Silicon Valley Global Toolbox Sessions
Tuesday October 10, 2023
The Localization Institute is excited to offer several interactive seminars and round tables as part of the upcoming Global Toolbox Day at LocWorld50 in San Jose, California on October 10. As a co-organizer of LocWorld Conference, the Localization Institute offers these seminars and round tables as separate, stand-alone events. You do not need to be registered for LocWorld50 Conference in order to sign up for these offerings. If you would like to register for the main conference of LocWorld50, please visit the LocWorld website.
Please Note: Global Toolbox sessions have a 24-person limit that cannot be exceeded – register now to reserve your seat!
Full Day Sessions – Lunch Included
Bigger, Better, Faster: The Human Sides of Localization
October 10, 2023 from 9:00am – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $650
Your registration for this session includes lunch.
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Localization professionals wear many hats, often acting as marketers, engineers, program managers, translators, terminologists, and product managers. Being cross-functional implies having expertise in many areas, and localization teams within enterprises are proudly multi-skilled and technological, especially now with more hard skills being added to the day-to-day work, such as product owning AI-based capabilities as part of any and all workflows.
But what about the human side of our jobs? How do we interact, manage relationships, conflict, emotions? How do we manage up, and lead and grow our teams?
In this workshop, we will focus on the human aspects of localization as opposed to tools and intelligent technologies, and on soft skills as opposed to hard skills.
Round Table Topics:
- Mental health*: the realities of tech layoffs, and continually justifying the existence and importance of localization as a function.
- Career growth: how do we nurture our career growth and opportunities for ourselves and our teams.
- Leadership: empathetic leadership, and psychological safety at work for localization teams.
- People skills: what we look for in localization candidates during interviewing and hiring, what qualities help localization professional with the best paths of succession at work.
*Important to note that we are not health professionals, and the discussion will be based on experience and observations.
By joining this round table, you will:
- Interact with localization leaders from various organizations.
- Learn how they approach managing changes and strategies, leading and managing people, and managing themselves in all human aspects of work interactions.
- Be able to benefit from what you will discuss and learn on the day and put into practice.
- Share, learn, and go back home with new relevant knowledge and new questions.
This round table is for:
Humans in localization, people managers and individual contributors alike, technologists and marketers, localization professionals who are eager to share, learn, and grow.
Roundtable Organizers:
- Oleksandr (Alex) Pysaryuk, GitLab
- Daniel Goldschmidt, The Localization Institute
Advisory Board Members:
- Antoine Rey, Argos Multilingual
- Christiane Bark, Freelance Translator
- Giulia Tarditi, Qualtrics
- Maria Kania, Translations.com
- Tarja Karjalainen, Oura Health
Speakers and Moderators
- Hajnalka Sarvari, Meta
- Melanie Heighway, Atlassian
- Tarja Karjalainen, Oura Health
- Christiane Bark, Freelance Translator
- Antoine Rey, Argos Multilingual
- Carrie Fischer, Subway
Location: University of San Jose Meeting Rooms, 1631 N 1st #200, San Jose, CA 95112.
Oleksandr (Alex) Pysaryuk – GitLab. Oleksandr Pysaryuk is a localization leader with experience in building and growing successful teams and disciplines focused on internationalization software development, localization and internationalization technical program management, and global product management in sports technology, telecommunications, consumer technology, human capital management and commerce organizations. translation, terminology and multilingual corpus analysis.
Daniel Goldschmidt – Collaborator – LocWorld. Daniel Goldschmidt is a consultant in software internalization and localization. Prior to that, he served as a senior internationalization project manager at Microsoft in the Cloud and Enterprise Division and led the internationalization team. Before joining Microsoft, Daniel cofounded RIGI Localization Solutions, a venture in the domain of visual localization, and he served as a senior software engineer for the Google internationalization team. He serves as vice-chair of the LocWorld program committee and as a member of the Internationalization and Unicode Conference review committee. Daniel presents frequently at international events. He holds a BS in computer science and mathematics (cum laude) and an MS in computer science, both from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
Antoine Rey – SVP, Customer Development – Argos Multilingual. Antoine Rey 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.
