Meet Our Instructors
Mimi Hills
Mimi Hills is a localization industry veteran. She’s 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. She’s passionate about people and finding ways to communicate. Early in her career she worked in college science textbook industry, as well as in technical publications at Apple Computer.
Mimi is active in the localization industry and in diversity and inclusion circles, and is a passionate advocate for the non-English speaking user. Mimi has been a mentor and Impact Coach for over ten years with the TechWomen program, and has traveled to Africa three times with delegation trips. In her spare time, she plays guitar and bass and runs a nonprofit music camp for adults.
Mimi Hills
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Dr. Peng Wang
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.
Dr. Peng Wang
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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John Yunker
John Yunker (@johnyunker), co-founder of Byte Level Research (www.bytelevel.com) is considered one of the world’s experts in web globalization. Since 2000, he has worked with the world’s leading global brands to provide web globalization training and consulting services. Clients have included Google, Adobe, FedEx and Philips, to name a few.
He has pioneered best practices in global navigation and is author of the books The Art of the Global Gateway and Think Outside the Country (also available in Japanese). He is also widely known for the landmark report The Web Globalization Report Card, published annually since 2003.
He has spoken at numerous industry events, including the Unicode Conference, Brand2Global, Internet Retailer, and Localization World. He has a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and an MS from Boston University. He contributes to numerous publications and media, including UX Magazine and Multilingual Magazine
John Yunker
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Melissa Biggs
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. 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.
Melissa Biggs
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Willem Stoeller
Willem grew up in Amsterdam where he obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Amsterdam. After many years in software development, Willem made the move to localization. He has over 25 years of experience in translation, localization, and internationalization of marketing materials, software products, and web content. His focus is on project and quality management and localization strategy/processes improvement.
Willem became a PMP® in 2002 and was very involved with the Project Management Institute where he was a board member of the Portland and Silicon Valley chapters. Training for localization is a top priority for Willem with focus on project, quality and risk management. He is a former professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and he is also the creator and presenter of the Localization Project Management Certification and a roundtable leader for the Project Management Round Table and the Technology Round Table.
Willem Stoeller
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Eva Klaudinyova
Eva Klaudinyova has been working in the localization industry since 2000, leading localization teams and implementing new strategies in some of the most well-known companies in Silicon Valley. She has a linguistic background with experience in translation, review and QA; project and program management experience on the supplier side (Medialocate); as well as experience managing localization teams and programs of all sizes on the buyer side. Apart from the overall globalization strategy, she has implemented a quality management strategy in a then-starting localization program at VeriSign, in a bigger and more mature Globalization Operations program at VMware, and she also built a world-class quality and supplier management program for multiple localization departments at Apple.
Eva is also a co-founder, Board member and Secretary of Women in Localization. She 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 in Translation.
Eva Klaudinyova
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Dr. Nitish Singh
Dr. Singh is the David Orthwein Endowed Professor of International Business at the Boeing Institute of International Business at Saint Louis University. Previously he was a Professor at California State University Chico where he headed the localization certification program. He holds Ph.D. in Marketing and International Business from Saint Louis University; MA University of South Wales, UK; and MBA Pune University India.
His educational efforts have been supported by the US Department of Education, Qatar Foundation, CSU, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and other companies. He serves as grant reviewer and has done grant audits for the US Dept. of Education Business International Education grants.
Dr. Nitish Singh
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Tim Arata
Tim Arata is a Partner at Locale Solutions. Here’s some information about him:
Immediately prior to co-founding Locale, Tim worked for eleven years at Apple. He joined Apple six months before the first iPhone was launched. He then spent 1.5 years managing Localization and Content at WhatsApp. As interesting as that is, it’s actually more interesting to understand his passion around this particular topic and course.
Locale Solutions (and Tim in particular) has long been curious about the ubiquitous us/them aspect of the sales process. Tim’s curiosity remained and grew during his 18+ years in localization. Much of the course’s foundation is built upon questions Tim and his partners have been asking buyers, industry peers, corporate departments, and vendors for well over a decade. Starting Locale finally enabled them to put this training together. Tim and his partners consider this course part of their greater mission to build bridges between buyers and suppliers so that a.) the industry moves forward as efficiently as possible, and b.) higher value-add thinking and conversation can supplant mistrust, useless bickering, and continued misunderstandings.
Tim Arata
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Kristina Podnar
Kristina Podnar is a digital policy innovator. At her core, Kristina understands that for today’s businesses, the internet is full of both promise and peril. Promise because you have more ways to engage more customers than ever before. Danger not only due to content and social media gaffs that could alienate customers and damage your brand, but also due to a regulatory environment that is growing more complex every day, with potentially high penalties for breaking laws you may not even know exist. For over two decades, she has worked with some of the most high-profile companies to balance the risk and opportunity of conducting business in the digital age. Kristina is now focused on helping others master the methodology she has developed and hone their global digital policy chops through her experience.
Kristina is the Principal of NativeTrust Consulting, LLC. She has a BA in international studies and an MBA in international business from the Dominican University of California and is certified as both a Change Management Practitioner (APMG International) and a Project Management Professional (Project Management Institute). Her book, The Power of Digital Policy was published in March 2019. She has lived in the E.U. and U.S., and has experience navigating English, Croatian, Russian, German, Italian, and Japanese.
Kristina Podnar
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Karen Combe
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 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. 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.
Karen Combe
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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Eva Klaudinyova
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.
Eva Klaudinyova
In-Person Course Virtual Course
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