LocWorld41 Presenters

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

Igor Afanasyev is a director of localization at Evernote. During his nine years with Evernote, Igor built localization infrastructure from the ground up to meet the needs of this rapidly expanding startup. In his current role, he supervises internationalization and localization at Evernote, and continues to support and improve localization tools. Igor and his engineering team actively contributes to the open source localization community. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Moscow State University of Printing (Moscow, Russia), and has over 20 years of experience in software engineering and user interface design.

Adam Asnes is the CEO and founder of Lingoport, a company that helps software developers continuously deliver internationalized and localized software, enabling that software to work well in every target language and locale format. Lingoport’s software and internationalization professional services have major impacts on its clients’ worldwide customer outreach and revenue growth. Adam lives and works in Boulder, Colorado and enjoys cycling and all the mountains have to offer.

Patrik Attemark is an experienced leader and has been the CEO of Semantix since 2017. Semantix is a leading language technology company, offering a broad range of translation and interpretation services.

Paul Barth is a director of global accounts for SDL International. For over 30 years, Paul has been in the localization/global content space, providing solutions and support to large enterprises in order to help them overcome their content lifecycle management challenges on a global scale. He has extensive experience in the areas of localization process, translation management software as well as web and component content management solutions.

Medhat Bassily has spent the past ten-plus years exploring the ins and outs of the localization industry. He has held various roles on both sides of the fence, ranging from project and program management to engineering and operational management at three different language service providers. In 2015, Medhat decided to move to the client side as a globalization lead. Currently, he is a principal globalization architect at ADP where his primary focus is to build the infrastructure needed to advance ADP’s global translation strategy at scale.

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.

Leading expert in globalization strategy, tech stack definition and implementation, process automation and change management for global companies looking to expand reach and maximize revenues.

Proficient in all major European languages, Alessandra has dedicated her professional life to advocating for international users and to create, market, and support products and services that engage customers in all continents.

She is the principal consultant of Global Sights Consulting, member of the Board of Advisors of the Process Innovation Challenge, a former Board Member of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).

Ana Boardman-Hsue is a globalization expert with over 20 years of experience. She has led globalization efforts for companies like VMware, Apple and Tesla, driving innovation and process efficiencies across organizations. At Tesla, Ana was responsible for the company’s globalization strategy, consolidating all activities and setting standards across disciplines and departments. She possess a wealth of hands-on globalization experience, and a true understanding of the needs of every team involved in globalization efforts. Ana is passionate about globalization at any level and has the mindset of providing the best experience for all teams involved as well as the end customers.

Tom Boerger is a language and culture aficionado who holds a special fascination with Japan and the Japanese language. After years as a Japanese-English translator, he moved into translation management with Sony Computer Entertainment America. Eight years ago he joined Google as a localization program manager. Tom is currently testing program lead on the Google localization team, managing an ever-expanding menu of vendor-supported testing services as well as solving localization quality assurance challenges for products including YouTube, Android, Google Search and Google Maps. He is thankful for the community of localization professionals around the world who make regular simship launches in 80 languages possible!

Kathleen Bostick is a localization industry strategist and senior consultant. Prior to her current role, she spent seven years as executive vice president of SDL North America, managing the sales and operations teams focused on helping global companies deliver world-class digital experiences to their customers. She has worked in the language industry for more than 25 years. She’s worked with hundreds of top brands in high-tech, financial services, government, life sciences, retail, online media, travel, and more. She has seen firsthand the critical role global content plays in today’s competitive landscape and uses this understanding to help customers accelerate time-to-market and increase global market share. Kathleen has an MBA in marketing and is a highly respected speaker and published co-author on topics such as global business strategy and global social media.

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.

