LocWorld32 Presenters

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.

Maryam Aly has been an engineer at Foursquare since 2012 but has been working on localization full time since 2015. She has written software tooling to streamline the translation process, built a pipeline to automatically translate the most-viewed tips and done other feature work to improve user experiences in specific languages. Prior to Foursquare, Maryam studied at Carnegie Mellon where she was a teaching assistant at the Pittsburgh and Qatar campuses and graduated with School of Computer Science Honors. She has also taught computer science through Girls Who Code and ScriptEd, and has given talks on Scala and Foursquare at meetups and hackathons.

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.

Krystian Aparta is the training resource manager on TED’s TED Translator program team. He joined TED following a career in translation and software localization, and uses his expertise in creating training tools and managing the community in TED’s volunteer and paid localization and crowd subtitling projects.

As the Donnelley Language Solutions sales manager for Canada, Martin Auger is responsible for providing strategic guidance and support to the Canadian Services and Technology Sales Team, overseeing all Canadian customers’ ongoing and complete satisfaction. He has been establishing strategic partnerships with executives and technology users within the public and private sector for over 15 years. Martin has provided value to the community and organizations he works with by understanding their situation as a long-term partner, and by aligning solutions and services to their specific business objectives and requirements. Born, raised and based in Gatineau, Quebec (Canada), Martin speaks fluent French and English.

Jean Aurambault is a globalization engineer at Box, a leading enterprise cloud-based collaboration platform based in Los Altos, California. He has over five years of experience working on localization platforms, starting at Yahoo! and progressing to Box. As a full stack engineer, Jean has been working on building and integrating localization tools as well as driving internationalization efforts to deliver improved global products.

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.

Aaron Babst is the program manager for community localization at Facebook. He previously spent several years at Google working on the Google Translate Community project and crowdsourcing on Google Maps. Aaron believes that when people are more open and connected it helps us embrace the differences of others and makes the world a better place. He is originally from the Portland area but now calls San Francisco home.

Rahel Ann Bailie is a results-driven strategic consultant. She is an ISTC Fellow, an STC Fellow, an industry author, and has tremendous depth and breadth of experience in operationalizing content. Rahel has a strong track record of developing successful digital content projects, tackling the complexities of managing content to be able to scale content across products and multiple languages when faced with complex content ecosystems.

Jeff Beatty is passionate about creating products that fully engage people in their preferred language, as well as personalizing products to what’s culturally relevant to their users worldwide. His 15-year career has spanned many different roles in localization. Jeff currently serves as executive director of product globalization with The Walt Disney Company, and previously served as head of localization at Disney Streaming, Stripe, and Mozilla. In addition to his role as a localization leader, Jeff teaches and mentors the next generation of localizers at New York University, and previously at Brigham Young University, teaching translation technology and machine translation topics.

Katia Belanger is the French language manager for Canada at Intuit. She is responsible for developing and maintaining a French language quality program, she oversees the work of vendors for translation and review, and she interfaces with stakeholders and customers to provide a top-notch user experience. Katia has nearly 25 years of experience in translation, review, localization and transcreation in a variety of industries including medical, pharmaceutical, travel/tourism and financial. She holds an MA in translation from Glendon College at York University in Toronto, and a BA in French and international relations from the University of Toronto.

Maryse Benhoff is president and cofounder of BG Communications International Inc. She is responsible for the company’s international development, marketing, financial planning and organizational structure, boasting clients and suppliers from around the globe. With more than 20 years of experience in the translation industry, Maryse is always looking to create a better business environment for all the players. To that end she cofounded the Association of Canadian Companies in Translation and Interpretation (ACCTI) in 2003. Maryse served as the official representative for Canada from 2003-2006 on the Comité Européen de Normalisation; as a translation expert from 2007-2008 on the Canadian General Standards Board; and as translating expert to ISO/TC 37/SC 5 from 2009 to present day. She is the international secretary of ISO/TC 37/SC 2 as well as the AILIA mandated chair of the Canadian Mirror Committee to ISO/TC 37. Maryse also serves on the board of directors of the Association de l’industrie de la langue/Language Industry Association (AILIA) and was re-elected for a two year mandate as vice president.

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.

Melissa Biggs is a cofounder and consultant with Locale Solutions, providing localization strategy consulting for companies in technology. Previously at Sun Microsystems/Oracle, she held senior management positions, managing both program managers and globalization strategies. Melissa expanded into marketing localization management and initiatives at Informatica and Check Point Systems. She has served on globalization industry-wide boards including TAUS, the Localization Institute, and is a member of the GILT Leaders Forum. Melissa is active in nonprofits, including the US State Department TechWomen program, and as a board member of the Global Lives Project.

