Ask LISA
Profile of Speakers Presenting at the LISA Forum Asia
An international businessman with over 25 years experience in the IT sector, Michael Anobile received a Bachelors of Science degree in communications at Syracuse University, and participated in the Masters degree program in political communications at the University of Maryland.
After relocating his family to Switzerland in 1980 to become European Training Manager for Exxon Office Systems, he subsequently held a number of European and Swiss management positions in the IT and language-technology industries, focusing on global business development and marketing.
A founding member of LISA, and the Managing Director from its inception, he is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Association including outreach programs to other standards organizations (E.g., ISO Category A liaison member, IdeAlliance, Unicode, Openi18N, W3C, OASIS, etc.) and government agencies (E.g., US Department of Commerce, the European Union's Directorate General for Translation along with various Asian, Canadian and European language technology and national standards and trade bodies) as well as its international forums, training programs and industry marketing & public relations projects.
Sophie Hurst is a member of the Institute of Linguists and a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SDL International. She is fluent in French and German, and has worked at various IT companies including Business Objects and Crystal Decisions, through which she has gained a good understanding of the requirements for global information management strategies within organizations.
Alison Toon has worked for Hewlett-Packard in 1991, originally as a usability engineer and technical author with localization responsibilities, for a networks division in Grenoble, France. After several years in this role, Alison moved on to creating, designing and introducing services such as web-based distribution of documentation and software to HP's support engineers.
Alison has been managing her localization program and team since 1997, growing the scope of responsibilities and increasing the team from one to many, and introducing centralized localization workflow tools to HP. The WW Operations CMS Translation and Localization team is now seen as an HP center of expertise for translation workflow.
Since July 2000, Alison has been based in Roseville, California. She manages a worldwide team responsible for the localization of web portals and services, and provides consulting to other HP organizations and program teams.
Before joining HP, Alison worked as an analyst-programmer and as a technical documentation consultant in various companies in the UK and the Netherlands.
Rebecca Ray is a highly accomplished Globalization Consultant and Author with a very successful track record of turning international expansion dreams into reality. Throughout her 27-year career, she has been a pioneer in managing worldwide product design, localization, marketing and distribution for successful products sold internationally by such companies as IBM, Netscape Communications, Symantec and Sun Microsystems.
Ray is the co-author of the book, Doing Business in the USA: Marketing and Operations Strategies for Success. She is currently Managing Editor for the Globalization Insider. Ray is fluent in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Mr. Peltonen has been working in the technical communication business for over 10 years. His main responsibilities are business development and strategic global business. Business process development within technical communication has been one of his main focus areas.
He has been leading the Citec globalisation process by starting subsidiaries and business in Sweden, India and China.
Previous to his job at Citec he was actively working in different positions within management and sales & marketing.
Bobby Liao is the senior product manager for internationalization strategy at Palo Alto, California-based TIBCO Software Inc. During his 13 years at TIBCO, Mr. Liao has worked in product marketing, training, support and client technical services with TIBCO's global 2000 companies in financial services and high-tech manufacturing industries throughout Asia and North America. He is fluent in Mandarin, Taiwanese and English and conversational in Spanish and Japanese. Mr. Liao received his M.S. degree in computer science and undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering both from Stanford University.
Being the senior manager of Shanghai Globalization Lab, IBM China Development Lab, Joyce has the mission of building up a world-class team specialized in globalization solution development, user technological tool development, and consumability enhancement. She leads the team delivering various services, including globalization solution development, globalization tool development, localization tool development, total information experience tool development, and consumability enhancement, etc. Joyce received her master degree of computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1998, and worked for IBM since then. She is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
John Hammond is Director Business Development for CLS Communication (Hong Kong) Ltd., Previously with the Standard Chartered Bank global product development team he has considerable experience in localization, standards and financial services in Asia Pacific. With over 25 years of electronic commerce experience in logistics and supply chain management, he currently serves as "Shepherd" to the E-Logistics group of the Hong Kong SAR Government LOGSCOUNCIL and is a Government appointed non – executive Director of the DTTN (Digital Trade and Transportation Network) Company, and the Hong Kong R&D Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Enabling Technologies. Mr. Hammond is a Round Table Member and the Treasurer of the Hong Kong Chapter of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.
