LocWorld34 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.

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!

Wolf Allisat is chief revenue officer (CRO) of Unbabel with a strong history of success growing companies through key phases in their evolutions from industry pioneers to becoming the global standard in their industries. He most recently served as CRO for European tech startups Teralytics and TagMan. Prior to that Wolf was executive vice president at Nasdaq-listed ComScore where he held global responsibility for the international expansion and revenue strategy. Before that, Wolf served as vice president and general manager, EMEA at Omniture where he oversaw the European expansion of Omniture’s technology platform from the ground up as the first international employee, growing the European business to more than 1,100 customers, $100 million revenue and 200 employees which culminated in a successful IPO and sale to Adobe for US$1.8 billion. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Saarland, Germany.

As director of human resources (HR) for the Europe Welocalize Life Sciences Division, Marta Altimira is responsible for developing organization-level HR strategies to align structure, culture and talent with business goals. With a passion for the business of talent acquisition, management and retention, Marta has a strong background in operations through 18 years of professional experience in a variety of roles at Nova Language Services, acquired by Welocalize in 2016. Over the past ten years she has developed a signature internship program that ensures an ever-flowing pipeline of incoming talent at the base of the organization, which has been key in the company’s strategy to address rapid growth while sustaining consistent quality of service.

Michaela Bartelt-Krantz is senior localization director at EA, heading up all worldwide localization functions including translation, recordings, vendor management, testing and engineering for the video game developer and publisher. Originally a translator by education, she looks back at 15 years of experience in the game localization industry. Her current focus is shaping the strategic direction of localization in the company’s shift to online service models.

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

Teddy Bengtsson is the founder and director of RoundTable Studio (RTS) – a leading regional language service specialist for the Latin American market. A Swedish native, his 30 years in localization have taken him on a global journey and now to his fifth home country. Having held senior localization roles with major IT players Microsoft and Oracle, a crazy idea led Teddy to start a language service provider business in Argentina in 2003. Founded on a buyer’s perspective, RTS has a large team of in-house linguists, project managers and technical staff in its Buenos Aires and Porto Alegre (Brazil) production centers, and a business management unit in Spain.

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.

Mario Bergantiños, audio and video localization senior manager, has been with EA since 2003. He started his journey at EA as localization quality assurance tester and worked his way up in localization as audio engineer, audio supervisor and ultimately senior manager of the localization leadership team. Mario is responsible for the teams that capture, post-process and bug fix all the audio speech in EA that is not English, sometimes up to 12 languages, and coordinating more than 30 recording studios worldwide. He is also responsible for the marketing video localization at EA.

Gábor Bessenyei has always been enthusiastic about the combination of languages and computers — two totally different worlds. One is human and always escapes from the trappings of rules, the other is very formalized and is driven by rules. Gábor started his career in 1994 as an SAP translator. Between 1997 and 2001, he was IT manager, translation coordinator and member of the board at SAP Hungary. Since 2001, Gábor has been the founding managing partner and CEO of MorphoLogic Localisation, a language service provider and language technology company located in Budapest, developer of Globalese NMT.

In her role as service owner for the onboarding service (mergers and acquisitions) at SAP, one of the world’s leading business software enterprises, Kerstin Bier is responsible for supporting SAP’s mergers and acquisitions in setting up and managing efficient localization processes and projects in the post-merger integration phase and beyond. Coming from an acquisition herself to SAP in 2012, Kerstin leads a team of account and delivery managers, project managers and a localization engineer, and puts a strong focus on establishing strong working relationships with the goal to set up efficient and scalable processes that help all sides. In her previous role at Sybase, acquired by SAP in 2010, Kerstin was responsible for managing European localization projects. She initiated and drove the introduction of statistical machine translation for one of their product areas and presented challenges and lessons learned at various conferences.

Alessandra Binazzi is a leading expert in globalization strategy, tech stack definition and implementation, process automation and change management for global companies looking to expand reach and maximize revenues. Proficient in all major European languages, Alessandra has dedicated her professional life to advocating for international users and to create, market, and support products and services that engage customers in all continents. She is the principal consultant of Global Sights Consulting, member of the Board of Advisors of the Process Innovation Challenge, a former Board Member of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).

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.

Part of Red Hat’s content team, Leigh Blaylock leads marketing content governance and globalization efforts. Her team is currently focused on making processes more efficient and content performance transparent. They are working across the company to provide marketing content analysis — with a focus on content scoring and return on investment — and an on-going content audit. The team also works with representatives from APAC, EMEA and LATAM to identify and prioritize content translation and localization needs — focusing on quality, process and cost.

Zana Boljkovac manages the business development department which includes sales, marketing and account management. She is oriented to business development sales, process improvement and introduction of advanced solutions. Zana is active in several industry associations as a coordinator and association president. She is involved in collaboration with the academic community and is a regular guest speaker at regional universities and an organizer of internship and summer school programs. With her passion for knowledge, perfection in corporate communication and team management, Zana is a perfect industry ambassador.

Katie Botkin is the managing editor of MultiLingual magazine. Prior to joining MultiLingual, she studied journalism and applied linguistics, taught English on three continents and did freelance writing. She continues to write or edit for a variety of other publications in her spare time including the Translators without Borders newsletter.

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.