Loubna Bilali is a PhD candidate in translation studies at Kent State University (KSU). She holds master’s degrees in translation (French-English) from Kent State and in cross-cultural communications and translation studies from Chouaib Doukkali University in Morocco, where she also completed her undergraduate studies in English linguistics. As part of her graduate fellowships, Loubna is responsible for teaching language and translation technology courses at the Institute for Applied Linguistics at KSU. Her research interests are varied, including localization, terminology management, corpus-based research and translation pedagogy. Loubna’s in-progress PhD dissertation presents a needs analysis study of localization between market demand and training.

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.

Dave Bryant has worked at Dotsub for over seven years as president and product owner. He has spent time in sales, software development and product management in high tech. After visiting many countries for business and pleasure, Dave became passionate about video and language and their ability to enable knowledge distribution for commercial and altruistic purposes. He helped build Dotsub’s team and is responsible for Dotsub’s VideoTMS™ platform. Dave lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he used to attend concerts, play golf and was an attentive member of the New York City food scene. He hopes to be able to do those things again soon.

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.

Fernando Caro has worked in globalization for the past 20 years, mostly in engineering where he drove the localization process and later as a technical project manager driving internationalization. Fernando now leads the team that supports the technology and tools used by the globalization and technical writing community.

Matthew Castricone is a 15-year veteran of the technology and payment space. As the director of enterprise, he works with translation and localization organizations worldwide to ensure that translators are paid in a fast and cost-effective manner. Transpay is the world’s largest independent mass-payouts solution, serving freelancers and translators in over 120 countries.

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.

Helena Shih Chapman is the IBM globalization executive. She has extensive experiences in various areas at IBM. Helena spent a short stint managing the worldwide market intelligence operation and an internal open source bazaar for IBM’s software division. She also has a deep development background with hands-on development experience with the International Components for Unicode. Before joining IBM, Helena worked at Taligent, Dataware and Apple. In her spare time, she manages the information security compliance program for IBM Cloud Platform services and is an ISACA certified information security manager.

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.

Dan Collette joined Pitney Bowes in 2013 and is focused on strategic front-end development tracks to deliver best-in-class web software solutions. He is passionate about learning and experimenting with new technologies. Dan is a key contributor in developing the Pitney Bowes design system, providing teams with reusable assets to deliver a consistent user interface across product domains. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design from the University of Connecticut, class of 1996.

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.

Combining a rare blend of wisdom, passion and humanity, Donald Cooper’s insights and bottom-line ideas will help any business to sell more, manage smarter, grow their bottom line…and have a life. Simply put, Donald transforms businesses and business people! He is respected in over 40 industries throughout the world as both a thought leader and a passionate visionary. Donald has an MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario followed by 18 years as executive director of Cooper Canada. He was then founder and president of Alive & Well, a visionary fashion retail business that received seven awards for marketing, service and business excellence in just three years, including being voted Canada’s Outstanding Innovative Retailer by the Retail Council of Canada.

Lara Daly leads the revenue generating teams at Akorbi, the largest US-based, woman-owned, and diverse language services provider. She has been in the language industry 20+ years, working on global growth with clients in technology, life sciences, ecommerce, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. Lara’s team and colleagues at Akotbi are dedicated to building innovative strategies and teams that broaden inclusion, accelerate growth, and promote truly global brands.

As the founder of CSA Research in 1999, Don DePalma has been instrumental in establishing the company as the preeminent market research firm in localization and globalization. He initiated CSA’s coverage of localization maturity, enterprise language processing, business-driven globalization, machine translation, return on investment for localization and multicultural domestic marketing. Don holds a doctorate in linguistics from Brown University, with specializations in generative grammar, computational linguistics and the historical phonology of Slavic languages. He also studied at Moscow State University and Moscow Linguistic University in Russia, Charles University (Univerzita Karlova) in the Czech Republic and ILISA in Costa Rica.

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.

Formerly of Memsource, where he collaborated on a big data program, Konstantin Dranch runs translationrating.ru, a ranking and research blog for language service providers (LSPs) in Russia and Ukraine. He currently collaborates with the ATC association to survey LSPs in the United Kingdom, and with CNET in France. Konstantin is one of the creators of national translation conferences: Translation Forum Russia and Ukrainian Translation Industry Conference.

As vice president of operations, Rachel Ferris leads Acclaro’s global operations team of project managers, technical specialists and linguists. Her 20 years of industry experience spans roles from translation resource management and project management to operations management and solutions development for complex localization programs. Rachel enjoys collaborating with customers to understand their challenges and apply her experience to developing customized translation solutions.

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.

Klaus Fleischman has been active in the field of global content delivery with a focus on terminology. His company, Kaleidoscope, is a language solutions provider implementing processes, tools and delivering language services. Klaus infuses his terminology passion into enterprises that want to roll out a corporate terminology process, as well as university students and localization event participants.