Dr. James Wei has been in the localization industry for more than 10 years. He started his career as an electronic engineer working in CALVT (China Academy of Lunch Vehicle Technology), then after 3 years of working with science and research, he decided to follow his passion to involve himself in business management. After several successful management positions in IT sector, he founded his own company - E-C Translation Ltd. to meet the increasing market requirement in China in early 1997. He is one of the pioneers in China localization industry and wants to share his knowledge on China market with localization community.
Lior joined Net-Translators in its infancy and has successfully led the effort to define the company as a leader in the field of Localization for the Software and Medical device industries. In addition to Lior's responsibilities for managing and directing the marketing and sales team, his duties also include creation and implementation of strategic plans. Lior has several years experience in localization and his familiarity with localization processes and ability to understand the clients' localization needs has enabled Net-Translators to experience extraordinary growth over the past few years.
Hua Duan is the Application & Content Globalization consultant from Hewlett Packard. He was responsible for managing globalization, transformation and localization into more than 30 languages for imaging and printing products from HP. Currently he is responsible to develop application globalization solutions and service portfolios to:
· Help clients to define and implement application globalization strategy resulting in faster international time-to-market delivery of multi-language products
· Prepare clients for streamlined and efficient localization efforts. Work with clients to develop a single and internationalized code base to enable clients reduce R&D costs while accelerating international time-to-market.
Fiona Tan is a Vice President of Engineering at TIBCO Software Inc., responsible for the strategic direction and overall management of TIBCO’s offshore engineering operations as well as product development of numerous product suites, including Adapters, B2B, Master Data Management, Mainframe Integration and Data Integration. Ms. Tan has been with TIBCO since 1995, holding various positions of increasing responsibility in development, architecture, and management. During Ms. Tan’s career at TIBCO, she has led the initial design and development of several key product suites, such as Adapters and the B2B product suite.
Ms. Tan holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
After pursuing Japanese and Chinese studies as well as communication studies (comprising information and documentation studies and applied linguistics) at the University of Bonn (1967-1971), he spent two years in Japan for further studies and research on the history of Japanese education (1971-1973). Being a registered court translator for Japanese since 1976 he founded and ran a private language and consultancy service (1977-1980).
In 1979 he joined the International Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) as a scientific staff member and in 1986 succeeded Prof. Felber as Director of Infoterm and also as Secretary of the Technical Committee ISO/TC 37 “Terminology and other language and content resources” of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Since 1986 he has been a driving force behind the foundation of several institutions, networks and organizations in the field of terminology, such as the “International Network for Terminology” (TermNet), Association for Terminology and Knowledge Transfer (GTW), International Institute for Terminology Research (IITF), East Asia Forum on Terminology (EAFTerm), etc. at international, regional and national levels. C. Galinski is consultant to several intergovernmental organizations (IGO) and international non-governmental organizations (NGO) as well as of institutions in the public sector.
Ms. Chien-Hale is a U.S. attorney specializing in patent and other forms of intellectual property protection in the United States and abroad. She is also the founder of an information-based non-profit organization Institute for Intellectual Property in Asia.
Prior to consulting, she headed the patent practice at Baker & McKenzie’s Hong Kong office. She also worked for other law firms in Silicon Valley including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Fish & Richardson.
Ms. Chien-Hale has substantial technical knowledge in a variety of electrical and electro-mechanical arts, having drafted and prosecuted patent applications in telecommunication, software, wireless and Internet-enabled devices, language-based data processing, semiconductor processing and computer-related mechanical devices. She was also involved in a number of intellectual property litigation cases, including cases in the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court, relating to patent infringements and trade secrets violation.
Ms. Chien-Hale has lectured and written, in both English and Chinese, on the topics of international intellectual property protection and the Chinese constitutional structure. She was a research scholar at the College of Law of the Peking University and taught at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1995. She is a registered patent attorney before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and is licensed to practice in the states of California, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, and a British Solicitor (early 2007). She is also admitted to the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her name has been included in the Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in the World.
