Muhannad Albayk Jaam is the Levantine Arabic language lead with Translators without Borders (TWB). He handles linguistic, quality assurance, and design aspects of Arabic translation. Muhannad has worked as a translator since 2013 and has a wealth of experience and insight regarding Arabic localization, translation, voiceovers, subtitling and so on.

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

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

Marco Angiuoni is a program manager for the VMware product localization team. He has been involved in the localization industry for 20 years, starting as a graduate translator and later moving into team coordination and program management roles on both client and vendor sides. Marco is currently involved in several initiatives aimed at improving VMware localization strategy in terms of ROI and customer satisfaction. In his spare time he can be found playing board games and video games or enjoying a walk with his dog.

Tim Arata has over 18 years of hands-on localization management experience. His expertise spans the entire global content workflow and the technologies that support it. Tim has a passion for building holistic localization strategies and international teams. Prior to cofounding Locale Solutions, he was at Apple where he helped pioneer and manage Apple’s localization processes, technologies, and quality assurance programs. Other experience includes WhatsApp (1 1/2 years where he grew and managed the content and localization teams); Localize Technologies (multilanguage vendor); and Idiom Technologies (the original enterprise translation management system). Tim has long been curious about the ubiquitous us/them aspect of the localization sales process.

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.

Silvia Avary has over 19 years of localization experience working for high-tech companies including Juniper Networks, Symantec, VeriSign, and NetApp. She recently joined Rivian, an electric vehicle automaker and automotive technology company. Silvia is a board member and cofounder of Women in Localization. She is a native of Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese, English and Spanish. Silvia has a diverse background which includes an MBA from San Francisco State University and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, three kids and two dogs.

Carmen Avilés Suarez is the manager of localization at Agilent Technologies, Inc. Her desire to explore new areas moved her from a BS in molecular biology to the localization industry. Carmen brings over seven years of experience in localization project management. She and her global team are currently focused on marketing content of key strategic customer-focused communications for both the chemical analysis and life sciences divisions of Agilent. Carmen is currently leading initiatives for customers across all the different regions Agilent covers, working on terminology management, branding, asset management and operational efficiencies.

Tyler Balding is the courseware quality assurance director at KnowBe4. She has five years of experience in eLearning including building courses and managing the localization and translation of them as well as overseeing a quality assurance team to ensure each course meets customer expectations for excellence and universal accessibility. Tyler has a degree in foreign languages with a specialization in Spanish and a minor in business from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Localization visionary and professional contrarian, Renato Beninatto has done it all – freelance translation, vendor management, sales and marketing, CEO, and everything in between. He has a passion for passing on his extensive industry knowledge to others and helping companies grow. Renato is a co-author of  The General Theory of the Translation Company, an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey (MIIS), and a co-founder of Nimdzi Insights, a market research and advisory firm specializing in the language industry, and co-owner of MultiLingual Media, publisher of MultiLingual magazine.

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

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

Wayne Bourland is recognized as an agent for change, driving innovation and process efficiencies across global organizations. He is currently responsible for translation of Dell.com and marketing collateral for more than 100 organizations across Dell. With no background in linguistics, he approaches the industry with a different perspective, focusing on end value and customer acceptance versus traditional industry key performance indicators. Wayne is a member of the TAUS advisory board and has been published in MultiLingual magazine, The Economist, Brand Quarterly and numerous industry blogs.

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

Puneet Chandra is the country head for Welocalize in India. Based in Delhi, he has extensive experience helping organizations to go global. Puneet previously worked at Wipro Ltd. as chief marketing officer.

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.

Jim Compton is a localization industry veteran, technologist and optimist interested in the application of technology toward big-picture globalization challenges. As the manager of RWS Moravia’s technology partnerships team, he seeks out capabilities that can be leveraged into customer solutions. In his spare time, Jim likes to make rock music on the Commodore 64.

Orla Creaven has eight years of localization experience in program management and sales on the both client and language service provider sides. She is passionate about the promotion of technology for process efficiencies to create space for focus on quality and improving access to language services for everyone.

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.

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.