Michele Carlson is a globalization leader with over twenty years of experience in the industry. She is currently working at Apple as a senior marketing localization manager. Previously she served as the globalization director at SurveyMonkey where she spearheaded localization and international growth from the ground-up. She was also the director of localization for Sony Computer Entertainment America where she led the PlayStation localization team. Before Sony, Michele spent eight years at Yahoo! where she held various positions including the director of localization. She is also involved in Women in Localization, where she served on the board, director of global expansion, and the Silicon Valley chapter manager. She holds a BA in international relations from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Dulce Carrillo manages localization for all Sonicare apps at Philips for their connected line of toothbrushes. She was born and raised in Mexico, but as a journalism student always had her eye on foreign lands and languages. Dulce’s travels and studies took her places like France, Germany and the USA, where she currently resides. She transitioned from journalism into the translation and localization fields ten years ago and has held a variety of roles in industries such as court interpretation, video games, life sciences, software as a service, and IoT products. Dulce is a certified localization project manager, ECQA advanced terminology manager and Six Sigma Green Belt. A lifelong learner, she’s currently a technical communication and localization master’s candidate at the University of Strasbourg in France.

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.

Salma Chabbak is a trilingual script editor and translator with over 12 years’ experience. She recently worked for Al Jazeera Media Network. Salma is also involved in localization projects as a linguistic consultant. In parallel with her professional activities, she carries out researches in the field of localization and audiovisual translation, and delivers lectures for undergraduate students on techniques and strategies of translation and rhetoric for translators.

Gaëtan Chrétiennot is the founder and CEO of Six Continents, a boutique LSC based in France. He leads a team of highly skilled translation and localization professionals, delivering innovative solutions to contemporary challenges. Gaëtan values the importance of strong relationships and long-term collaborations. In addition to his role at Six Continents, Gaëtan serves as a senior consultant and shares his expertise with masters students at the University. Gaëtan is a well-respected member of the language industry who loves to bring a French touch around the globe.

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).

Ben is an esteemed global business leader with over thirty years of experience in international operations, content design, globalization, localization, and leadership in diverse business contexts. Specializing in global business and communications, he offers innovative solutions in process, organization, and technology to foster growth and enable effective global communication. With a rich background in technology, global business management, and process optimization, Ben’s work focuses on driving efficiency and growth in global settings, making him a visionary leader in the international business landscape.

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.

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.

Francesca 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.

Ariane Duddey has over 20 years of localization and documentation experience working in different roles on the vendor and client sides. In her career, she has managed localization and documentation projects and implemented processes, always emphasizing the need for global-ready content. In 2016, Ariane joined Broadridge as a bilingual technical writer responsible for documentation and translation. Drawing on her experience in managing multilingual projects, she currently leads a major documentation project, migrating content to a new authoring tool.

Mark Evenepoel previously held senior positions in software development, accounting, IT and business consulting and sales management. He joined euroscript in 2020 to grow and develop what is today Amplexor. Mark is passionate about content management and the content life cycle. He is focused on developing and materializing Amplexor group’s vision and expanding its presence around the globe, driving the group’s transformation in order to face future opportunities and challenges, adapting business models and adopting ever more technology.

Camila dos Ferraz has recently moved into a role as a global business lead at Google, specializing in the travel sector. For the previous five years, she was a measurement and analytics lead at Google, providing large customers with financially grounded industry insights, analytics solutions and recommendations for communicating. Prior to that Camila was head of marketing for a travel company and worked for Google as part of their team in Brazil.

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.

Kristen Giovanis has been an essential part of United Language Group (ULG) since its formation in 2016. In 1994, she cofounded KJ International after recognizing an evolution in global trade and language requirements due to compliance regulations and standardization in safety. Kristen brings an ability to spot industry trends and envision the future, a drive to push industry boundaries, and strong leadership skills to motivate teams at ULG.

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 Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Vitaly Golomb is a mergers and acquisitions and venture capital expert specializing in the transportation and mobility, industry 4.0 and software/internet sectors. Prior to cofounding GS Capital, he was a founding partner at HP Tech Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Silicon Valley’s original startup where he led fund-of-funds and early stage investments and was recognized as a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Star (awarded to the top 1% practitioners in the corporate venture industry). Vitaly led HP’s investment in The VR Fund and served on its advisory committee. He was also the exclusive advisor to Rimac Automobili’s €50M Series B with Camel Group and Porsche and €150M China EV market joint venture. Vitaly is a supervisory board member of the Ukraine Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. He founded three technology and services companies, served as a consistently top-ranked mentor to a dozen global startup accelerators and business schools, contributed to TechCrunch and authored the best-selling book Accelerated Startup.