Alicia Camacho is a data driven marketing manager with proven success in professional services industries. With over ten years of experience across different markets, she specializes in strategic planning, inbound marketing and go-to-market strategies. In addition to her role as marketing manager, Europe at Donnelley Financial Solutions, Alicia is a teacher at the digital marketing School EDIT. Prior to that, she spent three years at JLL where she successfully managed complex global marketing projects across different geographies, time-zones and business lines. Alicia’s endless curiosity and passion for traveling drove her to develop her career in different countries, including Spain, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Julia Cames leads the marketing localization team at GetYourGuide, a Berlin-based travel marketplace. She is responsible for the transcreation and adaptation in all localized markets of the marketing inventory. With over eight years of experience, Julia’s key focus and expertise is ecommerce performance through the power of online marketing and content. She holds a master’s degree in information and communication from La Sorbonne in Paris.

As a lean director, Lorena Canduela is responsible for implementing lean methodologies throughout the different offices within Welocalize Life Sciences. She acts as a facilitator, helping the team to achieve quality and mitigate risks through efficient, strong processes and continuous improvement. Lorena holds a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting from the University of Granada, and a master’s degree in translation technology. She previously worked as a project manager within the same company; the knowledge she acquired in this position was fundamental in developing her lean role.

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.

Veronica Carioni leads the Product localization program at Skyscanner, where she drives strategies to enhance the language experience in over 35 locales. Over the past year, she has driven the Localization Quality Program, exploring AI-powered solutions to ensure quality at scale and boost productivity. Previously, she led localization efforts at Vistaprint, focusing on process optimization and technology.

Anu Carnegie-Brown has built a career in Nordic translation companies in Finland and the UK, contributing to the development of three RLVs from modest start-ups to streamlined organisations. Since 2002, she has been devoted to Sandberg Translation Partners Ltd, spearheading the company’s growth from a staff of 45 in 2012 to 100+ in 2015, while also doubling revenue in the same period. She was promoted to Managing Director in September 2015. Anu volunteers for the European Language Industry Association as well as the UK Institute of Translating and Interpreting, focusing on improving translator training and their continued professional development.

As the global senior client service director of Welocalize Life Sciences, Consol Casablanca is focused on ensuring the optimum level of service and quality for life sciences industry customers. With a passion for languages, Consol started her career working at different translation companies. Eventually, she started her own company, NOVA Language Services, which specialized in life sciences translation and localization. When Welocalize acquired it, NOVA had grown to become one of the largest language service providers in southern Europe. Consol completed a PADE (Senior Management Program) at IESE Business School and holds a bachelor’s degree in English philology from Barcelona 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).

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.

Esther Curiel is a global content and localization expert. Her mission is to help brands achieve international growth objectives by integrating localization, content strategy, and global user experience. She is currently the globalization manager at Zoetis, an animal health company operating in over 100 countries.

Viktoria Danilina is the vendor manager at Palex. Her job is to find freelance linguists and experts, to test them and monitor their performance. Viktoria plays a part in the creation of a pool of doctor and physician translators for the medical translation team. “The medical field is my favorite,” she readily admits. “I grew up in a surgeon’s family, surrounded by medical encyclopedias and anatomy books. And even though I didn’t become a doctor myself, my work lets me feel that I’m carrying on the family tradition.” Viktoria has been fascinated with foreign languages since childhood. She holds a degree in Asian-Pacific studies with a specialization in China.

Chris Dell leads the Content Agency at Booking.com, the world’s largest platform for booking travel. He is responsible for a range of content topics including localization, copywriting, geodata, and content moderation. Chris’ passions at work are how humans and technology can coexist, and how we can build effective and inclusive organizations. Outside of work he runs, travels, writes, and coaches.

Constantino de Miguel is the general manager and founder of Prime Group, which includes Prime Multimedia (Spain), PrimeVoices (France) and Digit-a (Ecuador). Since 2013 he has been heading Prime Group’s business development and strategy, and directing language teams for multilingual voiceover, subtitling and multimedia projects on behalf of major world companies. Constantino was a former broadcast journalist based in the Netherlands, Switzerland and France, a TV and radio producer and foreign correspondent of news, current affairs and reports shot across Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has conducted hundreds of interviews with world players, is a media trainer and consultant on journalism hands-on practice. Constantino studied political science and English, German and Dutch.

With almost 20 years in the translation/localization industry, Shamus Dermody specializes in business advisory for global translation content management solutions. Leading the sales and solutions team for XTM International enables him to support his key recommendations with agile and versatile software for translation workflow technology.

Bekir Diri has seven years of experience in the translation and localization industries and has worked as technical translator, book translator, project manager, technology expert, web localization manager and translation technologies manager for several translation companies. Before joining Localex, he managed sales and marketing of an award-winning, cloud-based translation management system and CAT tool at the Turkish market and managed web localization projects for one of the biggest language service providers in Turkey. Bekir’s experience is enhanced by a bachelor’s degree in translation studies and he is in the process of completing an MA degree in translation studies at Istanbul 29 Mayıs University with a thesis subject which covers game, software and web localization gaps in Turkish. As a localization and technology expert, he is experienced with the localization and testing of websites, software, games, mobile apps and multimedia materials.

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.