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

Eulalia Franco is the translations director at Cerner Corporation, a health care software company with more than 30,000 associates across the globe. She has 18 years of experience in software localization. Eulalia has led major internationalization initiatives at Cerner, working closely with the development and certification organizations. The in-house translations team has 35 associates who localize the solutions into seven different languages. Eulalia also leads the external content factory, which has responsibility over the controlled medical terminology and drug content across geographies. Eulalia has a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications and a master’s degree in business administration.

Suzanne Frank is the vice president of global enablement at Vistatec. She works across the Vistatec global sales team to make sure that the sales team is trained on the chosen sales methodologies and has the tools necessary for success. Suzanne also works with the larger account programs within the Vistatec account portfolio.

Morgan Gallup Zhu, a Nimdzi consultant, speaks Mandarin and helps marketers and localization teams scale up global content that fuels revenue growth. She has spent 14 years in China, seven of which were with RWS Moravia where she rose to director. Her responsibilities included focusing on growing their business in China by engaging with the top seven largest Chinese technology companies and building programs for those that were in need of premium localization programs. Morgan regularly speaks at marketing conferences in China and is passionate about teaching marketers to leverage localization best practices to fuel global growth.

Dimitris Glezos is the founder and CEO of Transifex. He built the first version of Transifex in 2007 while he was a graduate student and localization leader for the Fedora project, an open source operating system. Having seen how well Transifex worked and recognizing its usefulness beyond just Fedora, Dimitris decided to leave his PhD program and form a company around the product. Transifex has since grown into a localization automation platform for modern technology companies and open source communities alike.

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.

Anna Golubeva has more than 15 years of experience in translation connected to communication, knowledge management, digitalization and marketing. Her background is in education, linguistics and intercultural communication at Moscow Pedagogical University. Anna enjoys working with languages for the life-at-home brand, as there are so many opportunities and challenges. Having previous experience in retail, marketing and production management, she is currently focusing on multilanguage initiatives at Inter IKEA Systems B.V., a worldwide IKEA franchisor to connect language topics with the business agenda and enable the reach of the brand for more people in the world.

Rocio Gray is a translation and terminology specialist II with Crown Equipment’s global content management group. She grew up in Madrid, Spain and has studied, lived and worked in different countries leading her to do what she loves. After more than five years at Crown and multiple positions within the company, Rocio is currently working with translation and terminology specialists and other departments at Crown to ensure that the company’s localization needs are met. She is career-oriented and a traveler at heart, but her real passion is spending time with her husband and two children. With her busy schedule, Rocio still finds time to decorate and flip houses.

Paulette Haedo has over three decades of experience in digital marketing, technology and data, she is the senior leader who drives growth for both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging her multifaceted expertise in eCommerce, CRM, mobile apps, and other systems, including cruise and reservation systems, HR, financial, shipboard systems, business intelligence and analytics, to increase effectiveness, efficiency and scalability.

Theresa Heim-Stohler is the senior operations manager of localization at Nike. She has 20+ years of experience in the localization industry. Theresa is a graduate of the Monterey Institute of International Studies where she earned a master’s degree in German and Russian translation and interpretation.

Andre Hemker is the CEO of Wordcraft, a comprehensive language service provider specializing in localization solutions architecture, corporate training, text and audiovisual translations, brand language and terminology management as well as text analysis. In October 2020, he also became the CEO of the Luxemburg-based, translation management system developer, Wordbee. After spending more than a decade working in media production and translation, Andre evangelizes for a tight and effective interconnection between creative production and translation workflows. He received a master’s degree in translation from the University of Leipzig.

Susanne Hempel is responsible for linguistic quality management at SAP. She has more than 15 years of experience in linguistic quality review, best practices and guidance. Susanne is currently driving an initiative to find ways to improve the internationalization and linguistic source quality where automated checks are to be integrated into the development environment. She has a degree in translation and regularly participates in industry initiatives about linguistic quality management.

Heather Hepburn is a passionate accessibility evangelist with a background in user experience writing. She developed and runs the accessibility program at Skyscanner, aiming to raise awareness, increase adoption and improve advocacy throughout the business. Heather is working toward not only fully accessible Skyscanner products, but to improve travel for people with disabilities.

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.

Stella Hodkin Paris is a versatile language service industry expert with a passion for languages and a belief in the power of global communication as a driver for change. With over 20 years of experience in language services, she is currently a member of the leadership team at CLEAR Global / Translators without Borders (TWB). As chief language services officer, Stella seeks to leverage the potential of TWB’s community-based model to provide nongovernmental organization partners and United Nations agencies with essential language services and support.