Kimon Fountoukidis is chairman and founder of Argos Multilingual, a mid-sized language service provider (LSP) with it’s global headquarters in Krakow, Poland, and its US headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. He has led three successful acquisitions of US-based LSPs and is a strong believer in mergers and acquisitions as a powerful growth tool available to all LSPs. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow in 1993 where he currently lives. A podcast of Kimon’s story can be found at http://projectkazimierz.com/kimon-fountoukidis-translating-success-for-krakow.

John Freeston is a trusted business development leader with over 16 years of experience building successful strategic partnerships with corporations, nonprofit and startup organizations.  Since 2009 he’s been helping global companies across all industries to implement tailored localization services, technology and consulting solutions for enhanced quality management, customer experience and return on investment.  John holds a BA in history from Allegheny College and is a certified scrum master for agile software development values, practices and applications.

Wojciech Froelich has 18 years of experience in localization engineering. He is CTO at Argos Multilingual where he leads a team of experienced engineers who are responsible for building customer-oriented localization workflows and providing internationalization consultancy and software engineering support to Argos partners. Wojciech focuses on integrating authoring, automated translation management and multilingual publishing systems.

Frédérique Froment-Kelleghan is the lead of transforming talent at Welocalize. With over 20 years of experience in the localization industry, she started her career as a freelance translator. Frédérique has been working with Welocalize since 2014, covering many different positions from talent manager for French to launch success manager in India. In her current role, she focuses on developing and delivering learning programs suited to the localization industry in different geographies and for many different service types.

As a cofounder of MultiCorpora, Daniel Gervais has over 15 years of experience in the language software industry. MultiCorpora was acquired by RR Donnelley in March 2015 and Daniel continues to lead the business unit as director, solutions development. With a background in manufacturing process optimization engineering, he specializes in leading-edge technology strategies design, development and implementation to streamline processes in enterprise content translation processes and bring return on investment to customers. Daniel is well-known in the industry as a thought leader in language technology and is frequently invited to speak at key industry events.

Shulamit Gilan was born in Israel, graduated from Tel Aviv University in French language and culture and musicology. She joined ManpowerGroup in 1985 where she assumed different roles and responsibilities, mainly as vice president of sales and marketing. During the past four years, Shulamit has developed the company’s service portfolio, streamlined processes, improved service levels, opened new business units and promoted integration of technological tools and platforms.

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.

Adolfo Gómez-Urda Montijano started his career as an English to Spanish translator, then as a programmer, before realizing that being a full-time programmer or translator was not his true calling. He found his dream job in the video game industry, which he has been part of for the past 11 years. Three years ago, after shipping over a dozen AAA titles at Ubisoft and THQ, Adolfo became the first member of the new WB Games Montréal localization team. He is now responsible for the internationalization and localization engineering of titles developed by various WB studios around the world.

Since 2009, Tzvi Gordon has been the IT and quality assurance (QA) manager at ManpowerGroup Solutions – Language Services. He is a doctorate student with a master’s degree from The Cohen Institute of History and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and a bachelor’s degree in English and American studies and philosophy from Tel Aviv University. As an IT manager, Tzvi is responsible for expanding and constantly improving the technology behind the localization processes. As a QA manager, he is responsible for developing and improving QA processes in localization and consulting on localization and internationalization solutions for high-tech clients. For the past couple of years Tzvi has been tasked with developing machine translation architectures.

Spence Green is Lilt’s co-founder and CEO. Prior to founding Lilt, Spence was a graduate student at Stanford University. He received a PhD and MS in computer science from Stanford and a BS from the University of Virginia. He has published papers on machine translation, language parsing, and mixed-initiative systems and given talks on translator productivity.

Jan Grodecki has experienced localization from different angles and in various roles, from work on the client side as developer, localization engineer, and project manager to the localization supplier side. This knowledge enables him to advise partners in their decisions on localization strategies, technology, and processes. Jan has a passion for education. He has been teaching localization engineering and project management since 2004 at the University of Washington.

Jon Haas is a partner at Clarion Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity firm based in New York. He leads Clarion’s investing efforts in the business and health care services industries. Jon currently serves as the chairman of the board of directors at Moravia, a Clarion portfolio company. From 1998 to 2000, he worked in the investment banking division of Credit Suisse First Boston as an associate in the industrials group. From 1994 to 1996, Jon was an associate at A.T. Kearney, Inc., an international management consulting firm, where he focused on both media and financial services. He graduated from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management with an MBA in 1998 and from Dartmouth College with a BA in 1993. Jon is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization.

