LocWorld49 Malmö Speakers

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.

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

Hilary Atkisson Normanha is a senior product manager specializing in product globalization and localization strategy. With over a decade of experience across fintech, B2B, social media, and music streaming, she has successfully built and scaled localization programs and products in companies of all sizes. Driven by the mission of making technology borderless, Hilary leverages her expertise in localization and internationalization to create globally accessible products that adapt seamlessly to local markets.

Maren Baetje-Mbaye studied applied linguistics and cultural sciences, holds a master’s degree in business psychology, and has been working in the localization industry since 2008. She thrives in her current role as localization project manager for GoTo. managing mergers and acquisitions and spin-off related projects. Maren’s primary preoccupations are figuring out workable practices in organizational development in terms of promoting a global-first mindset. In her spare time, she likes to keep herself busy with industrial and organizational psychology and connect with family and friends around the globe. Maren’s biggest (and yet to be mastered) challenge is to learn the Wolof language.

Olga Beregovaya has over twenty years of experience in language technology, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), global content transformation, and AI data development and is passionate about growing businesses through driving change and innovation. She started her career in language technology building lexicons and rules for rule-based machine translation, gradually expanding her expertise into other broader applications of NLP and ML to enterprise translation workflows. Olga has served as president of AMTA, currently serves as a vice president and technology program sponsor for Women in Localization, and as an advisor for Engineering Leadership at California State University, Chico. She received her MA in linguistics/Germanic studies at UC- Berkeley and MA/BA in linguistics from St. Petersburg State University.

Passionate about growth, mentorship, and technology, Sonya Biernath has built several high-performance teams while creating strategies and workflows to help increase return on investment from recruitment to training, production, and delivery. In her current role, she oversees Deluxe’s Spain client services across dubbing, subtitling, creative post-production, fulfillment, and advertising. Originally from Canada, she received her formal education in Toronto at Ryerson, in Montreal at Concordia, and in New York at NYU. Before joining Deluxe, Sonya worked primarily in marketing, communications, and audiovisual production. In another lifetime, she was an award-winning choreographer who worked under the mentorship of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.

Budapest-born, raised globally, and now a neonative Torontonian, Bruno Bitter considers himself a builder, strategist, technologist, and investor. He started Blackbird.io in 2021 to build an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that can serve as a workflow and decision automation platform for the language industry. Blackbird’s foundations were inspired by Bruno’s experience as CEO of Next Wave Europe, a successful digital agency, and his tenure at memoQ, where he held various roles including chief marketing officer and chief operating officer.

Simone Bohnenberger, PhD, leads the development of Phrase’s leading cloud-based localization technology as chief product officer. Simone brings over a decade of experience at the forefront of data technology and product oversight in leadership roles in the AI products and solutions space. She is known for her ability to unravel insights from complex information, her tenacity, and also her endearing love for her London-based family.

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

Katherine (Kit) Brown-Hoekstra is an STC fellow and former STC society president, a certified trainer for the STC Certified Professional Technical Communicator (CPTC) program and a member of the Colorado State University Media Hall of Fame for the Department of Journalism. She is an experienced consultant with over 25 years of experience in technical communication, much of it working with life sciences companies and localization teams. As principal of Comgenesis, LLC, Kit provides consulting and training to her clients on a variety of topics, including localization, content strategy and content management. She speaks at conferences worldwide and publishes regularly in industry magazines. She recently edited The Language of Localization for the Content Wrangler and XML Press.

Katarzyna Brzozowska has been working with games and localization since 2016. She has been responsible for codeveloping the Testronic localization service and overseeing all project management and coordination duties. As senior localization coordinator, Katarzyna works closely with translators, mentors coordinators, supports a variety of clients, and is involved in all daily operational needs. Her personal interests shift around multiple fields such as visual arts, theory and practice of architecture, photography, films, games, and more.

Henrique is an Engineer by heart, with his background in Computer Science and Business Administration. Before delving into words and languages, Henrique worked in railroad and mining automation with autonomous trucks.

Tim Cadenbach’s focus is spreading the word for DeepL, working with third parties and customers using the DeepL API and running various community activities such as the WeAreDotnet portal. He has worked with Microsoft technologies since Visual Basic 6.0 and enjoys helping fellow developers through mentoring or coaching, writing blog posts, building software development kits, and anything that helps make someone’s workday a bit more enjoyable.