Paula Hunter is a dynamic localization leader fueled by connecting, developing, and empowering people. Over the last ten years at Motorola Solutions, Paula built a high-performing, enterprise-wide localization team from the ground up; a revenue accelerating globalization strategy; and a scalable localization operations program. As a recognized leader and effective change agent, she was promoted into a Director of Business Operations and Chief of Staff role to scale and drive alignment across the growing video security organization. Paula now works as a globalization consultant for Nimdzi, volunteers as a mentor, and is an active speaker in the localization and tech leader communities.

Vicky specializes in LLM localization, AI multimedia, NLP, speech technologies, and GenAI platforms, helping millions of users worldwide experience AI-driven solutions in their own language and market. She collaborates with the top seven foundational AI providers and leading enterprise AI companies to develop AI-infused localization solutions that enhance workflow efficiency and scalability. With a strong focus on human-in-the-loop fine-tuning, she bridges AI and localization to drive industry transformation. Passionate about innovation, Vicky leverages cutting-edge AI to optimize multilingual experiences, ensuring seamless integration of technology across global markets.

Luděk Janda is a graduated linguist with a strong technical background. He started his career as an editor of translated literature. Ten years ago, Luděk joined Red Hat, working first as a global marketing content administrator and now a technical localization manager. His responsibilities include user interface, product documentation translation, automation and machine translation implementation.

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

Rafał Jaworski, PhD, is an academic lecturer and scientist specializing in natural language processing techniques. His alma mater is Adam University in Poznań, Poland where he works at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Rafał’s scientific work concentrates around developing robust AI algorithms for the needs of computer-assisted translation. These include automatic lookup of linguistic resources and computer-assisted post editing. Apart from the research and teaching, he works as a linguistic AI expert at XTM International leading a team of young and talented developers who put his visions and ideas into practice.

York Jin has been working in the globalization/localization industry for 17 years. He is focused on localization technology and toolchain development, especially on translation management systems and machine translation relevant solutions.

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

As localization manager, Laura Joo’s focus is on strategizing and developing test plans for in-context review which assures high-quality localized experiences for global users. She also partners with product and engineering teams on best practices for internationalization. Laura recently celebrated her ten-year anniversary at SurveyMonkey.

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.

Jamie Kincaid is the senior translation and localization manager for KnowBe4 Courseware Services. She is a Project Management Professional (PMP) with experience in laboratory information systems. In 2018, she joined KnowBe4 to manage the eLearning localization effort. Jamie has a bachelor’s degree in international business from St. Petersburg College.

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

While teaching in Thailand, Japan and Turkey, Sue Kocher became fascinated by cultural differences in expression through grammar, words and metaphors. She later applied this experience as a technical editor, promoting global English for software documentation. Meanwhile, Sue noticed that incomprehensible, untranslatable ‘devspeak’ was so ubiquitous in the actual software, nobody questioned it — except the poor translators. Through collaboration and research with translators, she developed guidelines and training for clear UI text. Writers, developers and UX specialists can learn to recognize and correct the top five issues in source texts, resulting in more efficient translation, and a better user experience for all.

Based in India, Rahul Koul is cofounder and chief strategist of Zensciences, a business-to-business marketing agency based in India.

An experienced localization specialist, Natalia Kurysheva has worked in localization on both vendor and client sides, in large international companies and small translation agencies. From 2011-2014 she took part in organizing the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games, working as the translation unit senior project manager. At Agilent Technologies, Natalia manages localization projects as well as onboarding of new localization and project management technologies as a part of corporate processes automation strategy.

Stéphanie Labroue joined SYSTRAN in 2011 as technical account manager, supporting prospects and customers in their machine translation (MT) implementation project. Before joining SYSTRAN, she was a business unit manager at Lionbridge, successfully implemented MT solutions to increase productivity, reduce time-to-market and maximize profits. Today, Stéphanie trains customers in order to maximize the benefits drawn from SYSTRAN’s solutions.

Yves Lang is senior director, business development at Amplexor, based in Colorado. With 30 years of experience in the translation and localization arena and, as a dynamic sales executive, he has a proven record of helping major brands with their global content lifecycle, from digital marketing to international expansion. He loves being a consultant for his customers and has built lifelong partnerships.