Vitaly grew up in Cupertino, California, and started his technology career as a teenager. He served as the executive producer of the Startup AddVenture conference across seven countries and appeared onstage as a speaker and lecturer in over 30 more. He is fluent in English and Russian, holds a BA in computer and video imaging from Cogswell College, studied venture capital at Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and is a registered FINRA broker-dealer agent.

Ludmila Golovine is the driving force behind MasterWord, a world-ranked Top 100 company that delivers customized language solutions in over 400 languages. She made a lifetime commitment to quality, innovation, doing business with heart and connecting people across language and culture. Ludmila is the Texas chapter manager for Women in Localization, Translation Commons adviser and professors group chair, and is a member of several professional organizations. She is an advocate of social justice and is a nationally and internationally recognized speaker. Her work has been recognized by numerous awards.

Pedro Gomez has a passion for bringing digital products to billions of users worldwide. At Microsoft he is part of Microsoft News, a publishing platform that delivers high-quality news to users around the world. Pedro leads the team of global product managers responsible for making sure that the products are engaging, locally relevant, efficient to run and globally scalable. As a volunteer, he serves as the vice chair of the Globalization and Localization Association, a global, nonprofit trade association for the globalization industry.

Joshua Gould has worked as an entrepreneur and senior executive in the language, defense and government services sector for almost two decades. As global CEO of thebigword, he oversees the group’s operations across translation, interpretation and defense. With a solid background in global expansion, market development and proven commercial track record, Joshua has demonstrated success in leading cross-functional teams to drive global growth and efficiency. “Our clients are helping to drive fantastic technological innovation within thebigword and the industry. I’m focused on delivering a viable, future-facing commercial strategy, which delivers the solutions our clients are looking for.”

Kristin Gutierrez is a highly respected localization industry expert in leadership development, growth, and strategy, a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and sought-after consultant. With over two decades of international experience, Kristin has excelled as a leader in the localization industry including various roles for Women In Localization, and won a Stevie Award for “Best Use of Thought Leadership in Complex Sales” for her innovation framework. Having demonstrated a consistent record of driving business growth and goal achievement, Kristin is a trusted partner for organizations seeking to thrive. Her expertise translates into valuable insights and actionable strategies that can be readily implemented to foster transformation within teams and companies. Through her engaging and transformative workshops, Kristin passionately advocates for creating positive and productive work environments, leaving a lasting impact on individuals and organizations alike.

Lucio Gutierrez is a seasoned globalization and localization engineering professional. He has led engineering teams to build state-of-the-art globalization and localization technology to support product and content development teams to be launched globally. Most recently at Workday, he led engineering teams to build the next generation of technology to support Workday’s global journey via platforms, teams, and content systems. He achieved this by bridging the gap between legacy and modern technologies with SaaS and platform strategies. His globalization experience spans the software development lifecycle in support of design, implementation, testing, deployment, and delivery. He’s currently working as a G11n & I18n consultant and looking for the next opportunity in his career.

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.

Mary Anne Henselmann is a senior director at ADP and is certified in Localization Project Management. She has expertise in developing programs and processes that solve business problems through innovative thinking and strong project management. Mary Anne currently leads ADP’s translation management services organization whose charter includes implementing industry best practices/technologies, streamlining business processes and helping project teams improve quality while reducing costs and turnaround times.

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.

Udi Hershkovich is the business development manager for speech and language AI services at Amazon Web Services (AWS), leading go-to- market solutions such as media subtitling, call center modernization, in-game multilingual chat and retail and enterprise content localization. Prior to AWS, he was CEO of multiple AI startups including LeanFM Technologies and Safaba Translation Solutions. Udi is keen on inventing and simplifying on behalf of AWS customers worldwide.

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.

Andy Jacobson is a design operations leader for the Amazon business user experience team. He leads operations, research, content and localization across four global design studios. Prior to joining Amazon, Andy spent 17 years leading multiple user experience and software development programs at Blackboard Inc.