Dmitry Drozdov has over 20 years of experience in media, translation and localization. Originally from Tomsk, Russia in Western Siberia, he spent over ten years in London working for various media, localization and gaming companies. Now his home is Barcelona where he works for King as localization project manager, making King games more enjoyable for players across the world. Like any Russian, Dmitry loves chess in theory, but prefers mobile games in reality.

Swedish journalist, author and digital futurist Andreas Ekström wrote a bestselling book about Google and has since been a leading commentator on all things digital around the world.  Andreas is a senior staff writer and columnist at Sydsvenskan, a daily morning paper in Malmö, Sweden. His passion? He calls it ”educating for digital equality”. As a reporter with many years of experience covering the field, Andreas holds amazing insights in how the world of media, business and politics is affected by the main digital power players of the world. He is a highly sought after and seasoned speaker who has received excellent reviews across Europe on his thought-provoking lectures. Andreas is the author of several books; The Google Code, published in 2010, made him a household name in the Nordics. His biggest international audience arrived through TED. His TED talks have reached over a million viewers to date and he recently won the breakthrough speaker of the year award in his native Sweden.

With nearly fifteen years of experience in the translation and localization industry, Benjamin Esch currently leads a translation and review team for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. In addition to managing relationships with external translation vendors, he works with stakeholders across regional, operational, and business teams to create and maintain a unified global brand voice across fifteen languages. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in German from the University of Texas at Austin. Outside of work, he enjoys sports (running, soccer, martial arts, you name it), cooking (although poorly), beer, chocolate, and spending time with his lovely family.

For over the past two years, Cristina Farelo Lanseros has been the localization project manager at eDreams ODIGEO, where she has established a steady localization process from scratch and currently works toward continuous optimization through task automation, tool enhancement and evangelization. One of her main objectives is spreading the word on the importance of a proper localization workflow, working closely with different stakeholders (user experiencers, developers, program operators, engineers and so on), and sharing knowledge and experience with other localization professionals. Cristina is passionate about what she does and, as an eager traveler, enjoys working in the travel industry, not forgetting her passion for subtitling and dubbing.

Marcello Federico heads the HLT-MT research unit at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, a publicly funded research organization with strong ties to the University of Trento (Italy). In addition, he is also lecturer and board member at the ICT Doctorate School of the University of Trento, and scientific advisor of MateCat Srl. As director of the HLT-MT unit, Marcello oversees the work of about 15 researchers and PhD students. His research expertise is in statistical machine translation, spoken language translation, statistical language modeling, information retrieval and speech recognition. In these areas, Marcello has coauthored over 180 scientific publications, contributed in 20 international and national projects, and codeveloped widely-used software packages for machine translation and language modeling. He has served on the program committees of all major international conferences in the field of human language technology. Since 2004, Marcello has been co-organizing the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation workshop series. He has also been editor-in-chief and associate editor for refereed journals (ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing; Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval), and is currently senior editor for the journal IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing. Marcello is a senior member of the IEEE and of the ACM.

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.

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.

Mikel Forcada is professor of computer languages and systems at the Universitat d’Alacant. He is president of the European Association for Machine Translation. Mikel has also worked in fields as diverse as quantum chemistry, biotechnology, surface physics, machine learning (especially with neural networks) and automata theory. He is the author of more than 70 articles in international journals, papers in international conferences and book chapters. In 2004, after heading several publicly- and privately-funded projects on machine translation, Mikel started the free/open source machine translation platform Apertium, where he is currently the president of the project management committee.

Ulrika Fuchs is the localization manager at Vistaprint. After ten years of working in different industries, she earned a BA in Spanish and started her journey in the localization industry as a project manager at a global language service provider. Ulrika later joined Vistaprint as an in-house translator, where she quickly took an interest in translation technology and led several technology implementation and workflow automation initiatives. She currently manages Vistaprint’s in-house localization team, ensuring that the business’ localization needs can be fulfilled as the company evolves.

Yahel Gal is the localization and translation project manager at Investing.com, a global financial portal and internet brand that provides breaking news, analysis, real-time quotes and charts, as well as technical data and financial tools for the global financial markets. Yahel is responsible for spearheading and overseeing translation projects as well as tracking translation progress and ensuring the quality of 30 editions in 23 languages over several platforms: desktop, mobile web, Android and iOS.

Massimo Ghislandi joined SDL in 2006 to manage marketing activities for the translation productivity business unit that was formed after the acquisition of Trados. Under his leadership, SDL drives a product and commercial transformation that combines on-premise and cloud capabilities to deliver the most advanced hybrid solution for translation productivity. Massimo has expanded his role and leads a large sales and marketing team with a focus on building collaboration with every part of SDL to drive the business further. He has a strong background in sales, revenue-focused marketing, lead generation and driving growth within multinational environments. In the past decade at SDL, Massimo has gained a deep understanding of the localization industry and how technology can help companies with their global content challenges. He has over 20 years’ experience working in international sales and marketing roles for engineering and technology companies. Before joining SDL, Massimo worked for Avery Dennison, ITT Corporation and Acterna (now JDSU).

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.

Attila Görög has been involved in various national and international projects on language technology over the past 15 years. He has a solid background in quality evaluation, post-editing, and terminology management. Attila specializes in quality management and machine translation, trying to solve globalization challenges through consulting.