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

Donna Liang is a senior technical program manager in globalization at VMware. Prior to that, her twenty years of globalization experience includes working at Adobe and CA Technologies. Donna is a strong program manager, driver and incubator for key initiatives in globalization tools and technologies at VMware.

Marina Malkevich is an industry expert with over 15 years of experience in localization operations. At Verizon Media she is the director of localization services for various brands such as Yahoo, HuffPost, TechCrunch, RYOT, Makers, Engadget, AOL and others. Marina is tasked with international launches for up to 76 countries ensuring that every Verizon Media experience is globally developed and locally relevant to the company’s 900+ million users worldwide.

Claudia Mandalà is a community officer at Translators without Borders (TWB), where the role of her team is to build, manage and engage a diverse global community of over 30,000 volunteer linguists who support TWB’s mission to raise awareness of language barriers, build local capacity in marginalized languages, and enable two-way communication. Before starting out her career as a freelance translator in 2016, she studied and worked at the University of Trieste in Italy, through which she also worked as an intern at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

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.

Rubén Martínez is client success manager at Tilde, a leading European language technology company. He helps clients to overcome language barriers, automate their processes and conquer new markets with the latest language technologies. As a resourceful visionary and savvy leader, Rubén has guided translators, language service providers and even multinational organizations across the globe in successful implementation of machine translation solutions.

As CEO and chief business architect at Group-Q, Diane McAveeney created a new business model for language service providers (LSPs) and language technology providers. In the past, Diane has led revenue growth at top-ranked LSPs, introduced creative programming for broadcast and digital media, and launched a music download service. She is known as an innovative sales architect and organizational leader within the localization industry. Diane brings insight on content, product and service design — and global operations.

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.

Danielle Meder is the senior director of vendor management and quality, interpretations at ULG and ensures that the right interpreter is connected to every call. She is a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter with over 15 years in supporting and advocating for language access and communicative autonomy. Danielle is a licensed trainer of The Community Interpreter International, an internationally recognized interpreter fundamentals training program from Cross Cultural Communications and is currently coauthoring a textbook on remote interpreting for CCC. She is passionate about advocating for quality and effective language access solutions and the advancement of interpreter training.

Kazu Mori is in charge of the localization and marketing strategy for Japan at Wix.com, a platform that makes it easy for everyone to create a professional and functional web web presence. With over ten years of experience in the industry, Kazu is committed to driving growth and building brand awareness in the Japanese market.

Arun Muttreja is an experienced international development consultant working with many organizations in India and the United Kingdom. Previously he worked for 15 years  at Save the Children based in London and India.

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.

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

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

Aline Pereira has worked in the localization industry, in various roles, for the past nine years. Currently, she is a senior localization program manager at Verizon Media, where she created and manages the company’s marketing localization program. In this role, which goes beyond the traditional content localization and transcreation focus, Aline works cross-functionally with all global stakeholders — from product, content, marketing, user experience research, analytics and more. She is also a liaison between regional and central teams to deliver truly international campaigns and products that engage millions of users and drive growth.

Esther Perez is a localization program manager at SurveyMonkey. Her passion for all things cultural and international led her to get a BA in translation and interpreting at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and an MA in audiovisual translation and localization. As the marketing localization lead, Esther spends time partnering with and educating core marketing teams on best practices to engage with global audiences. She has lived in four different countries and is an avid traveler.

Simone Perone joined Translated in 2015 and is currently the vice president of product management. Passionate about technology, in 2007 he joined Venere.com, an online travel agency which was bought by Expedia.com in 2008, where he then handled web marketing strategy as a product owner. In 2011, Simone joined AmicoTravel, an Italian startup, as head of computational marketing. He moved to Dublin in 2013 to join Groupon as EMEA search marketing product manager, driving the growth and designing new products. Simone is presently responsible for the Europarl plenary sessions real-time transcription and for two new audiovisual post-editing products by Translated: Matesub and Matedub.

Luz Pineda is a localization professional currently working as technical project manager, localization for Motorola Solutions. Her introduction to localization was working as localization tester of video games. This experience enabled Luz to understand the importance and need for localization quality across all languages and allowed her to view her own native language under a different light. She spent over nine years in different software testing roles only to go back to her real passion, localization.

