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.

Belén Agulló García is a multimedia localization professional with over a decade of experience in the localization industry in various roles in multiple companies, mainly language service providers, research and consultancy firms, and technology service providers. In her professional career, she has touched upon almost every role in the industry, including linguist, project manager, quality program manager, language technology deployment manager, researcher, educator, customer success manager, and vendor relationship manager, among others. This unique mix of experiences gave her a unique and deep understanding of the industry, which she is developing further at Deluxe as AI strategy director. In her current role, Belén’s focuses on leading teams in devising and implementing long-term AI strategies, fostering strategic partnerships, and defining go-to-market strategies for AI services across key verticals. She earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled “Subtitling in immersive media: A user-centered study.”

Based in Paris, Michal Antczak is the head of localization technology for PayPal’s World Ready Team. In his previous roles on the client side, he managed VMware’s localization operations for Asia-Pacific-Japan out of Singapore, led enterprise product localization engineering and quality assurance, as well as tool development teams at Symantec in Poland. Michal also held various positions with major language service providers.

Andras Aponyi is responsible for finding new opportunities in natural language processing to enhance the data services provided by TAUS.

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.

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.

Rahel Ann Bailie is a results-driven strategic consultant. She is an ISTC Fellow, an STC Fellow, an industry author, and has tremendous depth and breadth of experience in operationalizing content. Rahel has a strong track record of developing successful digital content projects, tackling the complexities of managing content to be able to scale content across products and multiple languages when faced with complex content ecosystems.

Juan Baquero has been in the translation industry for 20 years and is currently the team leader of Baquero Translations (BT). Prior to BT, he served as the chief executive officer at Texo SRL for more than ten years. During that time, Juan acquired experience as a translator, editor, and team leader, but above all, he acquired deep knowledge of translation technologies and the translation industry. He is a professor at the School of Languages of the National University of Córdoba, where he teaches business translation, interpreting, and post-graduate courses of financial-legal texts, and simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. Juan holds two university degrees: one in translation, and one in English teaching from the School of Languages of the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. Additionally, he earned a master’s degree in audiovisual translation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

A translator by education and passion, Micaela Belluzzo has been working in the localization industry for over 20 years, both on the translation service provider and client sides. She has lived and worked in various European cities and also spent a significant amount of time in Africa and the Middle East. In the past six years, Micaela has focused on building and maintaining the translation pool of external translation resources for Keywords Studios, assigning them to all of their gaming projects, and performing quality control on translated assets in order to guarantee their clients the best quality possible for each of their games.

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.

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

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.

Andrew Bredenkamp is chair of the board of CLEAR Global, a role he took over in October 2015 from the founder, Lori Thicke. In 2020, he joined the team as CEO of CLEAR Tech. Andrew has been a board member since the organization’s inception in 2010. He has over 20 years of experience in multilingual content development. Andrew is a founder and board member of Acrolinx, a linguistic AI company. Before starting Acrolinx, he was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in modern languages, technical translation, and linguistics, as well as a PhD in computational linguistics. He also serves on the advisory board of a number of organizations.

Richard Brewis, previously a translator, is now responsible for the negotiation and distribution of a wide variety of translation projects into a number of European languages.

David Čaněk is the founder and CEO of Memsource, a software company providing cloud translation technology based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is a graduate in translation and comparative studies, received his education at Charles University, Prague, Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Vienna. David’s professional experience includes product management and business development roles in software and translation industries. He has delivered a number of presentations on innovation and trends in the translation industry including the growing use of machine translation post-editing and cloud translation software.

Zhenhui Chao began as a localization tools developer in 1998 with Lucent Technologies and then moved into globalization QE and management.  Zhen is very interested in new technology trends and is focused on the deployment of those new technologies, including, but not limited to MT, ML, and NLP into current workflow and productions. Innovation and optimization are the two themes for his team.

Alex Chernenko is the CEO and head of localization at TRANSLIT, a complete language solutions provider based in Ireland. His localization and quality assurance career spans over 20 years, during which, he has accumulated vast knowledge on video and multimedia localization, along with an in-depth understanding of the meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions industry by running over 500 events. At TRANSLIT, Alex has built a one-of-a-kind remote simultaneous interpretation software that revolutionizes how event organizers run multilingual events and generate localized media content.

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.

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

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.

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.