Peter Harris has worked in Intuit’s localization and translation departments for 16 years. He holds two software patents and delights in finding technological solutions to help writers and translators do their jobs better. He currently heads up Intuit’s Globalization Platform software engineering group. In his early, pre-Intuit years he spent some time as a “slush pile” editor for a small press, giving him some insight into the wordsmithing side of localization. He is a monolingual English speaker, but is at least properly ashamed of that fact.

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.

Adolfo Hernandez started as CEO of SDL in April 2016. Since then he has been working with the board on a deep root and branch transformation of SDL to focus the company on helping global enterprises create, manage, translate and distribute content globally. This transformation encompassed disposal of noncore business, building a new strategy, a new operating model and executive team to focus on customers. Prior to SDL, Adolfo was CEO of Acision, the mobile messaging market leader, where his drive helped turn the company around prior to its merger with Comverse to form Xura/Mavenir. Before that, Adolfo spent four years at Alcatel-Lucent as executive vice president, global software, services and solutions, where he was a member of the executive committee, reporting to the group CEO. In this role, he was responsible for all of Alcatel-Lucent’s multibillion dollar software application solutions and services business globally. Adolfo also has a wealth of experience in enterprise software and services built over the years in several senior management roles at Sun Microsystems, where he was senior vice president, global services and IBM where he spent nine years (in London and Munich) in a variety of sales leadership and general management positions in the areas of ebusiness and open systems.

Mimi Hills is a localization industry veteran. She teaches the Localization Teams Master Class for the Localization Institute. Mimi is the former director, global information experience at VMware, Inc., and has also led globalization teams at BlackBerry and Sun Microsystems. She comes from the software world with a background in project and engineering management. Mimi is active in the localization industry and in diversity and inclusion circles. In her spare time, she’s involved in the TechWomen program and plays guitar and bass, and runs a nonprofit music camp for adults.

Tuyen Ho leads corporate development and legal operations for Welocalize. She drives Welocalize’s mergers and acquisitions roadmap to align with the company’s overall growth strategy, from deal sourcing and target evaluation to transaction execution and integration planning. Prior to Welocalize, Tuyen held leadership roles in sales and operations at enterprise software companies.

Anubhav Jain is an engineering manager at Adobe Systems and leads a team of internationalization engineers. He has extensive experience in translation technologies. Anubhav is responsible for managing international content at the Adobe Learn and Support website and the delivery of products such as Adobe Indesign, Illustrator and After Effects to global markets. He is a regular speaker at international conferences including the Internationalization & Unicode Conference 36, LocWorld22 London, Adobe Tech Summit 2013 and AEM Hub 2014.

Katell Jentreau has 20+ years of experience in localization, both on the vendor and client sides. She led the globalization effort at Box from 2012 to late 2015, before joining Netflix’s Globalization team as the company was getting ready to launch globally. From 2013 to 2015, she was also on the board of Women in Localization.

Ger Joyce is a senior user experience researcher at Rapid7, an information security and analytics company based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a frequent speaker at human factors and human-computer interaction events all over the world. Ger’s primary research focus is on the usability of cybersecurity applications, mobile applications within rapidly changing contexts and the end-to-end customer experience.

Rihards Kalniņš is a business development manager at Tilde, a leading European language technology company specializing in custom machine translation. In 2015, he managed the development of a multilingual communication tool and large-scale machine translation service for the EU Presidency. Rihards serves in an active role in the European Language Resource Coordination project and organized the European Association of Machine Translation annual conference in spring 2016. A former Fulbright scholar, Rihards holds a BA in philosophy and has written articles on language technology for various publications, including The Guardian and EurActiv.com.

Hanna Kanabiajeuskaja is product manager for infrastructure at Uber. She develops internationalization software that allows Uber teams to quickly ship local experiences for their customers. Previously, Hanna managed localization and internationalization at Box, ran social media for the Silicon Valley Chapter of Women in Localization and was on the advisory board of Translation Commons.

Jeffrey Kiser has been in the localization industry for 19 years, which has given him a great opportunity to see various developments over the years. During this time, he has learned to be a jack-of-all-trades which has helped him work with new and existing clients on developing their localization infrastructure. You’ll rarely see Jeffrey selling or pitching to someone; however, he will discuss existing systems, existing and new technologies, connectors, what works well, what doesn’t, you name it. He calls it “localization therapy” because you can share your concerns and ideas with him and he will give you an opinion from his knowledge — at no cost! Well, maybe a cold beer. Look for Jeffrey at the Process Innovation Challenge, bigger and better this year, come see who will win!