Neftalí Jovel started at Indeed as a country marketing associate for its Spanish language markets and wore many hats then, including that of translator, quality assurance analyst, marketer, salesman, client services representative, SEO specialist, scam moderator and more. In 2014, he stepped into the role of localization manager and created the localization team to help continue expansion of Indeed’s global footprint. Since then, Neftalí has grown the team to support every part of the website, helping people get jobs in over 60 countries and 28 languages.

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

Jenny Kang is director of globalization at Veritas, headquartered in Mountain View, California, where she leads a group of 60 employees who are responsible for enabling products for Veritas’s $2.6 billion global business both in internationalization and localization. During her 12 year tenure at Symantec and Veritas, she played a pivotal role in integrating 15 acquired companies for a successful global launch and business expansion, and also in internationalizing and localizing over 100 products across five business units.

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

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

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

Mercedes Krimme leads the product localization team at Spotify across New York City, Stockholm, and London, where they localize all things music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Previously a product localization lead at Meta (Facebook/Instagram), she is passionate about working at the intersection of language and human-centered design. Mercedes previously presented at LocWorld41 Silicon Valley on the topic of testing language patterns and user tone preferences in user experience research. She speaks three languages, is originally from Germany, and lives in Brooklyn with her rescue dog.

Josef Kubovsky serves as the CEO of Nimdzi Insights, a prominent consulting and market research firm specializing in the language services industry. With a background in language technology, localization strategy, and international business development, Josef brings over 20 years of experience, driving growth and innovation in the sector. He is renowned for his strategic vision and expertise in guiding organizations through transformative processes and has successfully led numerous projects for global clients. Passionate about using technology to solve complex challenges, Josef is dedicated to helping businesses navigate the evolving landscape of language services.

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.

Camela Logan is a senior user experience (UX) researcher at Facebook. In her role, she attains a deep understanding of what matters most to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger product users around the world — a dream for someone with a strong conviction in the power of cross-cultural communication like herself. Previously, Camela worked as a UX research consultant for eBay, UN Women and various startups in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. A Ford Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, she also worked in translation (French to English and English to French) throughout her doctoral studies in romance languages at the University of Michigan (specializing in contemporary francophone African expressive cultures), masters studies in medieval and modern languages (French) at the University of Oxford and undergraduate studies in French language and international relations at Brown University.

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.

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.

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

Skip Masonsmith is a leader with over 20 years of management experience in technology, customer support and operations. He is now focused on localization delivery and partnership across Expedia Group’s many brands including Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo.

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.

Allison McDougall has spent just over 20 years in client relationship roles in the global content space. Over the course of her career, she has been a French-to-English translator, a client-side global marketer in the financial services industry and a project manager for a small language service provider that later became SDL. Since then, Allison has created and transformed teams across North America, Europe and Asia to deliver double-digit revenue growth. In January 2019, she was appointed to lead worldwide revenue at Amplexor. She served as president of Women in Localization in 2017 and is the current board sponsor for sponsorships. Allison is passionate about mentorship in the workplace and encourages colleagues to step out of their comfort zones.

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.

With a master’s in African languages and a doctorate in linguistics, Manuela Noske draws upon a deep understanding of language and social behavior to deliver fresh perspectives on the language needs and preferences of customers in emerging markets. She has taken a close look at the role that language plays in creating great user experiences worldwide and through her volunteer work with the Indigenous Language Institute she has gained first-hand experience working with Native American communities in preserving and strengthening their languages.

Véronique Özkaya 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.

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.

Raymond Peng has worked in software internationalization and localization for many years on both the vendor and client sides. Since joining VMware, his focus is not only on VMware product internationalization and localization but also on developing tools to improve the product localization process. He is interested in and seeking to revolutionize the software globalization industry with disruptive technologies and innovations. Raymond has submitted several patent papers and is currently hosting the blogs on software internationalization and localization. He has also authored a business-focused book and video on how to improve the technical presentations.