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.

Since joining Skyscanner in 2016, Hristina Racheva has focused on setting up a strong localization team and robust processes as well as increasing the team’s visibility and profile inside and outside the organization. Presently, a team of over 15 localization managers and engineers is building internal tailor-made solutions to support Skyscanner’s ambitious mission to lead the global transformation to modern and sustainable travel. When not solving problems for global travelers, Hristina leads Locommunity, an online mentoring community for localization professionals and co-hosts a localization meetup in Barcelona.

Jessica Rathke has 30 years of localization sales experience and is currently the principal at FluentSales LLC, a London-based consultancy that helps translation industry leaders around the world increase revenue through training and consulting services. She holds an MBA and a bachelor of arts in foreign affairs and in German from Miami University in Ohio, USA. Jessica completed post-graduate German studies at the University of Salzburg. She has also been recognized as a translation industry influencer for the past several years.

Rebecca Ray has focused on designing, testing, adapting and marketing software outside of the United States since 1980. She has managed worldwide product design, localization and marketing for successful products sold internationally by IBM, Netscape Communications, Remedy Systems, Symantec Corporation and Sun Microsystems. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish and proficient in Portuguese and Turkish. In her work at Common Sense Advisory, Rebecca’s primary focus is enterprise globalization, social media, multilingual SEO and global product development. Her other coverage areas include outsourcing, testing, multimedia localization and internationalization. A former Rotarian scholar and Silicon Valley veteran, Rebecca was most recently managing editor for the Localization Industry Standards Association. During her tenure, she oversaw all of the association’s research and publications. She also coauthored a book for global high-tech companies on doing business in the United States. Based in Turkey, she has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America for many years.

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.

Kekoa Riggin is a software engineer in globalization at Domo, but comes to this conference as a volunteer for Mozilla’s localization effort. He has a background in translation and localization and a degree in computational linguistics from the University of Washington. What really sparks his interest is applying natural language processing techniques to localization, playing with language corpora and live jazz music.

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.

Kathy Rokni is director of globalization at Netflix, where she leads localization and internalization of Netflix services around the world. Kathy has extensive exposure to cross-cultural dynamics and multinational business practices in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. An international business leader first and foremost, she has led different aspects of international businesses for different companies in Silicon Valley including Google, where she led global content and localization as well as global policy operations. Before Netflix, Kathy was vice president of international operations at Tubemogul, where she led the company’s operational expansion internationally.

Sabrina Romagnoli is a translation and localization professional with 20 years of experience in this diverse and exciting industry. Born and raised in Italy, she moved to the US before embarking on this journey and building her professional experience, benefiting from the many professionals, mentors and translation enthusiasts she met along the way. Sabrina has loved the many roles she has embraced, from translation to managing corporate linguistic quality, and she plans to continue her education and growth in this dynamic environment.

Gregor Rosulnik is the leading generator of GORR’s business, financial and technical development, which he does with passion and devotion. Gregor’s positive energy, outgoing personality and entrepreneurial attitude will not leave you indifferent. Or just wait to see him slaying on a badminton court.

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.

A 15 year localization professional, Pascale Ruimy is an expert in the world of localization management. She currently leads a team in charge of localizing all Gap Inc.’s brands and corporate internal content.

Linda Russheim is the founder of HT Financial Marketing, specialists in financial marketing providing impactful innovative and cost-effective end-to-end marketing solutions for the investment and savings industry. She has 18 years of experience in the financial services industry, with 12 years at Mercer Investments, becoming the global head of marketing for the last five years. Linda has extensive experience in working with clients in marketing transformation, marketing automation, business plans, budgeting, branding, messaging, events and event series, websites, digital (including social media) marketing, SEO, press, integrated campaigns and managing teams.

Gaya Saghatelyan is responsible for globalization enablement at HubSpot. As an internal consultant she enables teams to scale globally and create an equitable experience for users regardless of the language they speak. Gaya was born in Armenia, raised in the United States and now lives in Germany. She’s passionate about language accessibility and education.