Paul Davis started his career working with international bands and DJ’s from Fat Boy Slim to The Chemical Brothers, and managing remix projects for U2 and David Holmes before setting up Davis Events Agency in 2013. While at university, he persuaded Apple to sponsor an internet café and quickly became a believer in the power of technology and AI as a positive force. Having built a successful marketing events agency, Paul brought the firm on an entire digital transformation to create a virtual events and digital marketing agency in 2020. The team has delivered hundreds of cutting-edge virtual and hybrid experiences for clients ranging from government agencies to blue-chip technology giants such as Google, Dropbox, Indeed, Cisco, and Intercom.

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.

Jorge Díaz-Cintas is a professor of translation and founder/director (2013-2016) of the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) at the University College London. He is the author of numerous articles, special issues, and books on audiovisual translation. Jorge is the chief editor of the Peter Lang series New Trends in Translation Studies and the recipient of the Jan Ivarsson Award (2014) and the Xènia Martínez Award (2015) for invaluable services to the field of audiovisual translation.

Nora Díaz is a full-time translator, translation team leader, and trainer who works for clients located around the world, covering every aspect of the translation workflow. Her interest in technology has led her to a constant exploration of productivity tools, and she enjoys sharing her knowledge with other language professionals.

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.

As Zendesk’s senior director of product globalization, Yoko Drain drives globalization for the entire Zendesk product line along with various business partner needs. Since she joined Zendesk in 2012, Yoko has built the product globalization practice from the ground up, and she continues expanding her influence and building agile localization pipelines across organizations. Yoko started as an internationalization quality engineer, and she pursues delivering high-quality, end-to-end software experiences to global users.

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

Ugo Ellefsen holds an honors BA in translation from Concordia University and an MA in audiovisual translation from Roehampton University in London. He has worked as a translator and translation project manager in Quebec, and as a localizer and editor on video game translation projects in the UK and Canada. Ugo’s master’s thesis on the subject of video games was published in The Journal of Internationalization and Localization. He is currently pursuing his PhD in the interdisciplinary humanities program at Concordia University, and his research project focuses on videogame localization and the impact of translation on user experience. Ugo has been a lecturer at Concordia University since 2018, where he teaches translation, and at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Continuing Education since 2021, where he teaches videogame localization.

Bern Elliot is a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner Research. He has been with Gartner for more than 20 years. Bern’s current research focus is generally artificial intelligence (AI), with an added focus on natural language processing, machine translation, and customer engagement and service. His recent research publications include Applying AI – A Framework for the Enterprise and the Market Guide for AI-Enabled Translation Services.

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

Amando Estela has been in technology for 30 years. He started with IBM developing distributed databases and applications, then jumped to expert systems, internet, and finally language technologies.

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.

Nazaret Fresno holds a PhD in translation and cross-cultural studies, as well as an MA in audiovisual translation, and an MA in comparative literature and literary translation. She is associate professor of translation and interpreting at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, in the US where she serves as director of the translation and interpreting programs. Nazaret is also associate chair of the department of writing and language studies. Her research interests include audiovisual translation and media accessibility — subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description.

Lupe Gervás Pabón is the vice president of product engagement and international at Univision Streaming. Previously, she led the localization efforts for Disney+ and Star+, the streaming service arms of the Walt Disney Company. In less than two years, Lupe’s team launched Disney+ in 15 languages. Her prior roles include localization and content operations manager at Quora, global media operations manager at Facebook, and globalization manager at Netflix, where her team successfully launched more than 22 languages across the globe. Before localization, Lupe was a journalist in Spain and the United States.

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.

Alejandro González López is a Spanish translator, proofreader, and editor, specialized in the audiovisual industry. He holds a BA in translation and interpreting from the Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) and an MA in audiovisual translation from the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). Alejandro is a native Spanish speaker, fluent in English and German, who has also lived in the United Kingdom and Germany. He enjoys translating and traveling more than anything in this world. Right now, Alejandro combines translating for dubbing/subtitling with his work for Mercateo Unite, where he’s gaining experience and insight into the marketing and ecommerce field.

Jan Grodecki has experienced localization from different angles and in various roles, from work on the client side as developer, localization engineer, and project manager to the localization supplier side. This knowledge enables him to advise partners in their decisions on localization strategies, technology, and processes. Jan has a passion for education. He has been teaching localization engineering and project management since 2004 at the University of Washington.

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

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

Karin Gut has been an events professional from the beginning of her career. Since 2012, Karin has been a partner and member of the management board of the communications agency, Compresso. Before her agency time, she gained years of experience on the client side as an event manager at the Weisse Arena Group in Flims Laax.