Julia Cassidy has been in the localization industry for over 16 years and has held various roles at tech companies ranging from technical translator, machine translation specialist, language and process engineer to language quality and localization manager. She is passionate about building scalable localization programs that help companies connect and resonate with a global audience. Since early 2021, Julia has been the head of localization at Momentive (the makers of SurveyMonkey) as well as the chapter manager of Women in Localization Ireland.

Amy Catling is a senior localization manager at language learning app, Busuu, and volunteers as the sponsorship manager for Women in Localization UK. She’s certified in proofreading and user experience writing and has an MA in linguistics. Amy’s past work includes researcher for an African linguistics department and marketing copywriter. She briefly lived and worked in Shanghai.

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.

Stephan Cocron is localization program director at Salesforce, where he works both as the localization business manager to a key product group and a key localization team lead in charge of process optimization, technology onboarding, and localization business strategy.

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.

Alex Coope has nearly 20 years of professional IT experience with over ten years specializing in ServiceNow global and multilingual implementations.  He helps customers optimize their way of working and removing languages as a barrier to achieve their ambitious visions and achieve great outcomes.

DeAnn Cougler has over 25 years of experience managing client-side translation and localization for large established companies, mid-sized companies, and startups. She is currently based in Munich at Europe’s largest organization for applied research. In every one of these positions, DeAnn has been responsible for dynamic change management and the reevaluation of vendor selection criteria based on the needs of the organization and the staff. An expert in the benefits of terminology, content management, and organizational best practices, she has spoken on these and other subjects at numerous conferences all over Europe.

Diego Cresceri is founder & CEO of Creative Words. He graduated in translation and interpreting from the University of Genoa. Diego is currently the president of the board of directors of the European Language Industry Association (ELIA). At Creative Words he is responsible for the company’s strategy and growth. When not involved with his own company, he holds workshops and seminars on innovation, artificial intelligence, and machine translation at several universities, training schools, and language associations nationally and internationally. Diego enjoys spending his free time with his family, and skydiving.

Rodrigo Cristina has been loving localization since 2005. With a background in business administration and a limitless passion for all things localization, he is a customer experience champion who believes that technology is, more than ever, shaping our industry, and that a value-driven approach is focused on the localization outcome, not just on the delivery.

Caroline Crushell is a senior technical program manager leading localization engineering efforts at Warner Bros Discovery. Her special areas of interest include automation of workflows and working cross functionally with teams to ensure quality from source. Caroline is also an advocate for the Irish language, writing articles frequently about what is being done and what can be done to keep it as a living language.

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

Tabea De Wille is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick, where she teaches localization, internationalization, and translation technology. She previously worked in games localization.

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

Chris Dell is a multilingual tech enthusiast and has been building technical solutions for over twenty years. Most recently, Chris founded Locale to help language service providers and language teams supercharge their localization workflows.

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.

Veronica Di Martino is a senior localization program manager at Eventbrite with a strong passion for multicultural and creative work environments. With an extensive experience coordinating global teams to deliver successful localization programs, she aims at naturally leading others in the language industry to develop inclusive and inspiring international strategies.

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

Tarrence Egbert has been a software engineer for most of his career. In the past five years, he has revisited his career and emerged as a globalization engineer. Tarrance has worked at about ten different companies and currently resides at Adobe Systems where he has been working for ten years now.  He very much enjoys the globalization community and is proud to be a part of it.

Cecilia Enbäck has more than 25 years of experience in the translation industry and is the CEO of Translator Scandinavia. She is interested in international communication and loves to take on new challenges, regarding projects and new technology. Cecilia is a board member of The Association of Swedish Language Service Providers (Språkföretagen), and also the co-organizer of the Nordic Translation and Interpreting Forum (NTIF).

Bert Esselink has been active in localization for nearly three decades. He worked for many years as a localization specialist and solutions architect, focusing on process management, language technology, multilingual marketing and global content management. In 2000, his book A Practical Guide to Localization was published and since then Bert has continued to contribute to publications on localization including most recently The Language of Localization in 2017 and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology in 2019.

Founder and CEO of Bureau Works, Gabriel Fairman is the father of three and a technologist at heart. Raised in a family that spoke three languages and having picked up another three over the course of his life, he has always been fascinated with the role language plays in identity and the creation of meaning. Gabriel loves to cook, play the guitar, tennis, soccer, and ski. As far as work goes, he enjoys being at the forefront of innovation and mobilizing people and teams together toward a mission.

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.