Ms. Chien-Hale is also an active participant in the professional organizations. For the American Bar Association, she is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Furthermore, she currently co-chairs the Committee on International Patent Treaties and Laws for the Intellectual Property Law Section, and co-chairs the Joint Task Force between the Intellectual Property Law Section and the International Law Section on PRC Intellectual Property Laws Amendments. She is a co-chair of the Intellectual Property Law Interest Group and the vice-chair of the Pacific Rim Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. She is also the legal counselor of the Silicon Valley-China Wireless Technology Association.
Mr. Cheng entered the Beijing High People's Court in 1982 and subsequently held the positions of assistant judge, judge of the commercial division, judge, chief judge, deputy presiding judge of the IP Division (No. 3 Civil Division) and head of the Intellectual Property Divisionl of the Supreme Court. In January 1985 Mr. Cheng became one of the first judges to hear IP cases in China. As a grade 4 senior judge he has heard numerous influential IP cases and was nominated as one of the world's 50 most important IP practitioners by the British journal Intellectual Property Management (July/August, 2003). Mr. Cheng retired in March 2005 from the Beijing High People's Court and now works as senior consultant in Lifang & Partners specializing in intellectual property matters.
Sanjay is the head of IPVALUE's India operations leading the firm's growth in India. Sanjay, who is based in Bangalore, India, comes to IPVALUE from Oracle Corp. where he served as chief patent counsel with responsibility for Oracle's patent program and related enforcement, defense and licensing issues along with other issues related to technology and intellectual property. Prior to Oracle, Sanjay was in private practice at Fenwick and West in Palo Alto and at Banner & Witcoff in Boston where his practice included patent litigation, prosecution and advising technology companies on multiple IP matters.
Sanjay also worked in the minicomputer industry as a chip designer at Prime Computer.Sanjay is experienced in a range of legal and policy issues pertaining to IP. He has testified before Congress on IP litigation and is a frequent speaker on topics pertaining to IP law. He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Software Patent Institute, the Executive Committee of the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel, the Board of the Intellectual Property Owners Association and as Chair of the IP Counsel's Roundtable of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). He is admitted to practice in California, Massachusetts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and various federal courts.
Sanjay received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in computer engineering, with an emphasis on VLSI design and networking, from Boston University. He received his law degree from Syracuse University College of Law where he was an editor of the Syracuse Law Review.
Zhang Ling is an advisory software engineer working for the Shanghai Globalization Lab (IBM China Software Development Lab) on IBM globalization solutions & tools development. He has a lot of experiences on globalization software development, software internationalization/localization with Java/J2EE/Web and other technologies/platforms. He is interested in programming, globalization, information management, Web 2.0 and many other software/Internet technologies.
A multi-cultural entrepreneur educated in Switzerland and the United States, Cyrill Eltschinger has more than a decade of experience working in the China market. Prior to I.T. UNITED, he spent eight years with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) on various assignments in Europe, the United States, and Asia-Pacific. He was eventually posted to China as Head of Technical Infrastructure to establish and lead the country-wide information and communications systems and automation of General Motors.
Anticipating the trend towards global IT outsourcing, he identified China as an emerging major player. In 1998, he and a group of former EDS colleagues started I.T. UNITED. The company today is one of the most trusted China-based outsourcing services providers with a reputation for delivering cost-effective IT solutions that make technology smarter, easier, and more productive.
Based on his expertise in the IT field, Cyrill acts as a strategy advisor for the TORCH Center, the technology-focused agency of China’s Ministry of Science & Technology (MOST), and is a subject expert matter at the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) Technology Council, briefing executives both on the technology industry and the China market. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Finance from the Texas A&M University and a certificate in Systems Engineering Development from EDS. Away from the office, Cyrill serves as Chairman of the Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, as Governor of the Board at the Capital Club, Beijing’s premier private business club; he is also the Founding President of the Texas A&M University China Club. Before joining the private sector, Cyrill was an Officer in an elite unit of the Swiss Special Forces. He is also an enthusiastic aviator and holds the first private pilot’s license issued to a foreigner in China since 1949.
Charles Pau has many years of experience in software localization and globalization. He is Director, International Product Management for Lotus Development Corporation where he is responsible for international product features and translation requirements for all Lotus products. He is also Director of Globalization Architecture and Technology for IBM Software Group where he is responsible for defining an overall architecture that will facilitate globalization and monitoring enabling technologies that allow IBM products to work in multiple languages. He is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joined Lotus in Singapore and established the Lotus Asia Product Development organization.