Erica Haims is an international content producer. Her past roles have allowed her a unique vantage point of global content production and content localization. She is a former manager of content production at Apple and has been devoted to marketing localization and globalization. In 2020, Erica served as board sponsor, marketing for Women in Localization. She devotes her current series, Globalization Motivation, to promoting collaboration across peers and partners of the localization industry.

Susie Hamlin is a high-tech marketing executive with a background in advertising, international marketing, global strategy, and localization. In her most recent role as senior director of brand and content marketing, she is creating a marketing-led strategy that unifies brand experiences across advertising, media, sponsorships, and content marketing. The effort encompasses paid, owned, and earned channels ranging from awareness through loyalty. In addition to her core responsibilities, Susie is spearheading the 2021 integrated marketing campaign strategy at Citrix.

Michèle Hansen has been translating and editing for the medical/pharmaceutical and global health sectors for 25 years. Through a good network, persistence, and some good luck, today her clients include translation bureaus, UN agencies, academic institutions, NGOs, and entrepreneurs. Michèle also teaches medical translation and is active in the American Translators Association, where she is the current chair of the certification program and past chair of the French language division.

Michael Harris is an experienced localization technologist with a background in solution architecture, product management, full-stack development, machine translation, business process management, and linguistics, with great people skills and a passion for learning new things.

Madhuri Hegde comes with over 16 years of varied experience in translation, cross-cultural communication, international business, marketing, software localization, and entrepreneurship. Her fascination with different cultures and communication drives her to create language solutions that enable people across the globe to understand one another.

Rachel Hegeman is the globalization lead at Pitney Bowes. She has been with the company for over 25 years and has spent most of those years in the globalization group. Rachel has a BS in French from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Outside of work, she spends her time gardening, biking, and finding ways to lower her plastic footprint.

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

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

Noreen Henry oversees the global commercial team, including sales, operations, and strategic partnerships. With more than 25 years of experience in travel, Noreen drives corporate commercial strategy using the intersection of digital media and online distribution as a guide. Prior to Sojern, she served as CEO of WayBlazer, an artificial intelligence travel technology startup. Before that, Noreen served as chief revenue officer at DHISCO, senior vice president at Travelocity Global, and vice president at Intent Media. She currently serves on the board of directors for smarTours as well as advisor for several companies, including Women in Travel THRIVE, a nonprofit organization. Noreen is a graduate from Harvard Business School, Advanced Management Program and earned a BA from the University of North Texas. On weekends, you’ll find her either paddle boarding, kayaking, or running the trails around Lake Dallas.

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.

Jan Hinrichs is the founder and CEO of Beluga, a European-based translation company that powers scale-ups and global organizations with strong translation and localization teams to run smoothly in over 40 languages. He is also a professional multitasker — especially when participating in online conferences while walking the dogs. Jan is the father of the @LocLunch community, (as Andrej Zito put it), to power conversation and knowledge sharing in and around the translation, localization, and globalization industry. He is also studying about carbon removal and carbon credits.

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.

Jochen Hummel is cofounder and CEO of Coreon GmbH. He also heads ESTeam AB, a leading language operations company. As founder of TRADOS, Jochen established computer-assisted translation as a product category, with Semiox he is reinventing multilingual again. He is an internationally known software executive, business angel, and serial entrepreneur.

Marina Ilari is an ATA-certified translator and CEO of Terra Localizations. She has two decades of experience in the translation industry, specializing in video game localization. Her leadership has propelled Terra to receive accolades like the 2017 Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s Rising Star Award and the 2020 Enterprising Women of the Year Award. In 2023, Terra was listed by Inc. Magazine among America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Passionate about gaming and languages, Marina also co-hosts the translation podcast, En Pantuflas.

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

Magda Jagucka is a localization professional with 20 years of experience in the industry. While an expert in subtitling, in her current role she oversees other aspects of localization: dubbing, scripting, audio description, and DFX localization. Magda is passionate about languages, communication, organizational psychology, and customer experience. She practices mindful leadership and believes big goals are best achieved through a shared vision and shared values. Magda believes that language is a wonderful tool that helps bring people together and make the journey exciting and fulfilling.

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.

Judy Jenner is a Spanish and German business and legal translator, and a federally court-certified Spanish and conference interpreter in Las Vegas. She has an MBA in marketing, and runs her boutique translation and interpreting business, Twin Translations, with her twin sister Dagmar. Judy serves as a spokesperson for the American Translators Association and is the co-author of The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation. She teaches interpretation at the University of California-San Diego and at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Judy is a frequent keynote speaker at translation and interpreting conferences around the world.