Christiane Bark – Lead Localization Manager – Busuu. Christiane Bark discovered her passion for localization as a volunteer translator for Plan International and decided to make a career of it. She holds a diploma in translation and has worked in both freelance and in-house roles. Currently, as lead localization manager at Busuu, Christiane took over the content team and implemented a new localization process, bringing the quality of both the source content and translated copy to a whole new level.
Giulia Tarditi – Head of Global Experience – Qualtrics. Giulia Tarditi is a localization professional with 15 years of experience setting up localization programs and teams on the client-side. She is a regular speaker for localization webinars, panels, talks, and social network debates. Giulia is known for her innovative approach and out-of-the-box ideas, and is highly praised for implementing data-first and highly customized operating models.
Maria Kania – Board Member, Strategic Global Sponsorship – Translations.com. 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 – Localization Program Manager– OURA. 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.
.
Hajnalka Sarvari – Director of Internationalization – Meta. Hajnalka Sarvari has worked in the field of internationalization throughout her entire career. She has worked on both vendor and client side and has worn many hats. She started her career as a translator and language specialist, worked in project and program management, and is currently leading the Internationalization Team at Meta.
Melanie Heighway – Product Localization Senior Team Lead – Atlassian. 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.
Tarja Karjalainen – Localization Program Manager– OURA. 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.
Christiane Bark – Lead Localization Manager – Busuu. Christiane Bark discovered her passion for localization as a volunteer translator for Plan International and decided to make a career of it. She holds a diploma in translation and has worked in both freelance and in-house roles. Currently, as lead localization manager at Busuu, Christiane took over the content team and implemented a new localization process, bringing the quality of both the source content and translated copy to a whole new level.
Antoine Rey – SVP, Customer Development – Argos Multilingual. Antoine Rey 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.
Carrie Fischer – Globalization Services Manager – Subway. 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.
Multilingual AI Round Table – Feel the Pulse of AI
October 10, 2023 from 9:00am – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $750
Your registration for this session includes lunch
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
The Multilingual AI Roundtable aims to bring together the language user community who are willing to proactively leverage AI technologies, including generative AI, natural language processing (NLP) and machine translation. By working with the AI experts and thought leaders, participants are able to capture the current status, manage the dynamics of change and plan for their own business models based on the present and future development of multilingual AI.
Round Table Agenda/Topics:.
- Modules
- GPT DemoBar
- Landscape overview: current and future development of Multilingual AI
- Keeping AI under control – intelligent quality evaluation, edit distance, quality estimation, alignment (intention and results)
- GPT DemoBar (GPT: Generative Pre-training)
- Adjusting to the new roles created by AI: how humans work with AI, new job opportunities, human-computer interaction
- Managing the dynamics of change in an AI age
By joining this round table, you will:
- Connect the dots between your industry practices and multilingual AI knowledge
- Develop actionable ideas for deploying GPT4 and other MT/AI solutions
- Discuss industry best practices to manage people and AI technologies
- Discover innovative strategies to open new service lines opportunities
- Learn about new frontiers in the AI space
- Make valuable connections with industry peers
This round table is for:
- Decision-makers who aim to leverage multilingual but don’t want to dig into technical details
- Buyers who want to implement multilingual AI
- Project Managers tasked with implementing an MT/AI solution
- Vendors who want to leverage MT/AI to meet their clients’ needs
- IT professionals involved in MT/AI implementation
- Content Managers responsible for global content
Roundtable moderator/organizer:
Peng Wang, The Localization Institute
Advisory board members:
- Olga Beregovaya, Smartling
- Alon Lavie, Phrase/CMU
- Michal Antczak, Paypal
Speakers
- Konstantin Savenkov, Intento
- Georg Kirchner, Dell Technologies
- Konstantin Dranch, Custom MT
Dr. Peng Wang has taught, researched and practiced translation and localization on three continents. She is the convener for EDUinLOC, the chair of the automation/AI track for LocWorld conferences and a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. Previously, she was the CAT Tools Coordinator at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Wang has rich research experience on NLP AI, having worked as a linguistic researcher at the Corpus Research Lab at Northern Arizona University, a domain expert for data mining projects at the University of Maryland and an honorary research fellow on automatic discourse analysis tools at the University of Liverpool. Her current research and practice focus on human learning vs. machine learning, machine translation, terminology and multilingual corpus analysis.