Stefani Grothe has a 20+ year track record in the translation and localization industry, both on the client side and the service provider side. She is a senior localization manager at LinkedIn where she has witnessed the intensive growth from startup to global corporation in the past ten years and has been growing the localization team and tirelessly evangelizing localization best practices. Stefani holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from the University of Mainz-Germersheim, Germany. She is part of the GoGreen team at LinkedIn and enjoys singing in two choral formations.

Lahcene Guerrouj is a marketer, tech enthusiast and content expert. He has led international cross-functional teams landing brands and content from HQ to the regions. Lahcene has been working with top players such as Dell, LexisNexis, Microsoft (Skype), Juniper Networks and now Salesforce, managing marketing content strategy through a successful implementation facing challenges from systems, vendors and business environment. He has been quickly recognized as an innovator who is consistently looking at new ways of doing things better. Lahcene is also an expert on globalization, internationalization and content marketing strategies.

Phil Harris is a senior narrative designer at Bigpoint, working on several products for Bigpoint and Yuozu Interactive, Bigpoint’s parent company. He writes unique, functional canon for each game, providing quests based on the worlds he has created. Phil works at integrating with art and design teams to realize the stories he is telling and supporting his localization colleagues to ensure that the meaning and terminology of the quests can be understood by the translators. Phil is friendly, outgoing and often enjoys dazzling people with the glint off his bald head, a trick he uses to gain the upper hand in meetings.

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.

Bruno Herrmann has more than 25 years of experience in international product, content, and customer experience leadership within large organizations and startups, and in various industries such as technology, market research, business intelligence, and life sciences. Until early June 2022, he was the director of localization operations at IQVIA, creating and leading an international team of more than 150 hub-based project managers, content design experts, vendor managers, and internal linguists in the US, LATAM, EMEA, Greater China and APAC. From 2003 to 2019 Bruno had roles of increasing responsibility in marketing, business operations, and product leadership at The Nielsen Company, including digital globalization leader between 2008-2019 where he was responsible for global content creation, localization, testing, certification, and delivery, product management, and international customer experiences. Before joining Nielsen, he managed online globalization programs at HP and content operations including localization at Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation. Prior to joining Digital Equipment Corporation, Bruno worked in marketing communication and localization startups, taking part in major international projects for high-profile technology clients. He has been a practitioner, change agent, thought leader, and strategist in data-driven and client-first information, transformation, and product management, both in the offline and online world. Bruno is a regular speaker, panelist, moderator, and workshop leader during conferences and events around the world.

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.

A native of Japan, Aki Ito has been involved in the localization industry since 1996, working in various activities such as sales management, operations management, project management, Japanese language management and consulting, and translation memory tool management. He previously served on the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) board of directors in 2005-2006 and as chairman of the board in 2006. He has also served on the editorial board for MultiLingual magazine. Prior to his involvement in the localization industry, Aki was an account executive at Dell Computer in the United States and Japan, selling personal computers and networking solutions to multinational companies for their worldwide implementations. Aki has an MBA in international marketing and a BA in international relations.

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.

Tarja Karjalainen runs the localization program at OURA, the sleep-tracking smart ring startup. She has a keen interest in languages and user experience (UX), with a passion for serving as the cross-functional link between the two. Tarja previously led a team of UX writers and localization managers in the wearables industry at Polar, as well as running an international UX-driven localization program at HappyOrNot. For the past ten-plus years, she has worked in the language and software industries in various roles from translation to program management, and continues to advocate for localization and internationalization in all her endeavors.

With a background in advertising and marketing communications, Debra worked as a creative copywriter, journalist and translator with her own company for over 10 years. Debra joined King in 2013, where she is Localization Manager for the Candy Crush Franchise, leading a small team of Localization Project Managers and Localization Specialists. Originally from London, she now lives in Stockholm with her son and husband. She loves word games and Sudoku, and when she has time likes to read books on history, play the piano, and indulge her new hobby of learning Japanese.

Alina Koldin is a content project manager for the content experience team at Tableau. She works across the company to streamline content creation processes and deliver helpful, global and delightful content to customers. Prior to that, Alina was a technical editor at both Tableau and Microsoft, and an English terminologist at Microsoft.  In a parallel life, she is the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Bracken, a writer and a poet.

Vassilis Korkas is the COO and a cofounder of lexiQA. Following a 15-year academic career in the UK, in 2015 he decided to channel his expertise in translation technologies, technical translation and reviewing into a new tech company. At lexiQA he is involved with content development, product management and business operations.

Alexey Kozulyaev, PhD, is the co-owner of RuFilms Group, the largest Russian provider of subtitling services as well as a leading Russian audiovisual localization company (dubbing and voiceover). In 2013 RuFilms established the Moscow School of Audiovisual Translation that developed various University-level courses that ensured the expansion of the translator talent pool to match the Russian launch demands of such content providers as Netflix, Amazon and Blizzard Inc. Alexey heads the school and teaches various courses at 14 Russian and two foreign universities. He is a graduate of the Moscow State Linguistic University.

Ksenia Krapivina is the lead linguist of the Palex medical translations team. She is in charge of analyzing the source texts in all fields of medicine — everything from dental hygiene to radiosurgery. Ksenia participates in selecting the optimal workflow and the pool of experts for every medical translation project. She also maintains the knowledge base, term base and query base for the team, as well as monitoring translation quality indicators and client feedback. Ksenia consults in-house and freelance linguists connected with medical translation projects and participates in their professional development. She studied pediatrics, philology and translation. Ksenia started at Palex as a junior translator just a few years ago and has become one of the most trusted medical editors and language quality assurance experts in the company.