Chandra Penke is a technical leader in user interface (UI) development with nearly fifteen years of experience. Most recently, he provided technical leadership for the Tesla Infotainment team and played a key role in helping institute best practices for internationalization and localization for the in-car UI deployed across the world. By being part of the creation and development of compelling and exciting products, Chandra shows his passion for providing the best experience to the teams he works with and ultimately the end customer.

Silvio Picinini is a staff machine translation language specialist at eBay. He focuses on creating processes for measuring and improving translation quality, whether from a machine or a human. Silvio has been working with translation quality and as a translator for over 20 years.

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

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

Oleksandr Pysaryuk is a localization leader with experience in building and growing successful teams and disciplines focused on internationalization software development, localization and internationalization technical program management, and global product management in sports technology, telecommunications, consumer technology, human capital management and commerce organizations.

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.

Robert Rogge is the CEO and cofounder of Zingword, a system where buyers of all kinds can find qualified translators in any specialization and quickly staff their translation needs. Translators get professional representation in a platform where they are the center. Robert is also the marketing manager at Wordbee and prior to that, he owned a small language service provider in Barcelona. The Zingword project is launching during the weeks before and after LocWorld41 Silicon Valley, and Zingword expects to raise their first round of investment soon.

Irina Rybnikova is a documentation and localization professional with over 20 years of experience in IT and security companies. She has worked for Kaspersky Lab, Yandex and Positive Technologies, maintaining content creation and localization teams. Irina implements new technologies, machine translation, online help portals, continuous localization and localization quality assurance automation.

Florian Sachse is chief evangelist of memoQ Ltd. where he advocates for memoQ, its strategy, and positioning in the localization industry. He has worked for memoQ since 2013 and previously worked as a C++ developer, developer team lead, head of development, and CTO. One of his first development projects dating more than 40 years back was to get the German umlaut into an English word processor application. In 1998, Florian started working with language technology when PASS Engineering introduced the leading software localization solution PASSOLO to the market. As managing director of PASS Engineering, his initial focus was the development of mission critical software for clinical analyzers.

Joel Sahleen has more than a decade of experience in software as a service (SaaS) internationalization and localization. He is currently responsible for directing the overall internationalization and localization of Domo’s SaaS business intelligence offering, including the backend platform, the middleware services and both web and mobile clients. Joel has spoken at several conferences on leveraging analytics and business intelligence tools to develop a data-driven internationalization and localization program.

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.

Anna Schlegel is the vice president, product, international and globalization at Procore. She has worked in the tech industry in the Silicon Valley for over 20 years, leading teams at NetApp, Cisco, VMware, Xerox, and Verisign. Anna served as the global executive sponsor of NetApp’s Women in Technology organization, where she focused on developing female leaders in the tech industry. She is also the cofounder of Women in Localization, the leading professional organization for women in the localization industry with over 5,000 members worldwide.

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.

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

A localization industry veteran, Gilbert Segura first started working with knowledge management in the 1990’s while at Dell. He then went on to help lead Dell’s first centralized globalization team, managing the technology and finances for millions of words, dollars and global customers. After Dell, Gilbert went to Lionbridge to learn bill of materials management, then to Amazon to work on content management system/translation management system transformation and localization. While in Seattle, Gilbert also worked with Jonckers for several years before trying out Silicon Valley (and finding out he didn’t like it too much). Now in Annapolis, Gilbert works with Compass Languages and Global eLearning as the CTO in charge of digital transformation and automation of multimedia, automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech and neural machine translation processes. The rapid pace of machine learning advancements for natural language processing and natural language understanding technologies is transforming how we communicate and how systems are designed and work together. To quote William Gibson: The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.

Rahul Sharma started his career as a Java developer working for various financial firms before moving to HP. In 2015 he led marketing IT’s split when HP branched into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Rahul now leads the marketing content and communications space under the marketing IT organization; he is currently responsible for supporting the marketing and communications business. Rahul focuses on creating business benefit cases for any new technology development and adoption.