Iti Sahai has over 15 years of combined experience in international business and localization, delivering international growth through product-led localization strategy and best practices that fully engage targeted international audiences. Iti champions localization transformation into a strategic function and has been recognized for her ingenuity in identifying solutions that allow organizations to have a global mindset.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As chief executive officer of the Government of Canada’s Translation Bureau, Lucie Séguin oversees the translation, interpretation, and terminology services that the Bureau provides to departments, agencies, and Parliament in Canada’s official languages of English and French, indigenous and foreign languages, and signed languages. She ensures that the Bureau’s professionals leverage the latest technological breakthroughs — including artificial intelligence — and possess the knowledge and skills required to effectively deliver quality linguistic services, now and in the future. Lucie holds a bachelor’s degree in education, a master of public administration, and a Chartered Professional Accountants Canada certification.

Jodi Shimp is the global content and localization strategy manager at Crown Equipment Corporation. She is responsible for designing and implementing a global content and localization strategy for a large manufacturer. Jodi currently leads a high-performing dispersed team of localization experts and content strategists responsible for content processes, governance and software tools. She has seven years of experience in the localization industry.

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.

Amrit Pal Singh is a senior international program manager with Adobe Inc., where he consults and manages localization of multiple Creative Cloud products. He has more than 17 years of experience in IT including 9.5 years in globalization. Amrit’s expertise lies in bringing innovative processes to manage projects, especially those on agile methodology. He is a technovation mentor, encouraging girl students to code. Amrit is eager to talk to anyone about internationalization and continuous localization.

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

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

John Sokol manages localization at Calm, the mental fitness app. In two years, he has overseen four language launches and he particularly enjoys working with the transcreation of dreamy Sleep Stories. John is a linguaphile who speaks fluent French and dabbles in several other languages. He is based in San Francisco.

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.

As part of the Phrase Marketing team, Francesca leads the localization program and the Loc Leaders community program. Francesca has been in localization for over 13 years in both client and vendor roles and she continues to be passionate about languages, curious about technology, and committed to implementing efficient processes.

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.

Willem Stoeller  grew up in Amsterdam where he obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Amsterdam. After many years in software development, he made the move to localization. Willem has over 25 years of experience in translation, localization, and internationalization of marketing materials, software products, and web content. His focus is on project and quality management, and localization strategy/processes improvement. Willem became a PMP® in 2002 and was very involved with the Project Management Institute where he was a board member of the Portland and Silicon Valley chapters. Training for localization is a top priority for him with a focus on project, quality, and risk management. Willem is a former professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the creator and presenter of the Localization Project Management Certification, and a round table leader for the Project Management Round Table and Technology Round Table.

Efrat Strassberg is a seasoned systems analyst with a passion for hands on management of complex IT projects and over 20 years of experience in systems analysis and project management. She has spent the past 15 years at NI, a leader in software defined automated test and measurement systems, where she has gained extensive experience with content management systems, translation software, cloud, community and search. Efrat is an expert in managing and defining international operations team processes, with strong skills in agile methodologies. She holds an MBA and a PMP certificates.

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. 

Min Tan is a localization consultant from Google’s global business solutions team. She has been in the localization industry for almost ten years, working on both the service provider and buyer sides. Most recently, Min worked as the Simplified Chinese language manager for Google. She graduated with a master’s degree in translation and localization management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Rob Thomas has spent over 30 years working with global organizations in streamlining processes, getting new products to market, merging with other organizations and reaching customers where they live. He currently leads new initiatives increasing and enhancing language outreach for FamilySearch and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In these efforts, Rob blends technical vision with people practices for developer, translator and crowdsourcing stakeholders. In the localization space, he has developed a volunteer translation network that is producing 15 million translated words annually in 14 languages. Rob is developing an automated path to optimize SEO in many countries. Currently he is improving the quality of machine translation across less trafficked languages.

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.

Marco Trombetti is a computer scientist, serial entrepreneur, and investor. He cofounded Translated in 1999 and currently serves as its CEO. He recently cofounded Pi Campus, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups, mostly in the AI field.

Miklós Urbán has been in the industry for over 20 years, working both on the language services and the tool provider sides. As an expert in translation automation and machine translation-driven localization, he is building solutions for some of the greatest brands in the world at RWS Moravia. Miklós strives to share his knowledge to the young generation of translation professionals as well as spread the love of the sky as a hobby astronomer.