With a career in translation for over 16 years, Volodymyr Kukharenko advanced from a freelancer to CEO of a translation agency and founder of a software company. He was translating and self-training as a freelancer, editing and teaching as an editor and managing the pipeline as a project manager. In 2010 he cofounded Technolex Translation Studio which is still one of leading companies in the Ukrainian market. Having the deep knowledge of the processes in translation companies and the translation industry as a whole, in 2014 he founded Protemos, a software startup to create the new tools for the translation industry which he was missing on his previous positions.

Elina Lagoudaki is the Localization Director at Peloton Interactive, overseeing the localization and accessibility operations for class content. She leads a localization team who advises on and delivers subtitling, dubbing, voice over, and AI evaluation services with the aim of amplifying the reach of Peloton content. Originally a translator by education, she has 20+ years of experience in the localization industry, mainly in the media and telecoms sectors. Elina holds a PhD in Translation Technology from Imperial College London, and her current area of focus is the design and strategic application of AI-powered localization models.

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.

Annette Lawlor is the CEO of Lion People Global, driving growth in the language industry through executive search/strategic staffing/corporate development and mergers and acquisitions. She is passionate about “people first”, honesty, personal and employee well-being.

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.

Having started his career in localization ten years ago, Mark Lesun has worked at almost every level of the localization supply chain, from freelance translator to lead reviewer to localization manager on the client side. He’s currently making sure all Google products feel truly local to Russian users, setting up and maintaining quality standards, working closely with vendors and internal teams, streamlining processes and developing new cool things — like Localization Essentials, the first MOOC in the industry.

Elaine Liang is a globalization test specialist at IBM China Labs. She has more than seven years of experience in globalization testing, including the globalization verification test and the translation verification test. Elaine is also a core member for the Invention Development Team and has several patent applications.

Chen Lin is a localization specialist at King. She has been working in the game localization field for over seven years, is experienced with the Chinese game market and specializes in localizing game genres such as MMORPG and mobile resource management. Chen is currently leading the localization works of a live resource management game, Paradise Bay, which is successful in Live Ops.

Gytha Lodge is an award-winning creative writer and copywriter who has worked with both high-profile theatrical productions and with prestigious international businesses for the past ten years. In 2016 she took on the role of global content and communications manager for Alpha CRC and has used her experience to create a pioneering workflow from creative content to fully localized materials. Gytha also heads up Alpha’s copywriting and marketing teams, working on creative brand strategy with external clients.

Rachele Maggiolini is currently the Italian language manager at Google. Aside from managing the quality of localization for her market, she has also been working closely with universities to familiarize students with the localization Industry and its peculiarities. The most recent outcome of this effort is Google’s first Localization MOOC: Localization Essentials.

Fulvio Marfoni is a knowledge management (KM) strategist within HP’s global customer support organization, covering among other things, all HPI support digital capabilities servicing over 500 million users a year. A strategist with substantial (17+ years) digital (content, knowledge, web and on-product) experience, Fulvio is versed in the different areas of content strategy, KM and deployment, localization strategies as well as mobile deployment and interactions. He is currently developing the next generation enterprise content management system for HPI including KM strategy (CX, content repositories, DITA models, dynamic DITA rendering), capabilities development and overall roadmap of the largest technology overhaul in HP’s web history. This includes taxonomy management processes and system, a new DITA-based content management system as well as “Knowledge as a Service” APIs to support various web services and on-product capabilities.

Anca Marica is a localization professional with seven years of experience in the video games industry. She has held various positions within the Ubisoft localization department, from quality control localization team lead to project manager. Currently, Anca is handling localization quality topics, process improvement and vendor management, working closely with localization project managers to ensure localized games meet Ubisoft standards. She holds a BA in English and Spanish philology, a Master degree in international studies and an MS degree in project management.

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.

Born in Alicante, José Juan Martínez Carrascosa graduated from the University of Alicante in computer engineering in 2005. Then he went to Russia where he enrolled in the department of linguistics. After coming back to Spain in 2016, José Juan found himself at the intersection of computers and languages: machine translation. Currently he works at Prompsit Language Engineering, Spain, and dedicates most of his time to the language industry.

Part linguist, part computer scientist and part psychotherapist, Mathias Maul founded The Content Shrinks to help organizations implement author-first workflows as the most effective means to plan, create, manage and measure reader-first content. He is passionate about debugging processes and people, tears down silos with bonsai scissors and enables his clients to establish work environments that make their content guys and gals more productive and happier, leading to measurably more effective content within and outside the organization. The Content Shrinks is a boutique agency for content therapy and corporate change. Its loosely-knit network of strong-minded professionals is available worldwide for on-premises and remote projects alike. Say hi!

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.

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.

Amy Rose Mc Govern is director of external affairs for Translators without Borders (TWB), a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate language barriers that hinder humanitarian and aid efforts worldwide. Amy Rose has over ten years’ experience in international relations and development assistance, specializing in the areas of political governance and communications. She has worked with governments, nongovernmental organizations and institutional donors in countries such as Somalia, Uganda and East Timor, in management and advisor capacities. Amy Rose is a qualified translator and is passionate about the mission of TWB, which aims to provide people with access to vital knowledge in their language.