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

Giada Gerotto is a reckless optimist, a learner-by-doing, and a cat lover. After gaining experience through several roles in the localization industry, she claims she has found her place in vendor management, where she has been for the past seven years. Giada is now the community manager at Creative Words, where she oversees recruitment, development, and monitoring of the company’s network of freelance translators, working hard toward fostering healthy and satisfactory business relationships with all of them.

Rustin Gibbs’ background includes 20 years’ experience forging world-ready software solutions from prospect to delivery. He is a thought leader in the localization industry, advocating for interoperability standards to make emerging language technologies more effective and to make collaborative translation more accessible. Rustin’s expertise lies within technical solutions, solving complex language related business problems. Working alongside the implementation team, he integrates chosen solutions within a client’s business, as well as creating technical proposals and presenting findings to clients. Rustin has worked in a variety of capacities, including product development, engineer, project manager, consultant and solutions architect, and he holds a BA in Japanese from Brigham Young University.

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.

Nancy Hähnel is the general manager for The Netherlands at Acolad group. With 20 years of experience in the language industry, she is a dynamic sales leader, skilled in digital marketing and market insights. Nancy’s practical and constructive approach solves complex issues. She specializes in international business-to-business sales for service, product, and sales as a service. Nancy is passionate about driving growth and creating structure in the business activities of ambitious companies. Her ability to build strong relationships with clients, stakeholders, and team members has helped her achieve impressive results, and her dedication to creating effective and efficient teams is unmatched.

Tom Hartley is an award-winning kids and family content producer specializing in digital and new media platforms. As vice president, digital content at Entertainment One / Hasbro, he has spearheaded shows for internationally loved brands such as Peppa Pig, My Little Pony, and Baby Alive, reaching millions of kids and families around the world and generating billions of views.

Ulrich Henes is the founder and president of The Localization Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based consulting and event organizing company. Already in his early years, Ulrich was fascinated by language, cultural differences, and global business. He spent the first decade of his career organizing international campaigns against the arms race and apartheid; and promoting global social justice. For the past 25 years Ulrich has channeled his passion for all things global into promoting awareness and respect for differences among people, countries, and languages in the international business community.

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

Ralph Jung grew up in the Netherlands and now lives in Dublin, Ireland. He started his career as a Dutch localization specialist at EA Games in Germany then moved to Dublin to join the team of in-house software localization engineers at Microsoft, where he played a key role in localizing the Windows XP operating system into Dutch. Following his departure from Microsoft, Ralph spent some time working as a freelance translator before joining Yahoo! as a cross-market lead editor for multilingual search engine advertising campaigns. After a brief stint at eBay, he became an account manager for a local search engine in Berlin. Back in Dublin, Ralph has been with Dell Technologies for the past 11 years, where he established the video localization program for product launches on Dell.com, which has since been extended and adapted to fit the needs of many other teams. He is also the named inventor on a Dell-owned video localization-related patent.

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.

Michal Kasinski works as senior globalization program manager at Precisely where he oversees the localization of several key programs and works on designing and optimizing localization processes and workflows. A recent point of focus in his work is researching, testing, and onboarding innovative technological solutions related to localization automation and machine translation. Michal has over 12 years of experience in the translation and localization industry in various roles, ranging from translator and quality assurance expert to project and program manager. In his free time, he likes to cook, work in the garden, and watch cartoons with his daughter.

Georg Kirchner leads the machine translation program at Dell Technologies. Before focusing on automated translation and related machine learning capabilities, he managed translation management systems. Early on in his career, Georg spent 17 years on the production side as a staff translator, project manager, and project management office lead.

Mercedes Krimme (she/her) is the Head of International Experience at Notion, where she leads international strategy and localization efforts across Notion’s global offices. She previously led the product localization teams at Spotify and Facebook (Meta), bringing over a decade of experience in solving tough technical and operational problems in the world of translation. An industry leader in transforming localization into a product, she is most proud of the user research she conducted in Brazil and India to adapt tone frameworks for voting during national elections. Currently based in NYC, she’s an avid traveler and language and culture nerd who recently completed her goal of visiting all seven continents.

Steve Lank is the CEO of Denver-based Cesco Linguistic Services. He has worked in the language services industry since 1987, having started out as a translator, then project manager, and subsequently holding senior management positions with language service providers in the US, Ireland, and Spain. Steve served as chairman of the subcommittee that developed ASTM F2575 Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation and recently shepherded the update (now the Standard Practice for Language Translation) to approval. Steve also teaches in the graduate studies in interpreting and translation program at the University of Maryland and earned his MA in Spanish translation and interpretation from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

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.

