Britta Aagaard is chief business officer at Semantix and is responsible for the total business within localization and advanced language solutions. With an academic background in philosophy and the science of language, coupled with an entrepreneurial mindset, Britta joined the language industry in 2004. Today she is enjoying the privilege of providing executive leadership to her organization and thought leadership to the language community. Britta serves on the board of directors of GALA and LT-Innovate and is part of the LIND Expert Group of the European Commission, with the ambition to position the language industry in the intersection of humanity and AI. Britta has a clear vision and commitment to creating a scalable business platform through sustainable integrations of people, technology, and solutions for a prosperous and democratic digital future.

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.

As a dedicated and results-driven international growth specialist, Andy brings a unique blend of cultural acumen and business focus to the table, with a passion for all things international and a drive to help companies grow organically and sustainably internationally. With 10+ years of experience in ASO, SEO and product localization/internationalization, he’s developed a strong foundation in understanding challenging market dynamics and a proven track record of efficient operations and scalability. Andy likes to connect with like-minded professionals and explore new opportunities.

– Experience working with over 100 languages; and in-market teams across 20 countries.
– Built international programs from scratch into 50+ languages
– Created, optimized and actively managed ASO portfolios for organic user acquisition into more than 70 languages and 7 different app stores.
– Hired, trained and coached teams with 15-20 direct reports managing over 100 people

Aimee Ansari has over 20 years of experience in leadership positions in large humanitarian and development organizations. She has worked in several humanitarian crises from the Tajik civil war to the earthquake in Haiti, the conflicts in the Balkans to the Syrian refugee crisis and the conflict in South Sudan. Prior to joining Translators without Borders in 2016, Aimee worked with Care, Oxfam, Save the Children and the United Nations.

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

Abdoulaye Barry is from Guinea in West Africa but currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he works on special projects for the finance department of a healthcare organization. He is a founding member and board member of the Winden Jangen Organization and a cocreator of the Adlam alphabet. Abdoulaye is doing research on the different Fulani dialects and has written and translated books on grammar, religion, short stories and current topics.

Indre Bates is an experienced vendor manager at Autodesk, where she centrally oversees the relationships with Autodesk partners who provide a breadth of services such as translation, engineering, project management, quality assurance and so on. She manages vendor performance, skills and risks on an ongoing basis through various means to ensure they provide the best services to localization solutions. Indre has also recently launched and is now managing the Women in Localization Singapore Chapter.

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.

Sylvia Berger-Zeigler came to the United States from Germany in 2009 and started her career with SDL in 2010 as a linguistic software tester. After a little over a year as a tester, she moved to SDL’s project management team in Colorado. Sylvia has led teams for multiple large clients in the technology space for the last six years, managing translation, testing, multimedia and other projects as she helps customers achieve their strategic goals.

Alex Bernet is the co-producer of LocWorld’s Process Innovation Challenge and previously served as the exhibits manager for LocWorld. Currently, he manages the Master Class Program and online educational offerings for The Localization Institute. Alex graduated with a BA in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 and joined both LocWorld and the Localization Institute in 2012. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he loves to hike and spend as much time as possible in the great outdoors.

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.

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.

Konstantine Boukhvalov is the operations manager of software engineering services with over 25 years of industry experience and 20 years at Experis, ManpowerGroup (formerly COMSYS/ASET). Over the years, he has developed a passion for developing and executing solutions for integrating technology and language for diverse global requirements. For over a quarter of a century Konstantine has been successfully supporting implementation and delivery of high-quality products and solutions for federal and commercial clients including Qualcomm, Discovery Channel, Microsoft, DELL, Ford Motors, SAIC, Department of Defense, Department of State, DTRA, Department of Health and other US Government agencies.

Scott Cahoon is a senior operational manager with more than 20 years’ experience within the localization industry and through working with both vendors and clients, he has developed a deep understanding of both sides of the business. Starting in the industry as a tester, then localization engineer and program manager, he developed a broad base through which he manages the technology footprint as well as operational implementation within the global translation team at Dell. A speaker of Japanese, Scott found the localization industry a natural fit as it combined his love of technology with his love for language and culture.

Christopher Carfi heads up global content marketing for GoDaddy. Over his career, he spent nearly ten years as part of the advanced technology group at Andersen Consulting/Accenture; he headed up product, marketing, and product marketing groups at a number of early stage companies; he has been a startup founder; and was part of the early team at Ant’s Eye View, which was acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Christopher joined GoDaddy in 2014. He holds a degree in computer science from Northwestern University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon, is originally from Chicago, and currently lives in Silicon Valley with his family.

Monica Catunda is a senior product manager lead on GoDaddy’s global platform team based in Kirkland, Washington. She has extensive experience in creating and releasing large-scale, high-profile products and services worldwide. Monica is deeply involved in key aspects of product releases, mastering practices such as service engineering, data-driven and scenario-focused engineering and internationalization. She is passionate about delivering solutions and experiences to customers and markets around the globe. When she’s offline, Monica loves exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her family.

Paul Cerda is an experienced classroom teacher with the innate ability to demystify complex concepts through archetypes, simple graphics and storytelling. He has worked for the largest Pacific Northwest software and ecommerce companies to help design and scale whole enterprise localization efforts that accelerate global expansion across every division in the organization. As a globalization consultant, Paul quickly assesses a company and helps to create and implement globalization plans that scale products and services to global markets. He thinks big, executes adeptly and has strong strategic planning, data analytics, writing and presentation skills to drive change across organizations.

Michele Coady has spent 18 years at Microsoft specializing in international engineering and global readiness. She is currently a director for the Microsoft Global Readiness group and drives company-wide geopolitical awareness, compliance and risk management.

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.

Craig Cornelius has worked in internationalization (I18N) at Google since 2007. He is a member of the I18N libraries team and contributes to open source for Unicode and the Common Locale Data Repository. As part of his work at Google, he has been privileged to work with a number of language communities that are beginning to use their languages and writing systems on the internet with modern computing and mobile platforms. These include Cherokee, Osage and other Native American languages, the writing systems of Myanmar, and Pular/Fulani in the Adlam script. Craig serves on the governing council of the Endangered Languages Project and is a member of the advisory board of the Australian Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. He is an occasional presenter at IMUG — The International Multilingual User Group. Prior to joining Google, Craig worked in medical research at Stanford University as an engineer and scientist in medical imaging, and was a college professor in the departments of computer science and chemistry at Luther College in Iowa. He holds a PhD in chemistry and an MS in computer science from Stanford University and a BA from Luther College (chemistry and mathematics.) Among other things, he loves science fiction, history, cats and bicycling.