Pascaline Merten holds master’s degrees in linguistics and information science from the University of Brussels (ULB) and a PhD. After being active in the private sector, she dedicated her carreer to research and teaching. Pascaline is teaching machine-aided translation and translation technologies at the Department of Translation and Interpretation of the ULB. She participated in the European-funded projects eCoLoRe and eCoLoTrain, and led the eCoLoMedia project. Besides her teaching, Pascaline is associate dean for study programs of the Faculty LTC (Letters, Translation and Communication). Her main focuses of interest are translation technologies, eLearning and multimedia localization.

Fabio Minazzi is passionate about developing ideas and creating businesses for an inclusive society in a connected world. With a background in audio R&D, he has built a career in software and games localization, taking on roles as an entrepreneur, investor, and global business leader. Always learning, Fabio never stops reading technical papers and history books to understand how emerging technologies, like generative algorithms, impact society. He spent the past two years on speech synthesis projects, including “Voice for Purpose,” which he will present at PIC#17. Outside of work, he actively supports social causes and peace-building efforts.

Anneta Mitsopoulou has been with Electronic Arts (EA) since 2008. She holds a diploma in translation and is based in Cologne, Germany. Anneta’s current focus lies on workflow optimization and automation with the implementation of a new translation management system for EA localization. She is also interested in quality assurance and quality evaluation, and is passionate about translation technology.

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.

Sheila Morris manages the Keywords Dublin localization group. The group is 50 strong, made up of linguists and project managers with a focus on social and mobile games for leading publishers. Sheila has been with Keywords for four years and previously worked at Oracle where she led the translation project management function in their translation group.

Luigi Muzii has been working in the language industry since 1982 as a translator, localizer, technical writer and consultant, and has been a consultant since 2002. He is the author of books on technical writing, the translation industry, translation quality systems, post-editing for project managers and many other articles. Luigi authors a blog and speaks regularly at conferences, and holds webinars and workshops.

With 25 years of experience in the industry, Yuka Nakasone owns Global Bridge, a consultancy company in Barcelona, Spain, that provides globalization strategies and its execution for a variety of clients. As its name suggests, Global Bridge’s mission is to bridge different cultures and countries. Yuka has held various leadership roles including globalization and localization director at Beabloo in Spain, and Intento in the USA. She also drives innovation as well as professional and leadership development in the industry through her activities including LocWorld’s Process Innovation Challenge and Translation Commons’ leadership portal.

Greg Niedt is a user experience professional and translation project manager for Shutterstock, Inc., a global stock media outlet based in New York City that provides services in 20 languages (and counting). After four years working for marketing and medical language service providers and three years on the client side in technology, he has had the curious experience of hearing most of the common industry stories told from all sides. Greg is also a PhD candidate in communication, culture and media at Drexel University in Philadelphia, with a focus on the public use of text in intercultural communication.

Véronique Özkya has established herself as a prominent figure in the localization industry, demonstrating expertise and leadership across various professional roles. At Lionbridge and Moravia, she helped scale the businesses to become among the largest content services players in the industry. Post-Moravia, Véronique became CEO at Xplanation, and then at Argos Multilingual, where she played a pivotal role in shaping organizational strategies and fostering growth across sectors such as technology, life sciences, finance, and retail. She is a frequent public speaker on leadership, growth hacking, diversity, and inclusion. Véronique is a former GALA board chair.

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.

Catharina Pawella is in charge of user interface content for eBay in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Her team is involved at the design phase and during localization to enable an engaging user experience that meets local requirements. Catharina’s team also manages content for product education and product marketing complementing the customer experience. She has worked with content for 20 years and today her focus lies on developing processes and technology to enable great content globally and at scale. Catharina is an agile enthusiast, a certified usability consultant and leads the German chapter of Women in Localization.

Vasco Pedro is the cofounder and CEO of Unbabel, an AI powered platform that enables modern enterprises such as Microsoft, Logitech, and Uber to serve customers in their native languages. Based in Lisbon, Vasco holds a PhD in language technologies from Carnegie Mellon University, and is a faculty member of Singularity University.

Mika Pehkonen is a frequent speaker at industry events with a passion for processes and automation.

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.

Oleg Pimenov has eight years of practical experience in front-end web development and the facility to work as a creative and resourceful member of high-level production teams. He is passionate about user interfaces and experiences especially with JavaScript (Angular) and Adobe solutions. Oleg holds a master’s in physics plasma from Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

After more than 20 years in and around the digital world, Gaby Prado has dived deep in areas as diverse (but related) as digital design, user research, content strategy, information architecture, project management, conversion optimization for eCommerce, business process reengineering, change management, design methodologies, organization design and team building. She is currently working as an independent consultant focused on helping established companies and up-and-coming startups to embrace customer-centricity while having efficient processes and organization structure and culture. In long-term partnerships with her clients, Gaby provides master-level training, mentoring and daily support and guidance to create a solid omnichannel experience that exceeds their and their customers’ needs and expectations.

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.