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.

Sofie Lindblom’s expertise lies in turning complex challenges into concrete plans for organizations to create value and take the lead in their respective industries. During the past ten years, she has led over 100 innovation processes in different roles and organizations. Sophie was the head of innovation at Spotify during an intense growth period and supported companies such as H&M and Electrolux with their innovation strategies. As an entrepreneur, she founded and was CEO of ideation360, a digital platform for collecting ideas and turning them into commercial opportunities. In 2020, Sophie embarked on her second startup journey with SPCE, to solve some of the challenges that emerged with working remotely. She holds several board positions and is an active investor in the Nordic technology ecosystem. Sofie’s motivation comes from the belief that all organizations can be innovative with the right structures and capabilities in place. She has unique experience from having worked with innovation internally as an intrapreneur in large enterprises, entrepreneur in startups, investor, board member, and consultant. Sofie has received several awards for her work with innovation and change management: one of the Top 111 Most Influential Women in Business, one of Sweden’s Top 100 Talents, and one of the Top 50 Most Inspiring Women in Technology in Europe. Sofie’s passion for innovation has made her a very popular speaker on stages around the world including two TEDx Talks.

Lisa Magnusson is a computational linguist and project manager at Fodina Language Technology. Through her background in technical writing and technical sales, she has first-hand experience of the consequences of consistent versus inconsistent terminology. Thus, she can provide both a supplier and an end user perspective on terminology solutions.

Translator by education, manager by trade, Paulina Makles has spent ten years with various language service providers, and recently joined the client side to bring products to life in new markets. Awarded Executive MBA in 2022, Paulina is deeply fascinated by languages, organizational change management, and the way localization enables growth.

Jay Marciano, director of machine translation outreach and strategy at Lengoo, has spent 25 years at the forefront of developing and applying machine translation (MT). He has held senior positions  at SDL (2001-2010) and Lionbridge (2010-2020), where he was responsible for the global strategy of using MT to increase translation efficiency. Jay is president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) and presents widely on MT, AI, and the future of the translation industry. He is a leading figure in building understanding among language professionals of the power and potential of MT and other AI-driven technologies.

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

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

Mike McKenna is a software architect and head of globalization engineering at Square, Inc. and is responsible for next generation globalization frameworks. He has over three decades of internationalization and standards experience and has a background in global user experience design, application design, social games, systems engineering, database internals, localization process automation, and ethnographic research. Mike is also chair of the Unicode CLDR Person Name subcommittee. Before Square, he held globalization leadership positions at PayPal, Zynga, Yahoo! (now OAuth), CommerceOne, and Sybase (now part of SAP), as well as consulting for several Fortune 500 companies.

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

Rose leads the Localization Operations team at Spotify. This team localizes content into 70+ languages for 190+ markets – this includes product, marketing, and other content types. Until early 2024, she led the marketing localization team at Spotify, collaborating closely with local teams to produce multi-market marketing assets and campaigns. Previously, she worked at Amazon in localization and Human Resources roles for close to 10 years, gaining a variety of experience across different business areas.

Claudia Francesca Mueller has over 15 years of experience in content, localization, and translation. She started as a journalist before branching out into various content roles such as content writer, copywriter, content editor, content strategist, managing editor, and transcreator. Claudia’s passion for language, culture, shapes, colors, and design led her to content design, where she can combine all her interests in research, information design, and product development. She currently works as principal content design and localization at Trusted Shops, promoting a strong collaboration between the two disciplines, as she believes they are interconnected.

Lyly Nana is a senior localization program manager at DocuSign. She has over 12 years of experience in the localization industry in various roles, ranging from bilingual text and quality assurance specialist to project and program manager. Lyly enjoys strategizing and building processes from scratch.

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.

Daniela Navarro is an operations-focused, senior program manager on the localization team at Meta. She started her career providing technical support at startups and Google where she discovered her passion for processes, operations, and the localization industry.

Brona Nilsson is a Generative AI Specialist at Oracle. Previously she was machine learning engineer in the Global Language Services group at IKEA. She has held leadership roles in speech technology at various other European companies, including Nuance Communications, SVOX, and Lernout & Hauspie. Before transitioning to industry, she lectured in Natural Language Processing at Trinity College Dublin where she earned a B.A. in Computer Science and Linguistics and a Ph.D. in AI.