With over 25 years in the software industry and a decade in data and applied science, Agustín Da Fieno Delucchi​ excels in transforming complex data into strategic business solutions. He leverages machine learning and AI to drive innovation and evidence-based decision-making. Leading global, cross-functional teams, he ensures alignment with business goals, data integrity, governance, and compliance. His leadership in AI has been pivotal in internationalization and localization efforts, spearheading innovation in software development. As a polyglot, he creates accessible, culturally relevant technology experiences, driven by curiosity and a commitment to excellence in the evolving tech landscape.

Paul Danter joined Moravia in 2015 with 17 years’ experience in sales, marketing and product management in the software industry. He was responsible for new client acquisition, marketing and new service development before being appointed CEO in January 2018. Prior to Moravia, Paul’s focus was in the converging areas of content and mobile, working with media companies, publishers and broadcasters as they wrestled with the new viewing habits of digital and mobile audiences. He was also involved in two businesses that were successfully acquired. Most recently, he cofounded Mobile IQ, a mobile publishing company, which was acquired by Quark Software. Previously, Paul was part of Argogroup, a mobile service test company, which was acquired by Ascom.

Philip Delaney has worked in the localization field for 20+ years, with experience in localization engineering, project management, operations management and custom software development. He currently works as a business consultant with SDL, helping clients with their global content operating model strategies with a particular focus on efficient technology deployment/enablement. When not working, Philip enjoys crossfit, obstacle course racing, sampling new craft beers and traveling the world with his wife and daughter. Philip lives in Boston, USA.

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.

Francesca Di Marco spearheads Pinterest’s internationalization and global development program, where she fuels her passion for crafting multinational organizations from the ground up. Dedicated to implementing scalable globalization and localization strategies, Francesca excels at connecting teams across functions and regional offices. A lifelong language enthusiast and former lecturer on the history of modern Japan, Francesca channels her curiosity into documentary filmmaking during her downtime.

Emily Du is a lead localization program manager at Meta, where she leads internationalization and localization efforts for Meta’s monetization products. She seeks to drive a localization strategy informed by a deep understanding of the user journey that enables a truly local experience for millions of international users and businesses. Previously, Emily managed localization efforts at Salesforce. She holds an MA in translation and localization management from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a BA in English and Spanish from Shanghai International Studies University.

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

Giulia Dugo is an international experience manager within the globalization team at Adobe Systems. She works on the localization of marketing projects for the Digital Experience Cloud, as well as running the company’s internal community to leverage international speakers. Giulia also manages the team’s brand management and relationships with the regional offices. She holds a joint BA in marketing and international business, with joint minors in French and Spanish from the University of San Diego.

Having worn the hats of terminologist, translator, localization specialist, project manager, trainer, and consultant over the past 20 years in the language industry, Elena Dunne is the head of the global terminology management program at Rockwell Automation and leads a number of strategic brand, content and terminology initiatives. She holds a PhD in translation studies from Kent State University, has published on language project management, was instrumental in creating the PMI Lexicon of Project Management Terms, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Dace Dzeguze is the Dynamic Quality Framework (DQF) product manager at TAUS, a resource center for global language and translation industries. She oversees the DQF product development, works with third party integrators and acts as product spokesperson at international events and conferences. Dace has eight years of experience in the industry, working as a project manager for language service providers in Riga and Amsterdam.

Marcus East is executive vice president product and technology and chief technology officer for National Geographic, based in Washington DC, where he leads the teams responsible for building world class digital experiences for audiences around the world. He has spent half of his career working for technology companies (four years at Apple and six years at IBM) and the other half helping global brands to harness the power of technology — including Comic Relief, Marks and Spencer and National Geographic. In addition to his expertise in delivering value for commercial organizations, Marcus also has a passion for the use of technology to drive positive social change, and spent two years building and leading Comic Relief’s technology function, during which time he drove the delivery of award-winning technology and digital products, including the record-setting donations platform that supports Red Nose Day. He has also advised and acted as a trustee for a number of charities.

Marcus is also very interested in policymaking related to technology, and he has also been involved in a number of government and public sector steering committees and think-tanks. Having lived and worked in the UK, Asia and America, he has an international perspective on the challenges facing organizations and societies today, and how technology affects them — he has strong views on social exclusion, diversity in technology, managing technology talent and how large corporations should react to the challenges and opportunities that the advent of the digital age brings. Marcus is a leading digital and technology expert with nearly 25 years of experience working at the forefront of technology and innovation for organizations across the globe.

Dale Eggett is the lead localization engineer at Lingotek. He has been a professional in the language services industry for the past eight years, before which he studied the industry at Brigham Young University (BYU) and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Dale is also currently an adjunct professor at BYU, where he teaches an introductory localization course.

Rikkert Engels is the founder and director of Xillio which he started in 2004 out of frustration with a migration project he was working on. There must be a better way, he thought, and it involves automation. Xillio has developed a powerful API platform for content integration projects and was awarded “Cool Vender” by Gartner in 2017. In 2019, LocHub was developed on top of this API to help automate multilingual content delivery processes.

Lee Engfer is a senior editor in Mayo Clinic’s global business solutions division, which delivers market-leading health and healthy living solutions to patients and consumers throughout their health journey. Since joining Mayo Clinic in 2012, she has managed strategy and development of health content for voice and mobile apps, websites, wellness programs, books and newsletters. Previously, Lee worked as an independent consultant specializing in health and wellness content. She has degrees in journalism and French and spent a year studying at the University of Strasbourg, France. More recently, Lee’s been attempting to learn Korean but struggles to get past “Annyeonghaseyo.”

John Fennelly is the CEO of Lionbridge. Under John’s leadership, Lionbridge has experienced significant organic growth and continued its global expansion. As CEO, he is leading over 6,000 employees to help businesses connect with their customers around the world. Prior to joining Lionbridge, John was the CEO of HireRight, a leader in the human capital management technology space. At HireRight, he developed and led a major turnaround effort that resulted in record revenue and earnings growth. Prior to HireRight, John held executive leadership positions at a number of information services and technology companies, including Thomson Reuters and Sungard.

Allison Ferch is GALA’s executive director. Over the past 8+ years she has served GALA in several roles and provided leadership for many of the association’s programs and activities including events, partnerships and special initiatives. As executive director, she leads internal operations at GALA and is responsible for the growth of the association, its financial stability, and for the execution and expansion of programs and services to members. Allison has an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology and a master’s degree in library and information science. A lifelong athlete and learner, she enjoys podcasts, reading, swimming and team sports.