Prior to joining Lotus, he held a number of Asia regional management positions at Cullinet Software Inc and Data General Corporation. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science from Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Chris joined SDL International in August 2006 as their first Chief Marketing Officer. In this role he is responsible for all Worldwide Marketing Operations – with particular focus on driving the brand awareness of SDL and expanding their global enterprise marketing initiatives.
Chris brings more than 15 years’ marketing experience to SDL International. Prior to his current position, he worked as Vice President of Marketing for Salesforce.com and VERITAS Software where he was responsible for European marketing.
Having moved across from OpenVision when VERITAS acquired the company, Chris grew the marketing team from two employees to over 70 full-time staff. Prior to OpenVision, he also held various key positions at Oracle, including Product Marketing Manager.
Chris has a Doctorate in Engineering, a master’s degree in cryogenics and a first class degree in Physics from Southampton University.
Mr. Gronski joined Cisco Systems, Inc. as a Director of Software Development for IOS. He subsequently managed groups involved in developing Voice and Security software for Cisco platforms. During his career at Cisco Systems, Inc. Mr. Gronski was responsible for software development on various hardware platforms including AS5300, AS5800 and Cisco 12000.
In the summer of 2004 Mr. Gronski assumed the responsibility for the establishing and managing Cisco China R&D Development Center. He is presently stationed in Shanghai and manages the site as well as product development activities.
Prior to Cisco Systems, Inc. Mr. Gronski spent over 20 years working in Data and Telecommunications Industries. He managed software and hardware development groups for Hybrid Networks, Silicon Graphics, Xerox and General Electric.
Mr. Gronski obtained his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1974.
Brian Sonet joined Adobe Systems in December 2000 as a Group Program Manager. During his tenure, Mr. Sonet has developed strategic plans and schedules for managing small to large-scale localization and international engineering projects and initiatives for the development of the company's Creative Solutions digital imaging software products(Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Camera Raw, Lightroom, etc.). As a Group Program Manager, Mr. Sonet has recently assumed the additional ownership for localizing and internationalizing Adobe's Knowledge Worker Solution's software (Acrobat, Connect). He has a direct staff of five international program managers supporting the international development of the products under his responsibility. Mr. Sonet has worked on several initiatives at Adobe in the areas of incremental development modeling and process efficiencies in response to the many global challenges facing Adobe and other software industry leaders.
Mr. Sonet holds an M.B.A. in Computer Information Systems, earned a B.S. in Quantitative Analysis and holds a CCP certificate (Certified Computing Professional). He is currently working on his Ph.D. degree, researching multinational corporations in China and studying Chinese management practices.
Xiaohong is a senior software engineer of the globalization team at TIBCO Software in Palo Alto, CA. She heads a number of localization initiatives and manages compliance for key product releases. Prior to join TIBCO, she worked as a senior software engineer at Quadbase Systems in Santa Clara, CA, where she led several internalization projects for their business intelligence (BI) toolsets.
Dr. Junbo Liu has over 18 years of software product development and IT operation management experience. He has worked at various Silicon Valley start-ups and established companies, in the role of founder, CEO, VP of technology, architect, engineering manager, and principle engineer. In the IT management role, Junbo has been responsible for the completion of Sales and Supervision of IT Projects in Millions of US dollars. Since 2003, he went back to China for taking the executive management positions at SureKAM and Nstek, two leading IT service providers in Beijing. Currently, Junbo is the Executive Vice President of Worksoft Creative Software Technology, a leading outsourcing service provider in China, in charge of its US operation.
Junbo has profound IT industry experiences in areas such as Telecom and Networking Systems, Business Process Management System, Enterprise Software, Language Design and Compilation.
Junbo got his Ph.D in Germany in 1994, and is academically recognized as a leading researcher in automated programming construction technology, with many publications in international conferences and journals. He got a US Air Force software award for his outstanding work in building a high performance resource allocation system in 1999.
Junbo is also socially active in helping community leveraging and promoting new technologies. He has served as chief representative for China Ecommerce Association in Silicon Valley, and as a member of the selection committee of California NGI program in 2002.