Michael Klinger has 25 years of experience in the globalization industry, starting as an interpreter and translation project manager. He is conversant in six languages. Michael established and grew the globalization staffing and localization outsourcing businesses at Winter Wyman Contracts which later became COMSYS. He helped find sellers for COMSYS in the language field. Michael then started Anzu Global and Language Transactions where he grew the language brokerage services business. His current wish is to leverage his business network to support his social venture and charitable work bringing computers and technology to Niger, Africa. Visit www.bokai.org for more information.

Daniel Koenig has worked in technical communications for more years than he’d care to admit. His experience spans the transition from light tables and IBM Selectric typewriters to modern era computer assisted translation systems. For the past decade, Daniel has designed and managed human and technology-based translation processes and systems for Beckman Coulter, Inc., a global medical device manufacturer.

Yuka Kurihara is the senior director of globalization services at Scaled Agile, Inc., where she leads international expansion and localization. Passionate about bringing products to global markets, Yuka has successfully navigated the complexities of localizing software, hardware, and diverse content in numerous languages. Since joining Scaled Agile in 2020, she has been instrumental in expanding the company’s global reach and defining its localization strategies. With multiple SAFe certifications, including SAFe® Practice Consultant and Agile Product Manager, Yuka thrives in both the localization and agile worlds.

Claudia Lefebvre has over 30 years of English and French copywriting, translation and editing experience in the health care field. Her stint as a standardized patient instructor for the Medical Council of Canada’s Objective Structured Clinical Examinations honed her clinical knowledge. Claudia has held several communications positions within Health Canada, where she produced bilingual content for nationwide internal and external ministerial communications. She also acted as communications coordinator and media relations manager for major private and public corporations. For the past four years, Claudia has been the translation team leader for TELUS Health, ensuring quality bilingual content in technical documentation.

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.

Péter Lepahin is the general director of Hungary-based language service provider (LSP) Hunnect Ltd. He holds a degree in French and Russian languages as well as in translation and interpreting from the University of Szeged, and a degree in English-French translation from UCO, France. During his ten years at the company, Péter has seen and helped Hunnect grow from a small family business to its current position as Hungary’s third largest LSP. For four years Péter was director of operations, overseeing Hunnect’s entire production team. Currently he is responsible for strategy and business development. Péter also teaches for the Translator Training Program at the University of Szeged.

Natalia Levitina is a localization director at PTC where she is responsible for vendor management as well as implementation of localization technology in the department. Natalia has 20 years of experience in the localization industry on both the vendor and client sides in areas ranging from operations to business development and from product management to program management. Her previous positions involved managing a localization desktop publishing team, performing user training for localization tools and processes as well as testing and technical writing responsibilities. Natalia holds an MA in journalism from Moscow State University.

Frank Lin is associate director of software engineering at Becton, Dickinson and Company where he leads software development for medication management products. He has led many software localization and internationalization initiatives and projects. Frank’s past experience encompasses teaching university computer science courses and tenures in various industries, including telecommunication, document imaging and storage, medical instrumentation and the internet.

Since 1997 Nancy A. Locke has been a US-born writer, translator and teacher based in Montréal. She began her 20+-year career in the language industry as a multilingual desktop publishing expert, and has been a regular contributor to MultiLingual magazine since 2000. A lecturer at Université de Montréal since 2004, Nancy has gained an international reputation as a skillful and engaging public speaker.

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.

Michel Lopez is the founder and CEO of e2f, operating out of e2f’s San Jose head office. Michel has a master’s degree in software, with a specialization in artificial intelligence, from Toulouse (France). After working in the software industry for 15 years, he switched to the translation field in 2003 to launch e2f.

For over 22 years, adaQuest president and CEO Hiram Machado has brought vigor and vision to the localization world. Born in Brazil, his work has since taken him to more than 20 different countries and he has managed 300+ localization projects to date. Before becoming the CEO of adaQuest in 2001, Hiram spent time at Bowne, Microsoft and Lionbridge. Hiram is also a professor at the University of Washington, where he teaches at the master’s and certification levels and helped establish a curriculum for localization project management.

Danielle Geraldine Marcos, known to many as a world traveler enthusiast, holds a master’s in translation and intercultural communication from the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. She has lived and worked on four different continents as a translator, interpreter and cultural mediator. Danielle is very active with the Women in Localization in the Pacific Northwest and has been the running chapter manager for the past two years. Currently, she is enjoying the beauties of building world-ready training content for a data visualization software company. Danielle feels strongly about evangelizing and teaching others best practices of globalization, internationalization, localization and translation. Most recently she accepted a role as a co-instructor for the University of Washington localization certificate program of which she is an alumna.

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.

Gráinne Maycock is the chief revenue officer of Acolad, a renowned sales leader, and revenue enabler in the language and content services industry. Working with Acolad since 2013, the Irish-born leader has 25+ years of experience driving revenue and go-to-market strategies, focusing on removing language and technology barriers for successful international growth for Acolad’s customers worldwide. With a remit that covers revenue, marketing, solutions, pre-sales, sales ops, sales academy, and sales enablement her focus is on AI transformation strategies for group and client success.