Gema Ramírez Sánchez made sure that she could mix her two passions: languages and computers. She holds a bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting and a master’s degree in computer applications from the University of Alicante where she started her professional career as a computational linguist. Gema is the CEO of Prompsit, a language technology provider with a strong focus on tailored machine translation (MT) services. You will find her frequently running workshops and linguistic Olympiads. Gems is co-author of various research papers, an active developer of the Apertium MT platform and the vice president of ARTES Cultura y Ocio, an association for inclusive leisure for disabled and non-disabled people.

Nani Ratnawati is a senior localization program manager at LinkedIn. Currently, she manages localization initiatives and projects for marketing content that includes all of LinkedIn’s business units: talent solutions, marketing solutions, sales solutions and learning solutions.

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.

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.

Tatyana Rodionova has 17 years of experience in user assistance and eight years in software localization. She is in charge of global user assistance and localization at Positive Technologies as a leading global provider of enterprise security solutions for vulnerability and compliance management, incident and threat analysis, and application protection. Previously Tatyana managed a technical writing and localization team at Kaspersky Lab with a portfolio of more than 40 projects localized into 40 languages.

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.

Thomas Nishantha Scheijbeler is passionate about all things technology related and from a professional perspective his focus is clearly aimed toward user experience, smartphones and the travel industry. His online and “offline” adventure officially started around 2004 when he found his way to the Graphic Design College in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in media and communication in 2012 and since then has worked globally for various companies in the Netherlands, Philippines, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Spain. Thomas is currently based in Barcelona working for eDreams ODIGEO, where he is responsible for the user experience and user interface for hotel and airline products.

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.

Thiago Schreiner has been with Blizzard Entertainment since 2011. Prior to joining Blizzard, he had ten years of entrepreneurship background in finance, stocks, business development and large infrastructure projects in South America with companies such as Boeing and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Thiago’s natural long-term strategic thinking and extensive knowledge of localization, combined with his real-life business experience has made him an invaluable asset to Blizzard Entertainment’s global localization team.

Commonly referred to as “the guy in the pink shirt”, Scott Schwalbach has been in the localization and globalization business for 45+ years, working for and with some of the largest companies and governments in the world. He has worked with sales, solutions, and operations divisions of service companies ensuring that they delivered solutions that drove customers to success.

Scott worked on the original localization pilot team at Microsoft and stayed for 18 years. In addition, he has worked on Google localization for 7 years, Amazon for 4 years, and spent 10 years with the U.S. Government.

Scott teaches various courses in communications and customer expectations, group dynamics as well as advises start-ups and VC’s on globalization best practices. Scott’s free time involves taking care of his mini orchard, adventuring with his Sheltie, Cody, trying out new recipes and other adventures around the world.

Jean Senellart joined SYSTRAN in 1999 after defending a thesis on natural language processing and graduating from France’s École Polytechnique. He has been working on the modernization of SYSTRAN’s legacy code, by leading multiple challenges such as Unicode introduction, IntutiveCoding technology development, introduction of machine learning, development of Translation Stylesheet, design and first-ever release of “self-training” hybrid translation engines, and more recently, modularization of language assets into the world-unique “Linguistic Development Toolkit”. After the merger and acquisition of SYSTRAN by Korean company CSLi, Jean is now the global chief technology officer, leading development of teams located all around the world.

Miguel Sepulveda is a localization geek, blogger, toastmaster, avid reader of management and self-growth books, PMP, proud father of two great kids and a video games player with not enough time to master (yet) the new version of FIFA. He will never forget his first localization project in 1995 as a localization Spanish specialist for Microsoft Excel ’95, the early days of the localization industry when the pillars were being constructed at Microsoft Dublin.

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.

Dimitar Shterionov is head machine translation (MT) researcher at KantanMT. He holds a PhD in computer science from KU Leuven Belgium. Dimitar has worked on the design and development of artificial intelligence software for learning and reasoning with uncertain data. Since 2016 he has led KantanLabs – a research and development group committed to advancing language technology. Within KantanLabs, Dimitar and the team work on introducing innovative technology to the KantanMT platform such as efficient word reordering, improved alignment, neural MT and so on.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lori Thicke is the founder and CEO of Lexcelera, a language service provider based in Paris with offices in London, Vancouver, Singapore and Buenos Aires. She is also the founder of Translators without Borders, the world’s largest community of humanitarian translators. Lori has a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia. A frequent speaker and blogger, she is passionate about language and technology for global access to knowledge.

Jon Thorne is a customer service and operations professional with more than 15 years’ experience in the travel sector. Currently senior global user satisfaction manager at travel search engine Skyscanner, he manages Skyscanner’s multilingual customer support team (based in Edinburgh, Miami and Singapore). Jon is responsible for setting Skyscanner’s global support strategy and for delivering user insights to internal stakeholders.

John Tinsley is an entrepreneur, technologist, and machine translation expert. He holds a degree in applied computational linguistics, and received a PhD in machine translation from Dublin City University in 2009. Following that, John cofounded Iconic Translation Machines, an award-winning language technology software business which pioneered the commercial deployment of neural machine translation technology. He grew the business for almost a decade before selling it to RWS in 2020. Most recently, John was the vice president for artificial intelligence product and marketing at Language Weaver. He has consulted for the European Commission on technology research initiatives, and he is also a regular public speaker on topics related to language, translation, and business.