Dr. Wang has published about 30 articles and two books. She is an expert in approaching technology in the context of culture and humanities. She embraces linguistic and cultural diversity in her classrooms, with students aged from 18 to over 70, in over 10 language combinations, coming from UAE, China, Italy, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Colombia, Mexico, and Haiti, to name just a few.
Olga Beregovaya – Vice President of AI and Machine Translation – Smartling. Olga Beregovaya has over 20 years of experience in Language Technology, NLP, Machine Learning, Global Content Transformation and AI Data development and is passionate about growing businesses through driving change and innovation. Olga 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 Machine Learning to enterprise translation workflows. Olga has also served as President of AMTA, currently serves as a Board member of Women in Localization and as an Advisor for Engineering Leadership at California State University, Chico. Olga received her MA, Linguistics/Germanic Studies at UC- Berkeley and MA/BA in Linguistics from St. Petersburg State University.
Alon Lavie is the VP of AI Research at Phrase, where he leads the development of the company’s AI strategy and manages its AI research team in Pittsburgh and Prague. Concurrently, Alon is an adjunct Consulting Professor at the Language Technologies Institute at CMU, where he has been a member of the faculty for 26 years. Prior to joining Phrase, he was the VP of Language Technologies at Unbabel. Prior to Unbabel, Alon was a senior manager at Amazon, where he led and managed the Amazon Machine Translation R&D group in Pittsburgh. Prior to that, Alon was the co-founder, President and CTO of “Safaba Translation Solutions”, an enterprise MT solutions technology startup, acquired by Amazon. Alon is a well-known expert in MT and translation evaluation, and spearheaded the development of the METEOR and COMET metrics. Other research interests and activities include MT adaptation approaches with and without human feedback, translation Quality Estimation, and methods for multi-engine MT system combination.
Alon served as the President of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT) (2013-2015). Prior to that, he was president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) (2008-2012), and was General Chair of the AMTA 2010 and 2012 conferences. He is also a member of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), where he was president of SIGParse – ACL’s special interest group on parsing (2008-2013). In August 2021, at the 18th biennial Machine Translation Summit conference, Alon was honored to be awarded with the 2021 Makoto Nagao IAMT Award of Honour for his contributions to the field of Machine Translation.
Connect with Alon on LinkedIn.
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.
.
Konstantin Savenkov – CEO & Cofounder – Intento. 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.
Georg Kirchner leads the machine translation program at Dell Technologies. He supports three major use cases: MT for down-stream ML tasks, MT for end users, and MT to increase human translator productivity.
Prior to focusing on machine translation and related language automation capabilities, Georg managed translation technology at Dell EMC.
His first 17 years in the industry, Georg spent in translation production as a translator, project manager and PMO lead.
Connect with Georg on LinkedIn.
Konstantin Dranch – CEO – Custom.MT. Formerly of Memsource, where he collaborated on a big data program, Konstantin Dranch runs translationrating.ru, a ranking and research blog for language service providers (LSPs) in Russia and Ukraine. He currently collaborates with the ATC association to survey LSPs in the United Kingdom, and with CNET in France. Konstantin is one of the creators of national translation conferences: Translation Forum Russia and Ukrainian Translation Industry Conference.