Brian McConnell is a software localization expert and startup veteran. He has led localization efforts at startups in the publishing, customer relationship management (CRM), and transportation industries, and is currently heading up localization efforts at Notion Labs. Prior to Notion, he led the localization teams at the rideshare company Lyft, at Medium, a popular web publishing platform, and at Insightly, a small business CRM provider. He is also a contributor to open source translation projects, and was an early contributor to crowd translation platforms.

Claudia Mirza is the CEO and cofounder of Akorbi. She has led the company’s evolution from a language translation company to a global provider of multilingual business solutions. What started as a home-based business in 2003 has flourished under Claudia’s leadership into an international company with approximately 600 employees. Prior to founding Akorbi, Claudia held managerial roles at GENUITY (formerly GTE Internetworking) US, where she worked on multiple enterprise process improvement, project management and optimization programs. She holds a business management degree from Cotecnova, Cartago, Colombia; is a graduate of the Tuck-WBENC Executive Education Program; has a management certificate from the Southern Methodist University Cox Executive Education Program; and holds a bachelor’s of science degree in business administration from the DeVry Institute of Technology.

As president of Akorbi, Azam Mirza oversees world-wide business initiatives, business development, innovation and strategic growth efforts. Under his leadership, the company has grown 75% since 2014, making Akorbi the fastest-growing language services provider in the world. Azam’s responsibilities also include strategy development and daily business operations, as well as technical initiatives for Akorbi’s localization and translation services. He also oversees the company’s multilingual staffing and business process outsourcing divisions. Azam’s leadership and vision have turned Akorbi into a multimillion dollar global business solutions company with over 600 full-time and part-time employees worldwide, and the company has experienced more than 200% growth in recent years.

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.

Lakshmi Narasimhan holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering. His passion toward technology and research made him join Tata Consultancy Services as a software specialist in 2013. Lakshmi then moved to Dell Research and Development in 2015.  Within a short span of 3.5 years of career experience, he has groomed as a young achiever and an active innovation specialist. Lakshmi has a few papers pending approval from the US Patent and Trademark Office. He is known for his cross-platform ideas and invention disclosures.

Patrick Nunes is passionate about the development and implementation of transcultural communication strategies to advance Rotary’s strategic initiatives and grow the organization’s brand. He firmly believes in the concept of rebranding the role of linguists and by doing so, Patrick is proud to say that the Global Communications team at Rotary has become the true voice and driver of global content. This includes the planning and execution of a global social media strategy, which leverages this medium to enhance engagement and advance global brand positioning.

Aiden Parker is the localization specialist at Wattpad. He works closely with team leads across the company to ensure that the product delivers the best experience worldwide. Aidan moved from Wattpad’s customer success team to localization in 2015. He has spent the past four years in Toronto’s tech space, working in search engine optimization, digital marketing and community management.

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.

Isabela Pedrosa is a freelance translator who for the last three years has dedicated her time to transcreation and localization in the field of marketing and IT (software and video games). She has worked at several AAA and indie companies, localizing or performing quality assurance tests of their games from English into Brazilian Portuguese.

André Pellet is director of globalization at Dell, leading the team supporting the globalization, localization and translation of Dell products and content across the organization for global customers. He is responsible for creating a 21st century vision, strategy, process, technology and partners to expand an industry-leading solution including: globalization strategy, internationalization engineering, international content, vendor management, globalization program management, localization, translation, software globalization, software testing, metric management, language quality assurance, machine translation and technology tools.

Eric Peterson has been in application development for over a decade. He’s currently at Tableau, applying software development to the marketing problem space where he’s developed and open sourced tools and applications that scale marketing campaigns and programs globally, generate leads and make marketing more data-driven. He shares in Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand their data.

Yury Petyushin holds a degree in linguistics and is a certified process improvement expert, a designation that led him to work in metallurgical plants, coal mines, environmental organizations, hospital emergency rooms and other random places. However, his passion for language and building systems finally led Yury to join All Correct Games as the head of the localization department. All Correct is one of Eastern Europe’s largest localization firms, with offices in Toronto and Dublin, where Yury now holds the title of chief financial officer.

Andrea Pilati is a 20-year veteran of Toronto’s online/digital industry from Fortune 500 companies to startups and across multiple industries. Over the years, she has honed her skills in user experience design, content strategy, business requirements and process transformation, getting her MS in technical communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic along the way. Andrea has an abiding love for metadata, taxonomies and the scalable classification of content. She currently teaches in the Bachelor of Interaction Design program at Sheridan College and has her own consulting practice.