Mariah Fike has worked in localization across three different continents, both on the vendor and client sides. Through her many years of experience, she has successfully managed regional localization teams, supported business management of lucrative accounts and provided cultural consulting services, including mobility management seminars at the Spain-US Chamber of Commerce in New York City. In her current role at Netflix, Mariah is a localization program manager on the product user interface team dedicated to improving the local experience for members and future members alike.

Carrie Fischer is the globalization services manager at Subway, headquartered in Milford, CT, and Miami, FL. She is responsible for all globalization-related strategies for the company. She has over 30 years of localization experience and has held previous localization positions at Bodybuilding.com, Hyperion/Oracle, and Transparent Language as the managing editor. She owns her own consulting company, Carrie Fischer Consulting, LLC which helps businesses with their localization needs. She is also the 2023 President of Women in Localization and a mentor.

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.

Originally from Paris, France, Max Fleury started his localization adventure as a freelance French-English/English-French translator in the video game industry. After years of linguistic creation and quality assurance (QA), he shifted focus and began developing test plans to improve both translation quality and QA velocity. Max moved to Netflix in 2016 where he has had the chance to work on amazing titles with outstanding colleagues, and is thrilled to help map the future of globalization.

Chiara Fornasero leads the localization team at WhatsApp which serves more than 1.5 billion users in up to 60 languages. She has a background in translation and interpreting from the University of Geneva and in her career has been responsible for localization quality, market and program management in small startups and large international companies like Yahoo!. At WhatsApp, Chiara helped build the foundations of a rapidly growing localization team of project, vendor and language managers. She’s passionate about making simple, reliable and secure technology that is part of our everyday life accessible to users around the world.

Dalibor Frívaldský is the research and development manager at Memsource. With a master’s degree in computer science and an infatuation with development trends, he created Memsource’s web and desktop editors and contributed to Memsource Cloud. Dalibor founded the Memsource artificial intelligence department four years after joining the company in 2011.

Nancy Gauthier is the vice president of business strategies and partnerships of the Translation Bureau of Canada. Nancy has acquired extensive experience in web accessibility, artificial intelligence for language technologies, business development, business reengineering and online learning solutions at various government organizations, including the Canada School of Public Service and the Department of National Defence, as well as in the private sector. Her accomplishments at the Translation Bureau earned her a Public Service Award of Excellence and recognition in the Transforming the Business of Government category at the GTEC conference, an event that promotes innovation and excellence in the public sector. As part of her duties, Nancy plays an important leadership role in the implementation of the Bureau’s technology program and the strategic reengineering program, which is closely linked to the government’s mandate to encourage and optimize the use of emerging innovative technology and building capacity in support of the Canadian language industry. She is also responsible for building partnerships and fostering close relationships with the language industry, associations and academia.

Kathleen Glennon is responsible for globalization vendor management at Dell EMC, working closely with globalization services and technology partners to build and maintain strategic partnerships. She is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton with a degree in computer science and over 27 years of experience in development organizations for software, retail and aerospace industries including over ten years of experience in software globalization.

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.

Harsh Govind is part of the Bing team within Microsoft’s artificial intelligence and research group. He enjoys driving technology product innovations, building high-performance teams and excels at taking technology innovations from concept to product. Harsh has a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and master’s degrees in business administration from both Cornell University, New York and Queens University, Canada. His interests include big data, analytics, geospatial data/products, artificial intelligence and research.

A software engineer with a keen interest in languages, Jen Hannon has worked in the localization business since 1999 on both the client and vendor sides. She has been at home for the past ten years at Iota Localisation Services, leading the localization effort across 33 languages and loving the challenges that come with it. Jen is also a part-time terminologist.

Melanie Heighway leads product localization at Atlassian, managing localization of Atlassian’s range of products including Jira and Confluence. She is a passionate advocate of international customers and enjoys evangelizing localization within organizations. Prior to joining Atlassian in 2019, Melanie managed localization of all content as a one-person team at an Australian startup, Invoice2go. Over the past 15 years, she has worked on both client and language vendor sides in Australia and the UK. Melanie has managed a diverse range of language tasks, including speech and language technology projects, mobilization and management of face-to-face speech and sign language interpreters, and medical device document localization at companies such as Cochlear, Appen, SDL and LanguageLine.

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.

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.

Sabina Jasinska is an international marketing leader with experience in managing global marketing and operations teams and activities for top language service providers Donnelley Language Solutions, SDL and Welocalize. Her specialization is driving growth in the rapidly evolving translation industry by capitalizing on regulatory changes and marketing trends. Sabina is currently leading global sales and marketing teams for a digital agency specialized in marketing automation for financial services companies. One of her passions is building communities — that’s why she dedicated her time as a member of the board of directors of GALA, Translation Commons and the advisory board of  The Localization Institute. Sabina is also an active member of the largest grassroots movement in Poland, campaigning for the preservation of parks and historical monuments.

Katell Jentreau has 20+ years of experience in the language industry, both on the vendor and client sides. She built and led the globalization effort at Box for 3 years, before joining Netflix in 2015 as the company was getting ready to launch globally. At the start of 2024, Katell joined Expedia Group where she has been leading the Globalization function for all EG brands, and helping drive global growth.

Katell is a known industry speaker in conferences, events and podcasts, as well as a Women in Localization volunteer – and served on the board from 2013 to 2015.

Tia Johnson has a background in applied linguistics, second-language instruction (English and French) and technical communication — and a passion for terminology management. As a senior program manager at Microsoft, she relies on this experience for her work with company-wide localization teams to manage the tools and processes used for multilingual terminology management. Tia is a member of TerminOrgs, a consortium of terminologists who work in large organizations. In her free time, she loves to read about dictionaries, attend yoga classes and walk around Seattle.

Eric Jones has spent his entire twenty-year career in the language industry. His current role is managing an 11-person team of strategic account directors across North America and Europe for RWS. The team supports RWS’ most sophisticated customers by providing a wide range of software and services across the spectrum of language, AI, and Content.

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.

Industry veteran having held a number of roles over the last 24 years. If you’d like to meet or have any questions for me, feel free to stop by the Acolad booth, # 205.

