Our Current Program Committee Members

Born in Barcelona and a nomad at heart, Olga Blasco has 30 years of experience in the language services industry. After holding leadership positions in Lionbridge and Welocalize, since 2016 she is a growth strategist, M&A advisor and mentor. Her mission is to help organizations increase their value and fulfil their end game through the right investments in talent, technology and M&A. Olga runs Blasco Consulting and is M&A Principal Partner at Lion People Global in Dublin. She is also a non-profit champion, having fundraised and delivered projects for disadvantaged women entrepreneurs in Turkey, and proudly serves on the boards of Clear Tech/Clear Global and Women in Localization.

Inge Boonen is passionate about fostering relationships and building communities within the localization and globalization industry. With an academic background in languages and translation, and nearly two decades of experience, she is dedicated to promoting localization as a strategic revenue enabler. Inge founded the Lessons in Localization Club to provide a safe space for localization leaders to connect, share knowledge, and drive innovation. Her expertise includes international growth strategies, workflow optimization, and enhancing global user experiences. Through her work at Nimdzi Insights, Inge advocates for the value of localization in empowering businesses to expand globally and achieve sustainable success.

Elena Carpanese is a localization leader with several years of experience in global content strategy and multilingual delivery. At DeepL for the past five years, she’s helped build and manage the localization team, scaling operations across 15+ markets. Fluent in English, Italian, Spanish and German, Elena is passionate about how language and technology intersect, and is committed to using AI in localization with a focus on people and cultures.

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).

María Roa Felices is the Director of Marketing and Events at Vistatec, where she drives global brand strategy, industry engagement, and high‑impact events. With deep expertise in localization and globalization, she specializes in elevating thought leadership, fostering community, and increasing visibility for innovative language‑technology initiatives. Known for her strategic mindset and collaborative approach, María plays a key role in shaping Vistatec’s presence across international markets.

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.

Celine Halpert started her career as a translator and conference interpreter working for UNESCO, UNHCR, UNCTAD, and many NGOs. In 2019, she switched to localization, first in the medical device industry and then at Canva. She has spent the past three years leading the Localization Quality and Operations team. She led the implementation of Canva’s AI localization strategy to expand product availability for LOTE users. Celine graduated from ISIT (Paris) and holds 2 master’s degrees from UNSW that combine her passions for languages and social work (MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies and MA in International Social Development).

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.

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

Donna Parrish is co-organizer of the LocWorld conferences. She was publisher of the magazine MultiLingual for 18 years. Prior to her work at MultiLingual Computing, Inc., she was a computer programmer for 25 years. Donna holds a degree in mathematics from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She is presently the secretary of CLEAR Global (Translators without Borders) and CLEAR Tech.

Growing up in a multicultural environment and immersed in localization from an early age, Dominique Puls built a deep connection to languages, culture, and global communication. Today, as Global Chief Revenue Officer for Seprotec, she helps organizations turn complexity into clarity, aligning people, processes, and technology to make multilingual operations scalable, relevant, and future-ready. With over 15 years of experience, she bridges strategy and execution, from AI-enabled localization and workflow design to commercial and organizational transformation. Known for her collaborative, hands-on style, Dominique shares practical insights drawn from real-world leadership and change.

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.

Alex Zekakis has been in the localization industry for more than 13 years, starting off as a localization project manager on the vendor side. After a few years in the industry he moved into different roles, initially leading production teams and then focusing on delivering solutions, before he joined XTM International. Alex currently holds the role of director of support services at XTM International, where he is primarily focused on driving the customer experience throughout presales and onboarding as well as continuous support.