Half Day Sessions – $450 per attendee – Lunch Not Included
Influencing to Enact Change
October 10, 2023 from 1:30pm – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $450
Lunch is not included with this session.
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Influencing and change management go hand in hand, and the ability to influence people (and “evangelize,” to use one of the favorite localization buzzwords) is one of the most critical skills for any localizer who wants to enact change to move their team, program, account, or company forward. The ability to influence might seem like this nebulous “soft” skill that some people have and others don’t. However, it’s a skill that can be learned. Through lectures and interactive activities, your instructor Eva Klaudinyova will walk you through organizational, personal and interpersonal skills you need to develop in order to improve your influencing competence.
Takeaways
You will learn about:
- building and using your organizational awareness, relationships and reputation to influence others;
- the different types of leaders and what communication strategies they might respond to best;
- the trust- and competence-building behaviors, and how to use different influencing strategies and currencies to persuade people.
You will also walk away with a list containing additional resources in case you want to dive deeper into any of the presented topics.
Target audience
Anyone who would like to start building or wants to improve their influencing skills! The sooner in your career you develop these skills, the faster and easier your career will progress.
The class is designed for beginner and intermediate “influencers.”
Workshop Organizer:
Eva Klaudinyova
Location: LocWorld50 Conference Hotel – Doubletree by Hilton, San Jose 2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA
Eva Klaudinyova has been leading change in the localization industry since 2000, first rebuilding client accounts working for a language services provider Medialocate, then building localization programs and teams while implementing new globalization strategies for companies such as VeriSign, VMware, and Apple. She is a Cofounder, Board member, and Secretary of Women in Localization. Eva is currently an Associate Professor of Professional Practice at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, imparting her knowledge and longstanding localization and leadership experience to graduate students of translation and localization management. She is from Slovakia, is multilingual, and holds MAs in Foreign Language Teaching and Translation.
Language Data Round Table: Maximizing Linguistic Assets With Language Data: How Language Factories Drive LLM Deployment
- This round table examines a value-driven and inclusive approach to maximizing the leverage of language data
- Learn to capitalize on your content assets with language data operations
October 10, 2023 from 9:00am – 12:30pm
Registration Fee: $450
Lunch is not included with this session.
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Enterprises find linguistic goldmines in their localization departments: bilingual content, translation memories, terminology databases, and sometimes even advanced multilingual knowledge systems. These assets are pivotal for the effective deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs). As the digital landscape evolves, LangOps strategies emerge, mirroring DevOps principles but tailored for language.
The need for language data is indeed not new. It has been feeding some applications and platforms as data labels in the past. Yet, artificial intelligence has made language data business critical to generate correct content in one or multiple languages. It poses new challenges to organizations that have been used to manage content mostly based on the transaction and implementation of files for decades. Converting content assets into relevant and clean language data is the most immediate and challenging imperative in AI-enriched content management. On the other hand the increasing importance of language data comes with opportunities to revisit existing content supply chains as well as roles and responsibilities in order to adapt them to new workflows and enable them with technology.
This roundtable will be a unique opportunity to share views, guidance and experiences with language data and language factories. During this interactive session you will learn:
- How to create concrete value and how all functions in the business should be involved
- How to refine and leverage your linguistic treasures, ensuring precise LLM text generation and seamless deployment in today’s fast-paced business world
- Which technology solutions can help you implement and manage language factories effectively.
We will cover best practices and opportunities from two major perspective:
- Readiness – preparing people, processes and technology to leverage language data in your organization, e.g.
- Who should be aware of language data and understand the value it creates?
- Who should own language data and what governance model should be put in place?
- What business processes should be adapted and optimized for a proper use of language data?
- What is the impact of language data on existing systems and what are the technology solutions to leverage language data effectively?
- Effectiveness – ensuring that people, processes and technology create value with language data in your organization, e.g.