After working as a translator and proofreader for over 16 years in the UK, Luxembourg, and Greece for many top global brands, Dimitra Kalantzi is now a computational linguist at lexiQA where she is responsible for the improvement of dictionaries across all supported languages. With an MS in machine translation and a PhD in informatics from the University of Manchester, she has presented at various conferences, and is a member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting in the UK and the European Association for Machine Translation.

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.

Ben Karl is a certified corporate, marketing, and financial communications translator and copywriter from French and Mandarin into English. Since 2013, he has been helping French- and Chinese-speaking companies find or strengthen their English voices in North America. In his spare time, you can find Ben on the beach, in the mountains, or in his garden.

Dominick Kelly has a true love for gaming testing and localization with over twenty years of hands-on experience. As a qualified software engineer, he leads teams implementing CMS, TMS, CAT, and Loc Portals to create automated and agile workflow solutions often integrating GIT, Perforce, PIM, web CMS, and AI Custom NMT elements. Dominick uses creative and design thinking approaches in his work to ensure the core of any challenge is resolved, not just resolving the symptoms that are at the surface.

Maxim Khalilov is currently head of data science at Glovo, a Spanish on-demand courier service unicorn. Prior to that he was director of applied artificial intelligence at Unbabel, a company disrupting the customer service market with machine translation. Previously, he was responsible for collection and exploitation of digital content for the hospitality market as a product owner in data science at Booking.com. Maxim is also a cofounder of a natural language processing company, NLPPeople.com, has a PhD from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona, 2009), an MBA from IE Business School (Madrid, 2016), and is the author of more than 30 scientific publications.

Elliott King is the head of content at Unmind.

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.

Michael Klinger has 25 years of experience in the globalization industry, starting as an interpreter and translation project manager. He is conversant in six languages. Michael established and grew the globalization staffing and localization outsourcing businesses at Winter Wyman Contracts which later became COMSYS. He helped find sellers for COMSYS in the language field. Michael then started Anzu Global and Language Transactions where he grew the language brokerage services business. His current wish is to leverage his business network to support his social venture and charitable work bringing computers and technology to Niger, Africa. Visit www.bokai.org for more information.

Michalina Krogulecka is a team lead and vendor manager with more than eight years of experience in the localization industry. Michalina’s main focus is to develop resourcing strategies for clients based on their requirements, and to build a strong partnership with vendors. All this effort is aimed to meet the clients’ expectations and help them expand their businesses.

Ann Lawless is a vendor manager with CQ fluency, Inc. She has been in the localization industry over 20 years, with much of that time devoted to managing diverse teams, creating scalable solutions to support growth, and fostering strong relationships with localization professionals and teams.

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

Arle Lommel is a senior analyst with independent market research firm Common Sense Advisory (CSA Research). He is a recognized expert in quality processes and interoperability standards. Arle’s research focuses on technology, quality assessment and interoperability.

Mathieu Lonchampt is French and based in Sophia-Antipolis Technology Park, South France. He has spent most of his career at Amadeus looking after project management, IT engineering, and project management of IT engineering. Over the past two and a half years, Mathieu and his team have accelerated their digital ambition by developing and implementing a chatbot solution, new self-services capabilities, and machine translation which has shown rapid benefits for their division and has gradually expanded to the entire company.

Zhenyu Luo joined VMware in 2015 as manager of the VMware test as a service (vTaaS) team. This team is developing an end-to-end testing platform that provides automation and integration service for users from different function teams. It was incubated from an innovation idea and now serves about 3,000 VMware internal engineers across business units and functions.

An industry veteran, Jordi Macias started his career in Madrid, Spain, as a project manager for a company that later became Lionbridge. He is currently leading the machine translation team as well as the product team focused on evolving Lionbridge’s offerings on the technology vertical.

With more than 15 years of localization experience, Ellen Ma is currently the staff localization program manager in globalization at VMware. Previously, she worked for Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Ellen drives the successful delivery of multiple-language translations of multiple content types, offering a consistent and effective localization approach to the global readiness of products and services.

Christos Makropoulos is a seasoned learning and development leader with more than 17 years of experience in the technical and strategic facets of training, eLearning, and all aspects of education. At AstraZeneca he owns the global IT End User Training capability. Christos is also a professional linguist by vocation, with 12 languages under his belt and a number of academic achievements. Since 2020, he has added a pioneering internal language service within his portfolio of services at AstraZeneca, which aims to disrupt the corporate translation landscape.