Jean-François Vanreusel (“JF”) is Director of Globalization at Adobe, where he has been a key architect of the company’s globalization strategy for over 25 years. JF has successfully led a diverse team of international engineers, program and product managers, driving the development and implementation of strategic programs focused on world-readiness, localization automation, quality, and more recently, multilingual AI. His contributions have significantly shaped Adobe’s ability to serve a global audience more effectively. Recognized as a thought leader in the industry, JF is a frequent speaker at major conferences and serves as the co-chair of the GILT Leaders Forum, where he continues to shape the future of globalization in the technology sector. Jean-François holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, and an MBA from the esteemed Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Yasmin Vanya joined Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation) in 2011 and has been the senior localization manager since 2014. She is responsible for managing localization of user interfaces for PlayStation products — PS4, PS3, PS VITA and recently PS5. Prior to that, Yasmin worked at Megnicode (an app development startup) and had a long tenure at Xilinx as localization manger and senior software developer. She has an MSCS and MBA in technology management. Yasmin is a lifelong learner of languages and can speak Burmese, Japanese, Persian, Urdu and basic Arabic. When she is not localizing, she moonlights as a project manager for Burma with Moonlight Humanity Foundation . Yasmin has contributed to the Bay Area community volunteering for more than 15 years through social projects including feeding the homeless, interfaith activities and serving on community-based, nonprofit organizations.

Hartmut von Berg is senior director of localization at GoTo, a company that helps people and businesses do their best work — simply and securely — from anywhere. He serves as the site leader of GoTo’s office in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he drives employee satisfaction, employer branding, and GoTo’s charity and youth education program, GoTo Gives. Over the past three year’s, Hartmut has transformed the localization function at GoTo from a translation service into a globalization consultancy driven by his passion to serve GoTo’s international customer base with compelling localized experiences.

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.

Jolanta Wantuła is a translation program manager with over seven years of experience. She studied at the Institute of Political Sciences in Bordeaux, with an internship at the European Parliament. Jolanta is in charge of Covid-19-related projects, making sure vital information is available in languages and formats people understand. She is passionate about Translators without Borders’ mission.

Paul Warambo is a seasoned translator, localization expert, translation project manager, and trainer with over ten years of experience in the language service industry. He is the Swahili language lead at CLEAR Global, is very knowledgeable of the African language landscape, and understands the language diversity of the African continent. Paul is passionate about the power of language in facilitating global communication and the opportunities presented by the linguistic diversity of the global south. Coming from multilingual and multicultural contexts, he has a wealth of experience in breaking the language barrier through translation and localization.

Sarah Weise is the CEO of award-winning marketing research agency Bixa and the bestselling author of InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z. For 15 years, she has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands including Google, IBM, Citibank, Mikimoto, and PBS. Sarah helps brands achieve a laser-focus on their customers and build experiences that are downright addictive. She lectures at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide.

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

Sue Ellen Wright is a professor of translation studies at Kent State University, Modern and Classical Language Studies. She is also a terminologist, terminology trainer and TBX designer. Sue Ellen is the chair of the US Technical Advisory Group ISO TC 37 for language and terminology and also chair of ASTM F43.96. She is the coauthor of the Handbook of Terminology Management.

Martin Xiao started his career in Beijing as a professional translator in English to Simplified Chinese translations. For over seven years he was a localization project manager on the vendor side before moving to a client company. On the client side, Martin acted as a technical localization program manager for more than five years. Since joining VMware in 2018, he has focused on machine translation (MT) and related programs. In 2019, Martin created the conceptual design and co-led the effort of the MT quality prediction program including part of the coding work from proof-of-concept to production. MT and natural language processing are part of his current focuses.

John Yunker is cofounder of Byte Level Research, the first company dedicated to best practices in website and content globalization. Since 2000, he has published 16 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card. John authored the first book devoted to website globalization, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies as well as the most recent book Think Outside the Country (also available in Japanese). He writes the popular blog Global By Design.

Effective leaders never stop learning. Roman Zelenka leverages that fact in his business consultation services. His 20+ years of working at and leading a family company put Roman in a unique position to guide others through the learning process, while helping them never lose sight of all the amazing humans that make their success possible.

Lindsay Zhang has ten years of experience in the localization industry. At Trip.com she manages the content team at headquarters to deliver the most qualified content worldwide. The content team handles all content related tasks such as translation, transcreation, copywriting, technical writing, content evaluation and so on.