- How to plan the adoption of language data in business processes?
- What are the most valuable applications to use language data for?
- What are the options to convert content assets into language data and what are the new roles to be created to achieve this conversion?
- How should language data-driven workflows be implemented?
Target Audience:
As this round table will cover a number of localization facets in a short time and in an interactive way, it is designed for leaders and practitioners with 2-5 years of localization experience or more than 5 years of international business experience including – yet not limited to – the following roles:
- Marketing directors and managers
- Communication directors and managers
- International project and program managers
- International business analysts
- International user and customer experience specialists
- E-commerce directors and managers
- Language technology experts
- International sales managers
- Content designers, developers and testers
Participants from any industry and any size of business will be welcome. Multinationals, scaleups and startups can send delegates to attend this course.
We will publish additional advisory board members and speakers for this round table soon so please check back.
Roundtable moderator/organizer:
Bruno Herrmann
Advisory board members:
- Jochen Hummel, Esteam/Coreon (www.esteam.se / www.coreon.com)
- Matt Grotenstein, Boston.ai (www.boston.ai)
- Yvan Hennecart, Loquell (www.loquell.com)
Location: LocWorld50 Conference Hotel – Doubletree by Hilton, San Jose 2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA
Please note:
The Round Table’s success depends on people being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage that, we ask the attendees not to record or republish the sessions. No formal minutes or records are kept, but attendees are free to keep their own notes.
Bruno Herrmann – Executive Advisor and Strategic Consultant in Global Content Operations. Bruno is currently consulting with leaders in startups, scaleups and multinationals in various industries to design or optimize their content strategy. He has more than 25 years of experience in international product, content, and customer experience leadership within large organizations and startups, and in various industries such as technology, market research, business intelligence, and life sciences. Until early June 2022, he was the director of localization operations at IQVIA, creating and leading an international team of more than 150 hub-based project managers, content design experts, vendor managers, and internal linguists in the US, LATAM, EMEA, Greater China and APAC.
From 2003 to 2019 Bruno had roles of increasing responsibility in marketing, business operations, and product leadership at The Nielsen Company, including digital globalization leader between 2008-2019 where he was responsible for global content creation, localization, testing, certification, and delivery, product management, and international customer experiences. Before joining Nielsen, he managed online globalization programs at HP and content operations including localization at Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation. Prior to joining Digital Equipment Corporation, Bruno worked in marketing communication and localization startups, taking part in major international projects for high-profile technology clients.
He has been a practitioner, change agent, thought leader, and strategist in data-driven and client-first organizations in various countries, both in the offline and online world. Bruno is a regular speaker, panelist, moderator, and workshop leader during conferences and events around the world.
Jochen Hummel – CEO – ESTeam AB. Jochen is co-founder and CEO of Coreon GmbH. He also heads ESTeam AB, a leading LangOps company. As founder of TRADOS he had established Computer-Assisted Translation as a product category. By driving the LangOps movement and deploying language factories he is again reinventing multilingual. Jochen is an internationally known software executive, business angel, and serial entrepreneur.
Special Half Day Session
Complimentary for LocWorld Attendees
Global Strategy Playbook Workshop
October 10, 2023 from 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Registration Fee: $250 – If you are registered for both days of LocWorld Silicon Valley, the session is FREE for you! Please contact jill@localizationinstitute.com for the free registration code.
Lunch is not included with this session.
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Have you wondered how to convince your management that your globalization or localization function contributes strategic value to the company? Maybe you’re a localization manager on the buyer side, executing more and more productively as you adopt better tools and processes. But still, you’re seen as a mere service in your organization, rather than as a strategic partner? How can you change that perception? Well, there’s a (free) book on the subject, written by a group of successful industry managers, directors, and vice presidents who have met and overcome this challenge. We are offering a workshop with several of the authors to discuss key topics from the book.
- What does it mean to adopt a strategic approach to localization?