Ryan Knott has more than 20 years of experience managing communications and content strategy, public relations, social media and media relations. He joined the TechSmith team in 2016, and previously served at nonprofits, the Michigan Department of Education and as a coach, communications director and announcer for a number of Michigan roller derby teams. Ryan is a graduate of Michigan State University and is passionate about creating content that communicates clearly, engages audiences and inspires action.

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.

Bill Lafferty is a solution architect at Memsource, a software company based in Prague, Czech Republic, that provides cloud-based translation technology. Upon graduating with an MS from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Bill embarked on a career in Japanese-into-English legal translation. He was a professional translator for 17 years, and during that time he also cofounded a translation agency specializing in financial and legal Japanese translation services. Bill is passionate about language, technology and communication. He presents at conferences all over the world and is always looking for opportunities to share ideas and learn more as the localization industry evolves.

Alon Lavie is vice president of AI research at Phrase. He has been at the leading edge of AI research in language technology for many years. He has just concluded a tenure as VP of language technologies at Unbabel, where he led the company’s U.S. AI lab based in Pittsburgh, and provided strategic leadership for the company’s broader AI R&D teams. Prior to this, Alon headed up the Amazon Machine Translation R&D group in Pittsburgh. Notably, earlier in his career, he co-founded and led a machine translation technology start-up, Safaba Translation Solutions, ultimately serving the company as president and chairman of the board, until its acquisition by Amazon in 2015. Additionally, Alon has been at the forefront of academic research in machine translation. His impressive academic credentials include 20 years of serving as research professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technology Institute (LTI) where he is now consulting professor. His primary research has focused on machine translation and translation evaluation as well as related areas such as MT adaptation approaches with and without human feedback, quality estimation, and methods for multi-engine MT system combinations.

Mark Lawyer is the general manager of Trados at RWS Group, where he leads the development and implementation of go-to-market strategies across product development, sales and marketing, account management, and partnerships. With over two decades of experience in the industry, he has worked with some of the world’s leading Fortune 500 companies, demonstrating his passion for global content and translation technology. Mark’s dedication to personal integrity and executive leadership has helped him develop and lead high-performing teams now focused on helping the localization industry eliminate barriers to communication by translating everything. He is based in New York, holds a degree in communication and international business, and resides with his family in New York.

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.

Olivier Libouban is a French-born software developer and manager with over 30 years experience in four countries. He is currently the vice president of product development at Lingoport, a company that drives innovation around software internationalization and localization. Olivier has a diplôme d’Ingénieur from the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Rennes, France, and an MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

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.

Wouter Maagdenberg started his first tech company during his BA studies at Erasmus University in 1996. He sold his former company, Calamares (Enterprise Video Content Management), to SDL in 2011. Wouter left his role as VP media worldwide at SDL in 2016 to start TXTOmedia. TXTOmedia technology transforms structured content into rich media in an automated way, procedures become interactive how-to videos on-the-fly. Wouter’s role combines product management with business development.

Terence Maikels oversees the enterprise translation program at Starbucks. He was initially brought in to Starbucks in 2009 to manage the retail learning organization’s global English program and would later lead localization efforts across all retail training programs for Starbucks international markets. In 2014, Terence began overseeing the newly created enterprise translation program at Starbucks, which had developed as part of a cross-functional initiative to create and centralize localization standards and governance. His favorite Starbucks beverage: a short flat white with extra foam.

Although Terence is employed by Starbucks, his views and opinions are his own and may or may not reflect the views of Starbucks.

Diane Manning is a senior marketing manager for localization at MobileIron, a leading mobile security software provider. She is responsible for localization of all marketing content including corporate website, demand generation campaigns, video, public relations and more. Diane has extensive experience in Silicon Valley’s high-tech industry, where she has held positions in international sales and marketing, localization, program management and executive communications. She has an MBA in international marketing from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, speaks four languages and has lived and studied in the Netherlands, Italy and Guatemala.

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.

In his role as senior director of health information, Jay Maxwell oversees content development for Mayo Clinic’s global business solutions. Jay has nearly three decades of publishing experience in web, mobile, print and broadcast channels. He has led large and diverse teams in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. As a journalist, Jay has served on a state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and has been a recipient of SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Award

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.

Isla McKetta puts her master of fine arts in creative writing to use as Ookla’s content manager where she plans and writes engaging blog posts, interactives and reports for Speedtest Insights. Conversant in five languages and having lived on three continents, Isla is passionate about the nuances of cultural communication. She was formerly the content crafter at Moz and senior content strategist at Portent. Isla is the author of Polska, 1994 and coauthor of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide for Turning Artifacts into Art.

Patrick McLoughlin manages localization at Verily Life Sciences. Prior to Verily, Patrick spent ten years at Eventbrite where he founded and managed the localization function, and five years at Yahoo! as a localization project manager and terminology manager. Patrick has also held positions as a lexicographer, adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, translator, multilingual researcher, and writer. He holds a variety of certifications and degrees from universities in Italy, the UK, and California.

Catherine Minden is principal of Minden Editorial Services, a Microsoft preferred supplier. Minden Editorial specializes in the development of voice and editorial style and standards. Currently, Catherine is the facilitator for the work of the Microsoft Editorial Standards Board, which oversees the guidelines codified in the Microsoft Writing Style Guide.

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.

Swati Narwal is a business consulting professional, a public speaking enthusiast, a die-hard optimist and a positive-minded person. She is motivated especially by change, learning new skills and being a part of a dynamic team. Swati has an international and diverse experience spanning over ten years in different fields of retail, banking, education and the IT industry, and has a multifaceted leadership experience in decision making positions. She has core experience in change management, communication and employee relations. As part of her quest for learning and knowledge, Swati has spent the past four years in the localization industry creating, implementing and supporting a comprehensive and acknowledged localization process for IKEA Group, focusing on various aspects such as quality, ways of working, processes and managing localization vendors.

Amy Grace O’Brien is a no-nonsense terminologist, AI wrangler, and localization troublemaker at Adobe. She’s on a mission to make terminology management actually work—cutting through the noise, cleaning up the mess, and building AI-driven solutions that scale. From revamping translation quality processes to leading industry-first innovations in multilingual term extraction, she’s all about impact. A frank-speaking Northerner with a sharp eye for efficiency, Amy bridges the gap between linguists, tech, and business, ensuring words do what they’re meant to. If it’s broken, she’ll fix it. If it’s inefficient, she’ll automate it. And if it’s boring, she’ll make it fun.