Andrzej Poblocki is a globalization architect who is passionate about delivering a software that will delight international customers. During his 15-year career in the globalization industry he has held various positions, starting in quality assurance then quickly moving to localization tools and engineering, internationalization engineering and finally to the architect role where he is responsible for the globalization systems, processes and integrations as well as the internationalization architecture of the company’s products.

Oleksandr Pysaryuk is a localization leader with experience in building and growing successful teams and disciplines focused on internationalization, software development, localization and internationalization technical program management, and global product management at the enterprise scale – in sports technology, telecommunications, human capital management, e-commerce and engineering organizations.

Frank Raco has been in the localization industry since 1987, holding various positions with a background in finance and accounting. He was the general manager of SDL Canada from 2001 through to July 2016 where he was responsible for providing leadership in ensuring continuous growth through new business development and organic growth of existing customers, onboarding of new business while overseeing the daily delivery performance of the division and full profit and loss responsibility of the division. Frank recently changed to vice president sales SDL Canada where his primary focus will be providing leadership to a team focused on new business development and maintenance, as well as further development of existing accounts.

Samantha Reiss is a senior director of Customer Services at Welocalize, who brings ten years of experience in the language services industry to a role that focuses on the creation, development and optimization of localization programs for the world’s leading technology and software companies. Focusing on innovation to drive continual improvement and change, Samantha keeps pace with industry trends in production processes, tools and resource models to deliver tailored solutions for clients whose needs are constantly changing and evolving. She has managed global production teams in New York, London and San Francisco, and graduated with an MA in translation and interpretation from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, with secondments at both l’Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels and the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid.

Bill Rivers has 25 years’ experience in languages for economic development and national security. He is the executive director of the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the National Council for Languages and International Studies, representing more than 130 language organizations to the Federal Government and business community. Before JNCL, Bill was the chief technology officer of a research company, and spent 15 years in higher education. He taught Russian at the University of Maryland, worked as a freelance interpreter and translator for aerospace projects, and lived and conducted field work in Kazakhstan. Bill holds a PhD in Russian from Bryn Mawr College.

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.

Jonas Ryberg is head of Digital Globalization Services. He and his team provide artificial intelligence-infused language services, global data curation for artificial intelligence/machine learning, and global marketing services. Jonas has twenty years of experience in the language services industry in various roles from solutioning and linguistics to sales and management. In those capacities, he has served as both company founder and executive.

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.

Calvin Scarffs is a dedicated executive with over 20 years of experience managing products, sales, marketing, operations and personnel. His experience ranges from working with Fortune 500 companies to small startups. Calvin is currently vice president of marketing for Lingotek, a Utah-based technology company that enables the creation and management of multilingual content inside your enterprise applications.

Keith Schengili-Roberts is a DITA specialist at IXIASOFT, DITA evangelist and technical writing nerd. He is also an award-winning lecturer on information architecture at the University of Toronto’s iSchool and Durham College. Keith is an active member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee and can often be found presenting at conferences, working with customers and researching how DITA is being used then sharing those results with the DITA community. Keith’s popular industry blog DITAWriter.com has become a focal point on DITA resources and best practices.

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.

Stéphanie Schuh currently drives international design efforts and localization for NUI and holographic features in the Global Services Group within Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group. She has nearly 20 years of experience in localization, holding various positions in companies such ICI, PTC, Progress Software and HP. Stéphanie is passionate about design and helping teams better understand international challenges and opportunities.

Scott Schwalbach has been in the localization and globalization business for 35 years, working for and with some of the largest companies in the world. He has worked with the sales, solutions and operations divisions of service companies ensuring that they delivered solutions that drove their customers to success. At Microsoft, Scott worked in various business units and for the CFO. In addition, he now teaches various courses in communications and customer expectations, group dynamics as well as advises start-ups on globalization best practices. Scott’s free time involves biking, hiking and other adventures as well as discovering new food in places around the world.

Loy Searle has been a globalization and content industry leader for over 20 years. In the enterprise resource planning industry, her teams pioneered single-sourcing content strategies and built extraordinary integrated global content management systems and terminology solutions. At Google, Loy led global production and language services. Her focus was speed-at-scale — turning language quality around while shortening time-to-market. At Intuit, Loy’s team built a scalable globalization and innovative content foundation to support market expansion. At Deluxe, her team transformed their practice to support the entertainment industry’s digital transformation. As current president of Women in Localization, Loy is committed to the localization industry and the advancement of women within it.  At her side gig — the Global Guild — she builds curated industry peer networks, strengthening leaders and their globalization practices. Today at Workday, Loy’s team is building a localization and content center of excellence to scale and support the company’s expansion goals.