- We’re all supposed to be data driven now. But what data? How to get it? How to analyze it and develop appropriate plans?
- Technology continues to evolve at what sometimes seems an alarming pace. You may need a structure to help you evaluate the many possibilities.
- We have multiple stakeholders at different levels of importance and influence. How should we categorize and act on those relationships?
Attendees from both the buyer and provider sides of the industry are welcome, since the lessons from the playbook are relevant to anyone managing the many facets of localization.
Format: Workshop
One of the authors will outline a case study from the book and launch a general discussion based on specific, related questions, enlivened by the experience of the group. We plan to touch on three or four of the chapters in the book in this two-hour workshop.
Authors:
- Melissa Biggs, Locale Solutions LLC (www.localesolutions.com)
- Karen Combe
- Wayne Bourland, Dell Technologies
- Lyena Solomon, ServiceNow
Location: LocWorld50 Conference Hotel – Doubletree by Hilton, San Jose 2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA
To download A Globalization Strategy Playbook: go to Github – https://github.com/GILT-Forum/Globalization-Strategy-Playbook/releases/tag/1.0
Please note:
Minimum number of attendees: 6
Maximum number: 25
Melissa Biggs – Founding Partner – Locale Solutions LLC. Melissa Biggs is a localization veteran with over 25 years of experience in management roles targeting localized products for enterprises. Her career focuses on technical content and localization leadership. Her enthusiasm for localization started at Olivetti Corporation in Italy. Melissa then led a technical publications group at Xerox for artificial intelligence products. She switched fields to focus on globalization strategy at Sun Microsystems, managing localization groups, as well as leading corporate initiatives for global products, and international technology strategies. At Oracle, she contributed to Oracle’s translation products and processes. Melissa also managed marketing localization at Informatica, a data integration company.
In addition to deep corporate localization engagements, Melissa is active in industry and non-profit groups. She has served on localization industry-wide groups, including as charter member of GILT Leaders Forum, TAUS (Translation Automation User Society) and Localization World. In 2022, Melissa contributed as an expert from the GILT Leaders Forum and as a co-author of “The Globalization Strategy Playbook”. She is on the board of the non-profit Global Lives Project, which teaches global empathy through global film and curriculums, and is a mentor for the international TechWomen program.
Her passion is promoting best practices to connect global users with localized product experiences and information.
Currently, as a founding partner with Locale Solutions LLC, she provides localization strategy consulting services for companies in technology. Melissa graduated from Bucknell University and completed communications graduate studies at San Jose State University. In her copious free time, she loves travel (virtual for now), a good read, anything film (film festivals, streaming, etc.), and swimming.
Karen Combe. Karen 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 PTCU, Technical Support, and Marketing. She has been a member of the GILT Leaders Forum, a community of peers in the localization industry, since its inception. In 2022, Karen contributed as an expert from the GILT Leaders Forum and as a co-author of “The Globalization Strategy Playbook”.
Previously, Karen was Senior Vice President at International Language Engineering, where she managed Client Services, Sales and Marketing. Karen holds a B.A in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley and a post-graduate degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She served in the Peace Corps in Senegal and in International Voluntary Services in Algeria.
In addition, Karen worked for 8 years on a ranch in northwestern Colorado training horses and looking after a large herd of cattle.
Wayne Bourland – Director of Translation – Dell Technologies. 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.orked for 8 years on a ranch in northwestern Colorado training horses and looking after a large herd of cattle.
Lyena Solomon – Director of Globalization – ServiceNow. Lyena Solomon is director of localization at ServiceNow where she is responsible for localization and globalization go-to-market process and strategy. She works with multiple business groups to align globalization with strategic, operational, and local market priorities. Lyena practices a data-driven approach to shaping smart digital experiences in languages other than English and defines measurement framework for globalization impact on company and customer success. She has a strong background in analytics, usability and user experience, web development, digital technologies, and marketing.