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

Garth O’Brien joined GoDaddy in March of 2015 and became the director and global head of search engine optimization (SEO). In this position he drives the GoDaddy global content strategy, optimizes social media channels in addition to providing organic traffic strategies. Garth began his digital marketing career in 2002 while practicing law. As the youngest attorney in the law firm he was tasked with learning and managing SEO and search engine marketing. Garth left the practice of law to pursue a full-time career in digital marketing. He ran the global search marketing program for a small technology company for several years and then worked as an SEO manager for MSN. Garth then joined Catalyst Digital owning the SEO programs for Hallmark, Chevron, IKEA USA, Xbox, Windows Phone and was one of four SEOs to support Microsoft.com.

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.

As director of localization programs, Claire Pagès manages a team of about 20 program and project managers who together advise on and implement the localization strategies of the various brands that form the Expedia Group. In 2012, she joined Expedia as a localization program manager dedicated to brand Expedia. Claire started her career in the localization industry in 2002 as a French linguist. Having worked on both vendor side and client side for the past 15 or so years, she endorsed various roles and responsibilities in the localization space, and has always been passionate about languages and travel.

With over 20 years in the industry, Patricia Paladini Adell is a leading globalization consultant specializing in designing and building scalable and agile localization programs. Patricia is the Founder and CEO of Paladini Global. The firm expertise in continuous localization and systems integration makes Paladini Global a key parent to accompany companies to efficiently adapt their offerings for international markets. Proficient in translation technologies such as translation management systems, machine translation, large language models (LLMs), and terminology management, Paladini Global ensures high-quality, culturally relevant content delivery. Paladini Global excels in change and stakeholder management, guiding organizations through complex transitions and securing support at all levels. The firm’s advocacy for Agile methodology fosters collaboration, flexibility, and rapid iteration, accelerating time-to-market and enhancing global operations. Dedicated to helping corporations.

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.

As senior localization program manager, Maike Patty drives localization and globalization strategies at Netflix. In 2016, she supported Netflix global launch, which made the service available in 130 countries. Maike also paved the way for scaling title localization work. She currently focuses on tooling optimization with a goal to fully automate translation requests and find innovative scalable solutions to address expedited workflows for Netflix original titles with compressed launch timelines, such as The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale, The Break with Michelle Wolf and My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. Before joining Netflix in 2014, Maike worked at Facebook for eight years. As Facebook’s first language project manager, she helped the company grow from an English-only platform to supporting 150+ languages. Maike holds a master’s degree in history and communications from the University of Erfurt and was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

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.

Palle Petersen has worked at Microsoft in Dublin and Seattle for over 20 years in a variety of roles, most of them focused on localization and terminology. In his current role for Microsoft’s global readiness team, Palle is focusing on managing global readiness risks as well as managing the internal and external creation and publication of Microsoft’s editorial guidelines and style guidance for localization.

Anna Pietruszka is a change maker with extensive experience in business model design, transformation and shaping. She is a transformation leader with a wide range of experience in designing and managing complex change processes. Anna is also a business model creator, developing and implementing strategies around company growth and mergers and acquisitions.

Lelani Prévost provides strategy and technology support to multiple business units including research and development, marketing and customer success. With a background in linguistics and writing, she by chance found herself on the fun side of languages. In her spare time, Lelani enjoys volunteer opportunities and has recently joined the board of Haiti on the Rise, a nonprofit that funds programs for those affected by the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Jaime Punishill is chief marketing officer at Lionbridge and is responsible for leading global marketing and proposition development efforts. He earned a BA in history and political science from Stanford.

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.

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.

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

Burckhardt Rueffer grew up in Germany and the US. He holds degrees in computer science, graphic and industrial design, as well as social sciences. Throughout his professional career, Burckhardt has always been interested in communication across borders and to make content available to recipients, regardless of their language or the place where they lived. He became the cofounder of one the language industry’s first localization companies in the 80s. Having worked both on the buyer and the supplier sides, Burckhardt has experienced first-hand the coming and going of many tools and trends that define our business. In 2008, he cofounded BeatBabel in San Diego and continues to enjoy his passion for languages.

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.

Jaakko Salmenius is a software engineer who has written localization tools, internationalization libraries and worked for years as a localization and internationalization engineer.

Hajnalka Sarvari has worked in the field of internationalization throughout her entire career. She has worked on both vendor and client side and has worn many hats. She started her career as a translator and language specialist, worked in project and program management, and is currently leading the Internationalization Team at Meta.

Founder and principal at [A] and author of Content Engineering for a Multi-Channel World, Cruce Saunders brings more than 20 years of experience focused on content delivery technology. His team has delivered more than 300 successful digital and content engineering engagements. Cruce regularly speaks on multichannel marketing, content engineering, content asset valuation, intelligent content, machine learning, chatbots, artificial intelligence, cognitive systems, customer experience platforms and digital maturity. [A] operates in the US, Mexico and Latin America and serves large corporations, governments, associations, non-governmental organizations and other complex institutions.

After receiving a PhD in 2008, Konstantin Savenkov led research and development efforts for online content services, then worked as CTO at Zvooq and as a chief operating officer at Bookmate. In 2016, he contributed his experience in artificial intelligence (AI), technology, and operations to found Intento, Inc., where they build tools to source, evaluate, and use machine translation and other cognitive AI services.

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.

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.

Gilberto Segura is a localization industry veteran starting in ’00 where he has navigated the complexities of communication on both the buyer [i.e. Dell, Amazon] and vendor [i.e. Welocalize, Lionbridge, and others] sides for over twenty plus years. From enterprise problems related to startup, Gilbert [a localized name!] has always been found around the transit between language and technology. With Voxabot and PGLS he’s starting to explore the land of speech; and despite the Ai hype cycle, he is exploring multilingual communication beyond the confines of text.

Haseeb Shaik is digital transformation director at Adapt Worldwide, a Welocalize Company, a multilingual digital marketing agency based in London. He leads the research, design, strategy and execution of enterprise-wide digital transformation programs. Haseeb has played an integral role in enabling the design, deployment and management of the digital transformation initiatives for three major brands.

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.

Giuseppe Silvano is product manager at Translated. Over the past three years, he led the development of several software products for project management and localization automation. One of his key products is the MateCat Filters, based on the Okapi Framework. Previously, Giuseppe spent many years working as a full-stack developer and he was the CEO and founder of an AI startup focused on newsfeed generation.