Carme Mangiron, PhD, is a lecturer, researcher, and the director of the master’s in audiovisual translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She has extensive experience as a translator, specializing in software and game localization. Carme’s research interests include game localization, audiovisual translation, and accessibility to video games and the media. She has published extensively in international journals, participated in several research projects, and is one of the principal investigators of the Researching Audio Description: Translation, Delivery and New Scenarios (RAD), funded by the Spanish Government. Carme is co-author of Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment Industry (O’Hagan and Mangiron, 2013), the first academic monograph on this topic, and she is the main organizer of the Fun for All Conference, about game translation and accessibility, which is held at UAB every two years.

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.

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.

Theo Marube has been with Tamarind Language Services since 2009 and is a UN-certified translator. He has overseen the company’s growth into one of the leading players in the localization industry in (African) East Africa and beyond.

Jakov Miličević is a senior translator/localization project manager whose tenacious and proactive approach has resulted in successfully completing numerous translation and localization projects in different fields. His professional attitude has to develop communication skills and a commercial approach which has helped him to adapt a refined approach of solving multiple problems and developing business in professional manner.

LinkedIn: jakovmilicevic

Binta Moustapha is a Nigerian social entrepreneur and community activist specializing in information technology and innovation for good. She has a degree in science education from the University of Calabar in Nigeria, and worked as a teacher and administrator in several institutions before focusing on social entrepreneurship around new technologies and youth programs. Dynamic and deeply committed to human development, Binta has created and led several initiatives for the benefit of girls and women, notably to promote their participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Very active in new technologies, she has organized and facilitated many innovation-oriented events (hackathons) for different audiences including HACKATHON Hausa which aims to encourage the development of solutions for indigenous languages spoken within the West African subregion.

Stevy Daic Ndjala Totolo is the CEO of Gemini Multimedia Ltd, a multimedia company based in Rwanda that provides services to empower and sensitize young Africans about the opportunities that exist in many online voiceover platforms. Since 2019, he has helped to organize a series of Zoom webinars for African university students, professionals, and unemployed citizens. Stevy’s vision is to build a continent with resilient youth, free from unemployment, and a generation that takes part in the nation’s building of science, technology, and other professional areas because the youth represent the largest age group in Africa.

Daniel Ni is a staff engineer for the VMware globalization team and has been exploring the various globalization verification areas for the past ten years. He is an inventor of screenshot-based technologies to visualize the utilization in globalization. Currently, Daniel takes care of the hands-on globalization issue verification and troubleshooting from different technical perspectives, and focuses on the relevant innovations to empower users in their globalization practice.

Christoph Niedermair was born and raised in Germany and holds an MA in translation (Übersetzerdiplom) from the University of Mainz in Germersheim. He is ATA-certified in English-to-German translation. Since 1994, Christoph has worked as a full-time freelance translator, specializing in technical translation with a focus on IT, software localization, and medical translation for both translation agencies as well as many well-known direct clients.

With over ten years in the tech industry, Cynthia Obioha has a knack for ideating and building products fit especially for emerging market users, and taking them to market. Currently an international product growth lead with a team looking after Africa and Middle East, she is passionate about technology and its potential to enable people to connect and do life easily. Prior to Facebook, Cynthia worked at Google as a solutions consultant covering Africa and Europe on various consumer and enterprise products. She is constantly exploring various topics around human development, empowerment, and leadership.

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.

Sabine Peng is the senior localization program manager at VMware. She has over ten years of experience in the localization and globalization industry, serving both language service providers and buyer-side organizations, mainly focusing on project/program management. Sabine is interested in different use cases of machine translation, industry trends, and how to better serve business requirements from the localization perspective.

Elliot Polak, born in Manhattan, is a product of multiple cultures: American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Irish, Norwegian. His parents couldn’t agree on the right way to brush their teeth due to unbridgeable cultural differences. He is the chief consultant at Social Dividend Global, a company providing strategic insight through online listening for global brands, and awarded Best Strategic Insight Consultancy in 2021, 2020 and 2019. Elliot is also the president of the My XXY Klinefelter Foundation, dedicated to increasing global awareness of one of the least known but most common chromosomal variations in humans that affects over seven million people in the world.

With a CEO background in the localization industry, Shelly Priebe has consulted/coached since 2010. I3 Coaching goes beyond the executive suite with an inclusive model for emerging high potentials. Shelly was cochair of the 2020 ATX Global Leadership Summit. Certified in Energy Leadership Initiative assessments, she delivers iPEC’s Core Energy Coaching to create awareness and intention. Shelly discovered her inner introvert during COVID-19, relishing more time in her tree house office overlooking Lake Austin in Texas. While she wears many hats, being a mom of four, ranging in age from 13 to 27, is her favorite.