Prior to joining Pitney Bowes (PB) in 2011, Jerome Selinger held a number of positions over 13 years in the localization industry, starting as translator, linguistic lead, localization engineer and project manager. Now acting as advisory globalization project manager within PB, he helps development teams ensure localization readiness of software and participates in globalizing PB’s design system. Jerome graduated from Paris VII University in 1998 and has a master’s degree in linguistic engineering. Always keen on taking new challenges, he loves technology and languages altogether.

Languages and cultures are Tatiana Shanler’s passion. She has over 15 years of experience in globalization, localization and translations. Tatiana built her career from localization testing specialist and quality assurance to project manager on the vendor and client sides working at Lionbridge, IBM, Pearson and other companies. She holds a BA/MA in linguistics and an MS in information technology management.

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.

Jeannette Stewart is a cofounder of Translation Commons, an online volunteer-based public charity aiming to offer and share tools and resources and to facilitate community initiatives. She is the former CEO of CommuniCare, a life-sciences translation company with offices in London, Paris, Athens, Budapest and Los Angeles. Jeannette has been involved in high-profile projects such as the Genome Project and prototyping the online Unified Submission Process for the European Medicine Agency. She writes a column in MultiLingual on community initiatives. Jeannette has founded, served on the board of directors, moderated and volunteered in various educational and health charities.

Alison Strahan manages marketing and communications localization for the Adobe Marketing Cloud and has been working at Adobe for over ten years. She works closely with Adobe’s Global Search team, Studio team and with stakeholders — both local and in the field — to ensure an effective and holistic approach to marketing localization. Alison considers herself a cultural ambassador advocating for the regions to ensure they receive the same engaging and relevant experience as the North American customers. In the past she worked in television and radio as a producer, writer and reporter.

Daniel Sullivan is a veteran in the localization industry, having led translation technology and international content teams at four companies and across a diverse set of business verticals. His most recent roles have focused on making localization more of a strategic part of business from a performance perspective, and bridging the gap between straight translation and more nuanced copywriting and transcreative endeavors. Daniel is currently a senior leader in the growth organization at Shopify and oversees a high-impact team that includes programs, enablement, R&D, and analytics, which supports a broad spectrum of teams spearheading international expansion across the entire company.

James Suprenant leads William Blair’s efforts as managing director in the outsourced, IT services and professional services sectors. Previously, Jim held outsourced, IT and professional services roles with CIBC/Oppenheimer; Lehman Brothers; and Friedman, Billings and Ramsey. His transaction experience includes the CareTech Solutions sale to HTC Global Services; the CLS Communication sale to Lionbridge Technologies; the Welocalize sale to Norwest Equity Partners; Paradigm Tax Group sale to The Riverside Company; Emergency Communications Network sale to Veritas Capital; and OneSource Virtual minority investment from Technology Crossover Ventures. Jim earned an MBA from the University of Maryland and a BS in finance from Georgetown University.

Val Swisher enjoys helping companies solve complex content problems. She is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management. Val believes content should be easy to read, cost-effective to create and translate, and efficient to manage. Her fourth book, The Personalization Paradox, was published in 2021 by XML Press. She is on the advisory board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found working on her latest quilt, and she also makes a mean hummus.

Jason Tanker joined Norwest Equity Partners (NEP) in 2013 after working at Graham Partners, a middle-market private equity fund, and at Deutsche Bank as an investment banker focused on mergers and acquisitions. His responsibilities at NEP include sourcing and evaluating new investments as well as providing ongoing support and supervision for a number of portfolio companies. Jason has a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Victoria Ugarte has experience on both the vendor side (Smartling) and client side (Foursquare) of the globalization industry. Currently, she oversees the internationlization efforts at Foursquare and has introduced more efficient translation processes by working closely with the international Superuser community.

At the helm of his own venture since September 2023, Eric Vogt has dedicated himself to building solutions that align capabilities with real world business objectives. He helps clients responsibly redefine their globalization strategies around a practical objectives. As a systems thinker, his leadership focuses on fostering a solutions-oriented mindset, ensuring every initiative aligns with a core value proposition shaped by practical realities, and are both ambitious and responsibly aspirational. His localization journey has focused on operational, technical, and solutions management, particularly in mature program environments with complex technical and logistical requirements.

Saroj Vohra is an experienced IBM manager with significant experience in diverse fields such as product development, sales and distribution, eCommerce, channels, total quality management and many others. He has been in the arena of international management for over 20 years. As the WW NLS Executive at IBM, Saroj is responsible for the management of all aspects of translation operations. His interests include translation automation, multimedia, supply chain management, simultaneous translation and interpretation. Saroj’s hobbies include walking and writing poems. He has published over three dozen papers in leading scientific and technical journals; three patents; and a book of poems.