Claire Tsai is currently leading globalization and international expansion at Cloudflare. She has specialized in international digital marketing strategy, global product management and localization program optimization for the past decade in her previous roles at VMware, Intuit and Ubisoft. Claire holds an MA in translation and localization management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She also has completed two Wharton Executive Education programs at the University of Pennsylvania in strategic marketing and marketing metrics.

Noz Urbina is a globally recognized leader in the field of content strategy and customer experience consultancy who can effectively bridge organizational and user goals. He’s well known as a pioneer in customer journey mapping and adaptive content modeling for delivering personalized, contextually relevant content experiences in an omnichannel environment. Noz is coauthor of the book, Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between Business, Brand, and Benefits and lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences, Graz, master’s program in content strategy. He has coached teams, developed processes and spearheaded solutions that have helped some of the world’s largest organizations leverage their content assets to stand out in their sectors, while avoiding headcount increases and wasted costs. After 14 years in the content world, Noz founded his consultancy, Urbina Consulting, in 2013.

Anne-Maj van der Meer is a marketing professional with over ten years of experience in event organization and management. She has a BA in English language and culture from the University of Amsterdam and a specialization in creative writing from Harvard University. Before her position at TAUS, Anne-Maj was a teacher at primary schools in regular as well as special needs education. She started her career at TAUS in 2009 as the first TAUS employee where she became a jack of all trades, taking care of bookkeeping and accounting as well as creating and managing the website and customer services. For the past five years, Anne-Maj has served as the events director, chief content editor and designer of publications. She has helped in the organization of more than 35 LocWorld conferences, where she took care of the program for the TAUS track and hosted and moderated these sessions.

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.

Buket Vidinlisan is the language manager for Turkish at Google where she manages Google’s localization quality in the Turkish market. Having worked as a university lecturer before Google, Buket is still passionately collaborating with universities to familiarize students with the field of localization. Localization Essentials, the first MOOC in the industry, is one of the outcomes of these efforts.

Erik drives innovation at Argos Multilingual by nurturing strategic growth and fusing customer needs with robust technology solutions. By fostering scalability and seamless integrations, solutions meet customer demands and elevate team performance and company growth.

Erik’s passionate about crafting solutions, grounded in a comprehensive understanding of business realities and finding practical applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Translation. The mission is to develop business models that are viable and deeply embedded in a core value proposition that resonates with global markets.

Peng Wang has been teaching, researching and practicing localization on three continents. She is the convener for EDUinLOC, a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, and a freelance conference interpreter with the Translation Bureau of the Canadian government. Peng began conducting corpus-based translation studies at the University of Liverpool and later she worked in the Corpus Research Lab at Northern Arizona University. She is an expert in approaching technology in the context of culture and humanities. Peng’s current research interests include human learning vs. machine learning, machine translation risk management, terminology and multilingual data analysis.

Ruzena Wegener is a localization project manager at Bigpoint, acting as the connecting point between the development teams and translators. She has over five years of experience as a freelance translator  that adds exceptional insight into the needs and work of a translator and ensures that she provides the best quality throughout her work. Having an excellent understanding of the whole workflow, Ruzena can prepare translations more effectively. She works closely with narrative design, giving her even greater context and details about the products, which are vital to improve all translations.

Jack Welde is a technology early-adopter, serial entrepreneur, software patent-holder, product evangelist and combat-decorated Air Force pilot. Before founding Smartling, he served as senior vice president of product at eMusic and COO/CTO at SheSpeaks and RunTime Technologies. Jack also cofounded Trio Development, a software company that created the first personal information manager, which was acquired by Apple in 1993. He holds a BS in computer engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also studied linguistics and interned with Professor William Labov, and an MBA from Cameron University in Germany.

Barbara Werderitsch is a conference interpreter and technical translator based in Madrid. Austrian by birth, but having lived almost half her life in Spain, she feels half Spanish too. As an interpreter for different industries she is acutely aware of the value of specialized knowledge and the importance of accessibility for all languages. Barbara joined Translation Commons in 2015 to help launch the Mentoring Think Tank initiative, and is a major contributor to the general mentoring guidelines for the international community of translators and interpreters.

Having been in the games industry since 1996, Vanessa Wood is an experienced manager of computer games localization services on a global basis. Currently she is managing both the localization and narrative design teams, part of the wider games operations team at Bigpoint. Vanessa oversees all localization and narrative workflows incorporating narrative design, localization, audio, quality assurance, linguistic testing and all vendor management and tools.

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.

Wei Zhang serves as a VP in localization technology at Centific. He has over two decades of experience in internationalization. Prior to Centific, he led localization teams at Microsoft, Amazon, and Hopin, excelling in production, platforms, and pioneering tech. Wei has a passion for diverse cultures and international user experiences.

George Zhao is the founder and CEO of VideoLocalize, a video dubbing technology provider, and Boffin Language Group, a localization service provider. With over 25 years in the language industry, he is a serial entrepreneur passionate about driving innovation. Zhao currently leads the development of VideoLocalize, an advanced video dubbing platform that won the first LocWorld Process Innovation Challenge in 2017 and received TAUS Game Changer Innovation Awards in 2016 and 2017. Actively engaged in the industry, he served on the 2017–2018 board of directors for the Globalization & Localization Association (GALA), helping to shape the future of localization.