Cornelia Sittel leads the localization team at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. After working for over a decade in various software quality assurance management roles, seven years ago, she returned to the career she originally trained for, and built a localization team and processes at Demandware (which became Salesforce Commerce Cloud 2016). Cornelia’s team is proud to enable the global reach of a world-class eCommerce software suite. She holds a master’s degree in translation from the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg, Germany where she also pursued a doctorate in applied modern linguistics, which ultimately took her to Boston University. Cornelia is a native speaker of German, and besides English, is fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch as well as an avid student of Japanese. Her main interests include internationalization engineering, automated quality assurance, speech technologies and machine translation. She holds five US patents in internationalization/location.

Hanne Smaadahl is a senior terminologist at SAP, responsible for terminology management strategy, governance and outreach. She has extensive experience in the software and localization industry as a linguist, program manager and terminologist in large-scale environments. Hanne is a member of ISO TC 37 subcommittee 3 “Management of Terminology Resources” where she’s the convenor of working group 4 “Database Management”. The project lead for the last version of ISO 30042:2019 (TBX), Hanne is now the co-author of a new standard on terminology database content. She is the chair of TerminOrgs, a think tank of terminologists who work in large organizations.

Originally from Belgium, Martine Smets has been working at Microsoft for over 17 years, first in machine translation (MT) development, then in customer support, more specifically localization of online customer-facing help content. In that position, she has leveraged different approaches to MT (rule-based, statistical and now neural) and data-based methods for determining what content should be localized professionally. Martine currently manages a team of content experience managers and localization project managers who are passionate about empowering customers to self-solve thanks to easily consumable solutions.

Brennan Smith leads a global team responsible for talent acquisition, engagement and supplier management supporting all divisions of Welocalize. He joined Welocalize in 2012 as a result of the acquisition of Park IP. At that time Brennan was living in Beijing, PRC, leading Park IP’s Asian production centers and global procurement. He is currently based in Manhattan, and is originally from Warwick, Rhode Island.

Daisy Sortland is the localization group leader at OSIsoft, where she manages the localization group to deliver software products to global users. The markets cover over 125 countries and 65% of the Industrial Fortune 500. In the past three years, Daisy and her group have focused on localization test automation and localization process standardization, enabling the customer community to participate in translation and continuous localization. Daisy has 15+ years in the fields of internationalization and localization. She brings to OSIsoft deep industry knowledge, technical expertise and a proven track record of leading localization teams. Prior to OSIsoft, Daisy worked for Symantec and Kyocera. She holds two advanced academic degrees, including a master of science in electrical engineering and computer science from Arizona State University and an MBA from Sichuan University.

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.

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.

In a career spanning 17 years with Canon, Alex Thurgood has held a variety of marketing, sales and digital roles both at a UK and pan-EMEA level, covering consumer and business-to-business markets. In his current role, Alex is responsible for leading the digital operations team at Canon Europe, to develop and deploy digital strategies, systems and governance. His team is also responsible for providing digital expertise to Canon in the fields of user experience, optimization, search, analytics, web development, content management and digital project management. During his time at Canon Europe, Alex has been responsible for a number of key digital transformation programs.

Max Troyer is passionate about preparing future professionals to join the localization industry. He’s a Professor of Professional Practice and Grover Hermann Endowed Chair for the Translation and Localization Management (TLM) program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). His courses include Media and Audiovisual Localization, Advanced Media and Audiovisual Localization, Programming for Internationalization and Localization, and Games Localization. He believes in project-based teaching and assessment, and is constantly researching best practices for tools and techniques to incorporate into his program and courses. When not teaching, he is a consultant helping clients automate, reduce costs, and increase efficiencies with their localization processes and workflows.

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.

Born in Barcelona but based in London, Andrea Velasco Simon is the localization vendor manager at Expedia Group. Graduating with an MA in translation, she soon joined the localization industry specializing in audiovisual translation. It wasn’t until Andrea joined Expedia, however, that she found her passion within localization vendor management. Andrea has been in her current role at Expedia for over three years but also has worked in project management roles within a language service provider. Her remit at Expedia is to build a strong and flexible vendor pool that is able to support an aggressive outsourcing strategy that exists within the highly complex and diverse Expedia environment. Growing up in Spain and having lived in London for the past six years, Expedia has given Andrea the opportunity to combine challenging and rewarding work with her ever growing passion for travel and adventure.

Haitham Wahab is CEO of CMI Media, a leading provider of video localization services to corporate markets and the filmed entertainment industry. Having grown up on three continents and a fluent speaker of five languages, he is passionate about intercultural exchanges and believes that nothing does, in fact, need to be “lost in translation.” Prior to joining CMI and leading its expansion into new markets, Haitham was an investment banker, providing merger and acquisition and fundraising advice to multinational clients in a variety of industries. Together with the team at CMI, Haitham believes that the true language of global engagement is video. CMI’s mission is to make your video accessible to your global audience, in any language.

Chris Wendt graduated as Diplom-Informatiker from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and subsequently spent a decade on software internationalization for a multitude of Microsoft products, including Windows, Internet Explorer, MSN and Bing — bringing these products to market with equal functionality worldwide. Since 2005 he has been leading the program management team for Microsoft’s machine translation development, responsible for the Translator service that is part of the Azure Cognitive Services family. On the way Chris delivered Bing Translator and Skype Translator, connecting Microsoft’s research activities with its practical use in services and applications. Since 2020 he has been leading the group of language services in the Azure Cognitive Services family, bringing natural language processing capabilities to its customers. Chris is based at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Craig Wood has over 18 years’ experience in the localization field, having started in 2000 studying applied translation and interpretation in the United Kingdom, Spain and France. Currently in his 9th year at Expedia, he manages a team of project managers who look after all localization needs for several of Expedia Group’s brands. He has worked during the past 14 years both on the vendor and client sides in linguistic and project management functions across numerous products both on and offline. Particular interests are localization within the travel industry and how to instill best industry practices across companies to really maximize the value of the content in all languages for both internal stakeholders and external consumers.

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

Britta Aagaard is chief business officer at Semantix and is responsible for the total business within localization and advanced language solutions. With an academic background in philosophy and the science of language, coupled with an entrepreneurial mindset, Britta joined the language industry in 2004. Today she is enjoying the privilege of providing executive leadership to her organization and thought leadership to the language community. Britta serves on the board of directors of GALA and LT-Innovate and is part of the LIND Expert Group of the European Commission, with the ambition to position the language industry in the intersection of humanity and AI. Britta has a clear vision and commitment to creating a scalable business platform through sustainable integrations of people, technology, and solutions for a prosperous and democratic digital future.