Christian Redmann leads the localization organization at Siemens Digital Industries Software. His team provides localization solutions supporting all business domains and content types. With a master’s degree in German and specialization in linguistics, Christian started his localization journey as a translator in 1992. Now a localization leader for over 20 years, he is a key globalization champion at Siemens, driving innovative technology and approaches that reach beyond localization. Having built a localization program from scratch, Christian has firsthand experience with the pitfalls of answering to short-term need and constraints, and the beauty of being able to establish strategies that align with, and help shape the strategic objectives, of the company in providing key value to its customers and users.

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.

For more than 20 years Jon Ritzdorf has been immersed in localization; starting as a translator, transitioning into engineering, and ultimately moving into strategy where he has remained for over a decade. As a former senior solutions architect, he currently crafts globalization strategies for companies ranging from Fortune 100 to start-ups and unicorns. Outside of his full-time job, Jon is also an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and the University of Maryland where he strives to uplift the next generation of professionals in language technology, solutions development, and the business side of the translation industry. In 2012, he received an award in “Teaching Excellence.”

Emeline Robert-Pottorff is a recent graduate from Strasbourg University with a master’s degree in technical communication and localization. She works as an engineering linguist at LinkedIn (via Workforce Logiq) in California. Emeline’s daily tasks involve enriching and managing LinkedIn’s taxonomies for the French market. She is sometimes tasked with localization and quality assurance of internal projects. Emeline also holds a master’s degree in applied foreign languages (English and Spanish) and management from Lyon 3 University in France. After graduating, she had the opportunity to work abroad in marketing and language instruction until settling in the United States where she discovered the localization field through her work experience at RWS. Emeline quickly became interested in localization and wanted to expand her knowledge, which is why she completed her second master’s degree.

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.

Belén Rubalcaba is a localization manager with over 25 years of experience in translation and localization project and program management. She is passionate about localization technology and process efficiency. In her current role, Belén manages the PTC training localization program and is also a vendor manager for the localization department. Having been actively involved with the PTC terminology program since its beginning, she is in charge of driving terminology management across all PTC organizations to ensure that their terminology is accurate, consistent with industry standards, consistent across products, usable, translatable, and accessible inside and outside the corporation.

Martina Russo is a marketing translation and user experience localization specialist, and named one of Nimdzi’s top localization influencers. She started out as a freelancer in 2010, now owns and manages global virtual teams at Moving Words (localization for marketing and technology software as a service) and The Action Sports Translator (translation for the outdoors and adventure sports industry). Martina is looking forward to sharing what she’s learned (and still learning) by growing from solo to managing big teams.

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.

With nearly 20 years of experience in the localization industry, Rujira Saithong is currently working as a vendor manager at Beluga. Her career highlights include helping various film studios ramp up translation resources to prepare for major territory platform launches and streamlining onboarding practices with various companies. Recruitment, training, and feedback all require the personal touch Rujira values most and which she is proud to have developed during her professional career. The vendor manager and the translator form a partnership, and the success of one is invariably the success of the other.

Madalena Sánchez Zampaulo is not like most language service company owners, she is actually a translator herself. With a background in project management, and her translation and interpreting experience, Madalena opened Accessible Translation Solutions (ATS) in 2010 and has maintained her own freelance practice throughout the years. Doing so allows her to fully understand the needs of both the client and the translation team. Madalena holds a BA in Spanish from the University of Southern Mississippi and an MA in Spanish with an emphasis in linguistics from the University of Louisville. She is a Spanish- and Portuguese-to-English translator, and is certified in Portuguese-to-English by the American Translators Association (ATA). She currently serves as ATA president-elect, chair of the Governance and Communications Committee, and conference organizer for ATA61 and ATA62. Madalena is also a consultant for the University of Louisville Graduate Certificate in Translation.

Ben Sargent has worked in the language services industry since 1989, serving in operations, consulting, and marketing roles at companies such as CSA Research, Lionbridge, iXL, Bowne Global Solutions and International Communications. He also helped to found and manage several venture-funded, high-tech startups. He also consults for Global 1000 brands and global technology vendors. He has lived in France and has traveled to China, Canada and Western Europe. Ben has formally studied French and earned a degree in music theory and composition in 1983.

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.