Jose Palomares is the director of localization at Coupa, a world-leading business spend management firm headquartered in San Mateo, California. Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, his trajectory in the localization industry spans more than 20 years as a translator, technologist, executive, and entrepreneur. Jose brings his combined experience from the vendor and buyer sides, a lifelong interest in technology, and an outspoken attitude toward how to empower the globalization community. When he is not with his team localizing enterprise assets into 70+ locales, he relishes learning new things, photography, cooking, and not taking life too seriously.

Marina is a linguist and polyglot with experience in academic pursuits as well as management, leadership and innovation. Marina holds a PhD degree in Theoretical Linguistics. Her academic work centered around the exploration of the elementary particles of language within the framework of Nanosyntax. In 2014, Marina transitioned to the world of Localization. For several years, she developed processes and solutions for crowd-based localization, covering technology, BI, linguistic quality, Community management and more. Currently, Marina is heading the Linguistic AI Services Center of Excellence at RWS, dedicating her efforts to the development and implementation of linguistic AI solutions.

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.

Frederik R. Pedersen cofounded EasyTranslate in 2010 at the age of 21 with his close friend Peter Laadegaard. Since 2020, Frederik has served as the sole CEO of EasyTranslate and successfully transformed the former service company into a software-as-a-service company. He has been the main driver for pivoting the business model from a sales-led growth to a product-led growth approach to increase the autonomy of customers. In addition to the goal of empowering customers to unfold their global potential, Frederik strongly believes in the power of generative AI. Always at the forefront of innovation, he leveraged cutting-edge AI technology to challenge the way we think about translation. Instead of translating from one language into another, Frederik sees the future of translation shifting toward directly creating content in different languages.

Olga Petrova leads the localization efforts of launching Hyper Hippo’s games into new regions and manages the full localization pipeline from original copy to localization quality assurance. With over 20 years in video games under her belt, she is passionate about reaching players in their chosen language and has a talent for transforming localization processes from good to great.

Dominique is an experienced executive in localization and AI-driven language solutions, combining a background in economics and management with a passion for innovation. As CRO of Seprotec she specializes in optimizing multilingual workflows, leveraging AI to enhance efficiency, and driving sustainable growth. A dynamic leader focused on collaboration, strategy, and the evolving role of technology in global communication.

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.

Passionate about coaching research and development teams and leveraging technological solutions to drive strategic achievements, Frédéric Queudret is a trusted and reputed professional with a relentless commitment to innovation. With a keen focus on customer satisfaction, he believes in using technology to enhance productivity for enterprises rather than the other way around. As a prolific writer, Frédéric has authored multiple publications in prominent developer magazines and blogs, covering a range of topics including cloud computing, security, and general application development. He is also a seasoned speaker and has delivered engaging talks to audiences of over 100 technical decision-makers. As a technical leader, Frédéric is eager to share his passion, culture, and extensive software development experience with others.

Xinzi Rao is workstream lead for data within the localization area at SAP. She is responsible for data modeling, low-code, no-code strategies and promotion of data literacy. Being a true global citizen and digital native, Xinzi was trained in anthropology, sociology, transcultural studies, and religious studies.

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.

Maribel Rodriguez Molina is a 20-year localization industry veteran. Over the past 13 years, her focus has been on defining and developing the practice of linguistic quality assurance automation. Her mission is to to create best-fit combinations of artificial intelligence applications plus human processes that drive clients’ content life cycles.

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

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

Inés Rubio San Martin is a localization veteran with experience in product and technical documentation, ecommerce, and marketing, among other fields. Her interest in scalability supported by technology and outsourcing solutions drove her to research language AI applications to localization before the Google neural machine translation landmark. Inés currently applies her passion to translation and localization processes at NI (National Instruments), a leader in software-defined automated testing and measurements driven by the concept to #EngineerAmbitiously while connecting people and technology.

Kristy Sakai is CEO of Supertext USA, Inc, a company that takes a creative approach to localization by focusing on how to drive impact with multilingual copy. After a decade of working as a copywriter and transcreator in the UK, Japan, and Germany, Kristy joined Supertext as a language manager. In 2016, she spearheaded Supertext’s expansion to the US, coming full circle to sunny Santa Monica, California. Supertext USA has since helped unicorn startups and multinationals reach global audiences with streamlined strategies and effective copy. Kristy is passionate about writing, multiculturalism, and food.