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.

As a dedicated and results-driven international growth specialist, Andy brings a unique blend of cultural acumen and business focus to the table, with a passion for all things international and a drive to help companies grow organically and sustainably internationally. With 10+ years of experience in ASO, SEO and product localization/internationalization, he’s developed a strong foundation in understanding challenging market dynamics and a proven track record of efficient operations and scalability. Andy likes to connect with like-minded professionals and explore new opportunities.

– Experience working with over 100 languages; and in-market teams across 20 countries.
– Built international programs from scratch into 50+ languages
– Created, optimized and actively managed ASO portfolios for organic user acquisition into more than 70 languages and 7 different app stores.
– Hired, trained and coached teams with 15-20 direct reports managing over 100 people

Aimee Ansari has over 20 years of experience in leadership positions in large humanitarian and development organizations. She has worked in several humanitarian crises from the Tajik civil war to the earthquake in Haiti, the conflicts in the Balkans to the Syrian refugee crisis and the conflict in South Sudan. Prior to joining Translators without Borders in 2016, Aimee worked with Care, Oxfam, Save the Children and the United Nations.

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

Abdoulaye Barry is from Guinea in West Africa but currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he works on special projects for the finance department of a healthcare organization. He is a founding member and board member of the Winden Jangen Organization and a cocreator of the Adlam alphabet. Abdoulaye is doing research on the different Fulani dialects and has written and translated books on grammar, religion, short stories and current topics.

Indre Bates is an experienced vendor manager at Autodesk, where she centrally oversees the relationships with Autodesk partners who provide a breadth of services such as translation, engineering, project management, quality assurance and so on. She manages vendor performance, skills and risks on an ongoing basis through various means to ensure they provide the best services to localization solutions. Indre has also recently launched and is now managing the Women in Localization Singapore Chapter.

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.

Sylvia Berger-Zeigler came to the United States from Germany in 2009 and started her career with SDL in 2010 as a linguistic software tester. After a little over a year as a tester, she moved to SDL’s project management team in Colorado. Sylvia has led teams for multiple large clients in the technology space for the last six years, managing translation, testing, multimedia and other projects as she helps customers achieve their strategic goals.

Alex Bernet is the co-producer of LocWorld’s Process Innovation Challenge and previously served as the exhibits manager for LocWorld. Currently, he manages the Master Class Program and online educational offerings for The Localization Institute. Alex graduated with a BA in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 and joined both LocWorld and the Localization Institute in 2012. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he loves to hike and spend as much time as possible in the great outdoors.

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.

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.

Konstantine Boukhvalov is the operations manager of software engineering services with over 25 years of industry experience and 20 years at Experis, ManpowerGroup (formerly COMSYS/ASET). Over the years, he has developed a passion for developing and executing solutions for integrating technology and language for diverse global requirements. For over a quarter of a century Konstantine has been successfully supporting implementation and delivery of high-quality products and solutions for federal and commercial clients including Qualcomm, Discovery Channel, Microsoft, DELL, Ford Motors, SAIC, Department of Defense, Department of State, DTRA, Department of Health and other US Government agencies.

Scott Cahoon is a senior operational manager with more than 20 years’ experience within the localization industry and through working with both vendors and clients, he has developed a deep understanding of both sides of the business. Starting in the industry as a tester, then localization engineer and program manager, he developed a broad base through which he manages the technology footprint as well as operational implementation within the global translation team at Dell. A speaker of Japanese, Scott found the localization industry a natural fit as it combined his love of technology with his love for language and culture.

Christopher Carfi heads up global content marketing for GoDaddy. Over his career, he spent nearly ten years as part of the advanced technology group at Andersen Consulting/Accenture; he headed up product, marketing, and product marketing groups at a number of early stage companies; he has been a startup founder; and was part of the early team at Ant’s Eye View, which was acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Christopher joined GoDaddy in 2014. He holds a degree in computer science from Northwestern University and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon, is originally from Chicago, and currently lives in Silicon Valley with his family.

Monica Catunda is a senior product manager lead on GoDaddy’s global platform team based in Kirkland, Washington. She has extensive experience in creating and releasing large-scale, high-profile products and services worldwide. Monica is deeply involved in key aspects of product releases, mastering practices such as service engineering, data-driven and scenario-focused engineering and internationalization. She is passionate about delivering solutions and experiences to customers and markets around the globe. When she’s offline, Monica loves exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her family.

Paul Cerda is an experienced classroom teacher with the innate ability to demystify complex concepts through archetypes, simple graphics and storytelling. He has worked for the largest Pacific Northwest software and ecommerce companies to help design and scale whole enterprise localization efforts that accelerate global expansion across every division in the organization. As a globalization consultant, Paul quickly assesses a company and helps to create and implement globalization plans that scale products and services to global markets. He thinks big, executes adeptly and has strong strategic planning, data analytics, writing and presentation skills to drive change across organizations.

Michele Coady has spent 18 years at Microsoft specializing in international engineering and global readiness. She is currently a director for the Microsoft Global Readiness group and drives company-wide geopolitical awareness, compliance and risk management.

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.

Craig Cornelius has worked in internationalization (I18N) at Google since 2007. He is a member of the I18N libraries team and contributes to open source for Unicode and the Common Locale Data Repository. As part of his work at Google, he has been privileged to work with a number of language communities that are beginning to use their languages and writing systems on the internet with modern computing and mobile platforms. These include Cherokee, Osage and other Native American languages, the writing systems of Myanmar, and Pular/Fulani in the Adlam script. Craig serves on the governing council of the Endangered Languages Project and is a member of the advisory board of the Australian Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. He is an occasional presenter at IMUG — The International Multilingual User Group. Prior to joining Google, Craig worked in medical research at Stanford University as an engineer and scientist in medical imaging, and was a college professor in the departments of computer science and chemistry at Luther College in Iowa. He holds a PhD in chemistry and an MS in computer science from Stanford University and a BA from Luther College (chemistry and mathematics.) Among other things, he loves science fiction, history, cats and bicycling.

With over 25 years in the software industry and a decade in data and applied science, Agustín Da Fieno Delucchi​ excels in transforming complex data into strategic business solutions. He leverages machine learning and AI to drive innovation and evidence-based decision-making. Leading global, cross-functional teams, he ensures alignment with business goals, data integrity, governance, and compliance. His leadership in AI has been pivotal in internationalization and localization efforts, spearheading innovation in software development. As a polyglot, he creates accessible, culturally relevant technology experiences, driven by curiosity and a commitment to excellence in the evolving tech landscape.

