 20 years of experience in translation, localization and globalization of software products, marketing materials and web content. Bodo is a certified project management professional and member of the Project Management Institute. He started his career in a quality assurance department overseeing the quality assurance processes for localized software. Since 2014 Bodo has been driving the quality management strategy for VMware. Previously, he was responsible for language and functional software quality at Autodesk.

Jaap van der Meer is the founder and CEO of TAUS, an organization started in 2004 that is on a mission to empower global enterprises and their service and technology providers with data-enhanced machine translation and language data solutions. He is a language industry pioneer and visionary, who started his first translation company, INK, in The Netherlands in 1980. Jaap is a regular speaker at conferences and author of many articles about technologies, translation, and globalization trends.

Luciana Vecchi is a global business strategic thinker and doer at NetApp. She is an expert at building cross-functional and cross-cultural relationships as well as highly productive teams, and has extensive experience bringing the outside in by being the eyes, ears and voice of the international user in alignment with a company’s goals, investment plans and ultimately, global revenue growth. Luciana is driven by the complexity, value and impact of doing business globally via qualitative and quantitative data to develop and shape scalable strategies and execution to ensure international customer needs and cultural realities are met. She is also an untiring advocate for team efficiency and effectiveness as well as cross-functional partnerships to influence international return on investment and revenue growth.

Christian Weih studied English literature and linguistics at the University of Mannheim, Germany. As chief sales officer at Across Systems, he provides customers with advice on language technology, translation workflows and integrated solutions such as for translation-oriented authoring.

Smith Yewell cofounded Welocalize with his wife Julia in 1997, building it to one of the top ten localization firms in the industry. Both Smith and Welocalize have been recognized in many ways including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, Deloitte & Touche’s “Technology Fast 500″ for 13 consecutive years and the Inc. 500/5000 award for ten consecutive years. Smith holds a BA in English from Tulane University. Prior to starting the company, he served in the US Army as a field artillery officer and received the Bronze Star for service in Operation Desert Storm during the first Persian Gulf War. Smith is also actively involved in philanthropic efforts and serves on the advisory boards of The Rosetta Foundation, The Aslan Foundation and Color Me A Cure Foundation.

Angelika Zerfaß studied Chinese/Japanese and computational linguistics at the University of Bonn, Germany. After her studies she worked for the Japanese Embassy in Bonn and then for Trados in Japan, Germany and the US. Since 2000 she has been providing independent consultancy, training and technical support for translation tools from her company based in Germany for clients all over the world. She is a frequent speaker at translation and localization industry events.

Anna Zierow is senior language specialist at Google, managing the localization quality and vendor network since 2011 for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. As a Wharton Marketing Academy graduate, she has specialized in improving the quality of marketing translations and has driven a number of initiatives to ensure that the Google voice sounds natural and idiomatic for users in the German speaking markets. Prior to Google, Anna worked as a freelance translator for several major clients such as the European Union. She holds master degrees in international management and intercultural communications.

Andrzej Zydroń is CTO at XTM International and technical architect of XTM Cloud. He is one of the leading IT experts on localization and related open standards. Andrzej sits and has sat on many open standard technical committees. He has been responsible for the architecture of the word and character count GMX-V standard, as well as the revolutionary xml:tm. Andrzej is also head of the OASIS OAXAL technical committee.