Martin Salamon is the senior localization manager at ESET. With over 15 years of industry experience, he has worked both on the vendor and the client sides (and everywhere inbetween), which gives him insight into the plight of the translators as well as the predicament of the end-client. Martin is passionate about process improvement and automation.

As a legal linguist, Sarah Sandführ is aware of how even small linguistic nuances can have big differences in multilingual texts. Her team manages the UX of the company’s products in up to 15 languages. Her love for language details, people, and easy-to-use products is what motivates her, and as chapter manager of Women in Localization Germany, she also shares her experience in volunteer work.

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.

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

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

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

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

With 22 years in localization, Kirill has been deeply focused on Translation Quality Management and its automation for the past 10 — as a co-founder, CEO, and CPO of a localization technology company. His most recent interest is simplifying the benchmarking of language AI (LLM and NMT) output quality across various multilingual use cases such as translation, LQA, and more. Formerly a Global Director of Localization at a Unicorn tech company. he’s based in Tallinn, Estonia, Northern Europe. In his spare time, Kirill plays, teaches, and promotes Irish traditional music.

With 20 years of games industry experience under his belt, including spells as executive producer at Eidos and nDreams, Michael Souto brings a wealth of internal and external development production experience to Gridly. His understanding of the development and publishing cycle provides a key knowledge base that enhances Gridly software.

Johan Sporre, Engineering Manager, Digital Global Language Services, is a leader with a great passion in languages, people and technology. His team provides Localization solutions to IKEA, to simplify multi-language communication, to reach customers and co-workers faster with a smaller price tag. They have implemented machine translation, tools and processes to enhance the capabilities of reuse and workflow automation for translations in IKEA, to better connect developers/content creators and linguists in IKEA. He has acquired over 25 years of achievement formulating and advancing revenue-generating projects and led professional teams to execute innovative and sustainable resolutions.

Melissa Sterner studied German and Chinese at the University of Delaware, holds a master’s in translation from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and has been working in the localization industry since 2017. She currently leads localization at LastPass, where she collaborates with teams across the business to ensure that LastPass’ global users are equipped with an authentic, in-language user experience. Melissa is passionate about promoting a global-first mindset and loves learning about new developments in localization technology. In her free time, she enjoys teaching fitness classes, walking her dog, and exploring the food scene in New York City.

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

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.

Joanna Tarasiewicz uses her background in localization project management and leadership skills to lead ATL toward their client’s global success. Outside of work, she enjoys volunteering for Women in Localization as a global community mentoring lead, is a conference speaker and a lecturer, and enjoys cooking and baking for her two daughters, traveling, and stand-up paddle boarding.

Giulia Tarditi is a localization professional with 15 years of experience setting up localization programs and teams on the client-side. She is a regular speaker for localization webinars, panels, talks, and social network debates. Giulia is known for her innovative approach and out-of-the-box ideas, and is highly praised for implementing data-first and highly customized operating models.

Andrew Thomas has been working in the localization industry long enough to have seen translation grow from manual, labor-intensive work to complex, highly automated systems management. Based out of Northern California, Andrew brings a wealth of knowledge and industry experience to his global team as VP of Linguistic AI Marketing at RWS.

Alison Toon has over 25 years of experience in the translation and localization industry with an emphasis in management of translation and localization tools, processes, architecture and operation for content management, and ebusiness services across enterprises. Her experience in these research areas and key projects help CSA Research’s clients gain key insights into the technologies, pricing and business processes key to executive buy-in.

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.

Antonina Vasyukova has more than ten years of experience in the localization industry and three years in the game localization industry. She has worked for international companies and practiced multicultured communication. Antonina lived in China for ten years and six years in Chile and speaks Russian, Chinese, English, and Spanish. She graduated from Harbin Engineering University, China, and has a master’s degree in industrial economics. Antonina loves to travel, learn new things, prefers outdoor vacations and sports, tries to stay curious and open to new opportunities, and her two favorite things are books and food.

Beatriz Verdasco has been in internationalization and localization for over 16 years and has 10+ years of experience leading multicultural and multidisciplinary global teams that multiply growth by bringing digital products to international audiences. She leads localization and global readiness at Trendyol Group, the largest eCommerce company in Turkey and the most valuable private internet company in the EMEA region. Bea is passionate about the combined power of technology and languages to create authentic, inclusive experiences for people across cultures and geographical borders.

Erji Wang is the senior localization program manager at VMware. His main focuses are on new product localization planning, customer feedback, and operation data analytics. Erji joined VMware in 2014, moved to the US in 2016, and loves hiking and cooking.

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