Paul Danter joined Moravia in 2015 with 17 years’ experience in sales, marketing and product management in the software industry. He was responsible for new client acquisition, marketing and new service development before being appointed CEO in January 2018. Prior to Moravia, Paul’s focus was in the converging areas of content and mobile, working with media companies, publishers and broadcasters as they wrestled with the new viewing habits of digital and mobile audiences. He was also involved in two businesses that were successfully acquired. Most recently, he cofounded Mobile IQ, a mobile publishing company, which was acquired by Quark Software. Previously, Paul was part of Argogroup, a mobile service test company, which was acquired by Ascom.

Philip Delaney has worked in the localization field for 20+ years, with experience in localization engineering, project management, operations management and custom software development. He currently works as a business consultant with SDL, helping clients with their global content operating model strategies with a particular focus on efficient technology deployment/enablement. When not working, Philip enjoys crossfit, obstacle course racing, sampling new craft beers and traveling the world with his wife and daughter. Philip lives in Boston, USA.

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.

Francesca Di Marco spearheads Pinterest’s internationalization and global development program, where she fuels her passion for crafting multinational organizations from the ground up. Dedicated to implementing scalable globalization and localization strategies, Francesca excels at connecting teams across functions and regional offices. A lifelong language enthusiast and former lecturer on the history of modern Japan, Francesca channels her curiosity into documentary filmmaking during her downtime.

Emily Du is a lead localization program manager at Meta, where she leads internationalization and localization efforts for Meta’s monetization products. She seeks to drive a localization strategy informed by a deep understanding of the user journey that enables a truly local experience for millions of international users and businesses. Previously, Emily managed localization efforts at Salesforce. She holds an MA in translation and localization management from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a BA in English and Spanish from Shanghai International Studies University.

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

Giulia Dugo is an international experience manager within the globalization team at Adobe Systems. She works on the localization of marketing projects for the Digital Experience Cloud, as well as running the company’s internal community to leverage international speakers. Giulia also manages the team’s brand management and relationships with the regional offices. She holds a joint BA in marketing and international business, with joint minors in French and Spanish from the University of San Diego.

Having worn the hats of terminologist, translator, localization specialist, project manager, trainer, and consultant over the past 20 years in the language industry, Elena Dunne is the head of the global terminology management program at Rockwell Automation and leads a number of strategic brand, content and terminology initiatives. She holds a PhD in translation studies from Kent State University, has published on language project management, was instrumental in creating the PMI Lexicon of Project Management Terms, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Dace Dzeguze is the Dynamic Quality Framework (DQF) product manager at TAUS, a resource center for global language and translation industries. She oversees the DQF product development, works with third party integrators and acts as product spokesperson at international events and conferences. Dace has eight years of experience in the industry, working as a project manager for language service providers in Riga and Amsterdam.

Marcus East is executive vice president product and technology and chief technology officer for National Geographic, based in Washington DC, where he leads the teams responsible for building world class digital experiences for audiences around the world. He has spent half of his career working for technology companies (four years at Apple and six years at IBM) and the other half helping global brands to harness the power of technology — including Comic Relief, Marks and Spencer and National Geographic. In addition to his expertise in delivering value for commercial organizations, Marcus also has a passion for the use of technology to drive positive social change, and spent two years building and leading Comic Relief’s technology function, during which time he drove the delivery of award-winning technology and digital products, including the record-setting donations platform that supports Red Nose Day. He has also advised and acted as a trustee for a number of charities.

Marcus is also very interested in policymaking related to technology, and he has also been involved in a number of government and public sector steering committees and think-tanks. Having lived and worked in the UK, Asia and America, he has an international perspective on the challenges facing organizations and societies today, and how technology affects them — he has strong views on social exclusion, diversity in technology, managing technology talent and how large corporations should react to the challenges and opportunities that the advent of the digital age brings. Marcus is a leading digital and technology expert with nearly 25 years of experience working at the forefront of technology and innovation for organizations across the globe.

Dale Eggett is the lead localization engineer at Lingotek. He has been a professional in the language services industry for the past eight years, before which he studied the industry at Brigham Young University (BYU) and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Dale is also currently an adjunct professor at BYU, where he teaches an introductory localization course.

Rikkert Engels is the founder and director of Xillio which he started in 2004 out of frustration with a migration project he was working on. There must be a better way, he thought, and it involves automation. Xillio has developed a powerful API platform for content integration projects and was awarded “Cool Vender” by Gartner in 2017. In 2019, LocHub was developed on top of this API to help automate multilingual content delivery processes.

Lee Engfer is a senior editor in Mayo Clinic’s global business solutions division, which delivers market-leading health and healthy living solutions to patients and consumers throughout their health journey. Since joining Mayo Clinic in 2012, she has managed strategy and development of health content for voice and mobile apps, websites, wellness programs, books and newsletters. Previously, Lee worked as an independent consultant specializing in health and wellness content. She has degrees in journalism and French and spent a year studying at the University of Strasbourg, France. More recently, Lee’s been attempting to learn Korean but struggles to get past “Annyeonghaseyo.”

John Fennelly is the CEO of Lionbridge. Under John’s leadership, Lionbridge has experienced significant organic growth and continued its global expansion. As CEO, he is leading over 6,000 employees to help businesses connect with their customers around the world. Prior to joining Lionbridge, John was the CEO of HireRight, a leader in the human capital management technology space. At HireRight, he developed and led a major turnaround effort that resulted in record revenue and earnings growth. Prior to HireRight, John held executive leadership positions at a number of information services and technology companies, including Thomson Reuters and Sungard.

Allison Ferch is GALA’s executive director. Over the past 8+ years she has served GALA in several roles and provided leadership for many of the association’s programs and activities including events, partnerships and special initiatives. As executive director, she leads internal operations at GALA and is responsible for the growth of the association, its financial stability, and for the execution and expansion of programs and services to members. Allison has an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology and a master’s degree in library and information science. A lifelong athlete and learner, she enjoys podcasts, reading, swimming and team sports.

Mariah Fike has worked in localization across three different continents, both on the vendor and client sides. Through her many years of experience, she has successfully managed regional localization teams, supported business management of lucrative accounts and provided cultural consulting services, including mobility management seminars at the Spain-US Chamber of Commerce in New York City. In her current role at Netflix, Mariah is a localization program manager on the product user interface team dedicated to improving the local experience for members and future members alike.