Heather Shoemaker is the mastermind behind Language I/O’s core technology, which eliminates the need for expensive and time-consuming neural machine translation engine training by dynamically selecting the NMT engine that will best translate a given piece of content and imposing company-specific terminology onto any of the many NMT engines. and LLMs integrated into the Language I/O cloud solution. Prior to co-founding Language I/O, Heather was well-known for globalizing code for Fortune 500s. She was also the senior director of Product Management and Globalization for eCollege, which was acquired by Pearson Education during her tenure. While at Pearson/eCollege, Heather and her team built a next-generation, online college education platform, which was launched globally. Heather holds a Master of Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Engineering as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle.

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.

Lori Silverstein, senior vice president sales at SPi Global, draws from over 25 years of business development leadership experience at top tier global brands. She has consistently earned top ranks in new business development as well as go-to-market strategies to launch new markets and data and technology related services. Lori’s areas of expertise include financial services, eLearning, localization and media. She has been with SPi Global for more than seven years and holds a bachelor of science degree from Ohio State University.

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.

Kirill Soloviev is the CEO and cofounder of ContentQuo, an Estonian technology company that helps localization teams, government departments, and Global Top-100 language service providers lower their linguistic quality risk, improve vendor performance, and boost machine translation output quality at scale via a data-driven software as a service platform that integrates with market-leading translation management systems solutions like Wordbee, memoQ, and Memsource. During his 20-year industry career, he has served in diverse vendor and buyer roles — most notably as global director of localization at Acronis, a Unicorn tech company. In his spare time, besides fathering a six-year-old boy, Kirill enjoys playing Irish traditional music on his banjo and drumming to rock tunes. He is also interested in web3 technologies.

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

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.

Andrea Tabacchi is the chief customer officer at Phrase where he utilizes his extensive experience in building customer-centric language technology solutions for multinational corporations and global translation companies. He and his teams work with clients to develop solutions to address their translation technology needs, including innovative ways to optimize the Phrase platform and liaise between clients and internal teams to suggest platform improvements. 

Tex Texin is an industry thought leader specializing in business and software globalization services. His consulting company, XenCraft, provides global product strategy, Unicode and internationalization architecture, implementation and testing. Tex has created numerous global products, led internationalization development teams and guided both startup and enterprise-level companies in taking business to new regional markets. He is a contributor to several internationalization standards for software and on the web. Tex is a popular speaker at conferences around the world and provides on-site training on internationalization, localization and  globalization quality assurance worldwide. He is the owner/author of the popular, instructional www.I18nGuy.com site.

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

Oksana Tkach is an ex-translator converted to data scientist. Her company, Metamova, brings human-friendly innovation into the language industry by leveraging technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), machine translation, neural networks and decentralized data storage. Oksana and her team are passionate about the localization business and language technologies, and hope to prove that data science and NLP are not just snake oil, but could potentially mean a revolution for the better in the translation industry.

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.

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

Mark Walsh is an 18-year veteran of Pixar Animation Studios, where he developed technology and characters for nearly every Pixar feature. He directed the Toy Story short, Partysaurus Rex, supervised animation for Academy Award winners Finding Nemo and Ratatouille, and developed interactive characters for Disney Parks. After Pixar, Mark created Gary the Gull, the first interactive character in virtual reality. He designed Facebook’s new Storytime platform, which connects families through augmented reality. Now the founder and CEO of Motional.ai, Mark is creating relational technology that gives virtual beings the “people skills” to be likable.

Ryan Webb has worked in digital advertising for over 20 years. During that time he’s improved the advertising and website performance of more than 400 companies including Mars, Allianz, Panasonic, Bose, Legoland and Grant Thornton. Ryan’s team improve the measurement and effectiveness of clients’ websites through analytics and conversion optimization. They are currently immersing themselves in the world of localization and working with a variety of groups across Welocalize to improve international digital content performance. Ryan regularly speaks at advertising and conversion and analytics events, sharing client stories and experiences.

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.

Hong Zhang is a senior member of technical staff for the VMware Globalization Engineering team. From Beijing, China, he is focused on software globalization testing for both SaaS and on-premise products. Hong has over ten years of working experience in software globalization testing.