Eric Silberstein founded Idiom in 1998 and is the company's visionary, focusing on globalization practices and product direction. He takes personal responsibility for customer relations and for maintaining a company culture that is committed to customer success and team enrichment.
While completing his Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science at Harvard University, Silberstein served on the founding team of Chipshot.com as vice president of technology. During summer positions at Microsoft, first in the Redmond office and then in their Beijing office, Silberstein worked on the localization of Microsoft Word. Silberstein has founded and directed several volunteer youth programs, travels extensively in Europe and Asia, and speaks Chinese and Russian.
Mrs. Signe Rirdance is a true professional of the language industry, with over 10 years of management experience in localization, technical writing, terminology and translation. As the Director of EuroTermBank, a recently launched multilingual terminology portal, she is in charge of developing a new business line in Tilde, the leading Baltic IT company specializing in language technologies, multilingual and Internet software, and localization.
Prior to this, Mrs. Rirdance developed Tilde’s localization business from a single project to a prosperous business line with offices in 3 countries. Later, she returned to Tilde on part-time basis as a quality management consultant, establishing comprehensive quality procedures and processes across Tilde’s localization department.
In parallel, she held the position of Director, Localization, Documentation and Training, in Exigen Latvia, the software development center of the global Exigen Group, headquartered in San Francisco, US. While at Exigen Latvia, she set up and directed the production cycles and teams for localization, technical writing, and training of Exigen products.
As a language professional, she has been involved in a variety of linguistic projects, such as the development of Microsoft Style Guide and terminology for Latvian, and numerous translation, validation and editing assignments, including translation of novels into Latvian. She volunteers as a guest-lecturer on translation stylistics and localization at the University of Latvia.
Mrs. Signe Rirdance is a member of the ICT Committee of Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. She has completed master’s degree in Business Administration, as well as bachelor’s degrees in English Linguistics (University of Latvia) and Political Science (University of Wisconsin).
Iris Zhang is marketing manager for E-C Translation Ltd. Holding a master degree in Computer Engineering from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA, Iris has accumulated rich experience in large account management, global business development, marketing and public relations in domestic and overseas corporations. Her last position was a senior overseas business development manager, leading wireless software product cooperation with industry big players in Moloon International. Now she is responsible for the company’s global marketing function, managing the worldwide marketing and sales actives for E-C Translation.
Andy Lee, Ph.D., heads the technical committee of China's Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance. His accomplishments in the area of open standards includes: the development of cnXML, a project which introduced XML technology to China's IT industry; the development of an XML standard suite in China's e-Government reference model and reference architecture; key participation in the adoption of ebXML as China's national eBusiness standard; recognition of Rossettanet as the official e-Logistical standard for China; and the development of SOA EERP, which is regarded as an emerging industry standard in next generation enterprise applications. Andy has also served as China's senior eBusiness advisor and acted as the national major eBusiness project technical reviewer since 2002. He holds a Master's degree in fluid dynamics from Shanghai JiaoTong University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Richard is a passionate entrepreneur who co-founded Celestone in 1995. In 1997, Celestone entered into translation market and soon got recognition from a number of leading Fortune 500 companies. The company started to offer localization service in 2003 and is now one of the leading translation and localization agencies in China.
Richard also serves as the board member of Embedded Software Systems Co., Ltd., a high-tech company focusing on developing embedded software products, and www.chinantique.com, an Internet portal for Chinese antiques.
Richard studied at Beijing Polytechnic University majoring in International Trade and at Beijing Foreign Studies University majoring English. He is a member of the Entrepreneur China Network, a consortium of young Chinese entrepreneurs.
Richard is 31 years old, married and has a happy family. He likes outdoor sports like ski, boating, fishing and traveling. He is also a fan of Chinese traditional culture and arts.
Veli-Matti Lahti joined SDL TRADOS Technologies in 2006 as Sales Director for Asia Pacific and China. Veli-Matti Lahti has worked in the telecommunications industry for most of his professional career, eleven years of which were spent with Nokia. His roles have been varied and include experiences in Engineering, Sales, Marketing and Senior Management.
His Career has allowed him the opportunity to live and work in Finland, Great Britain, Indonesia and Japan as well as travel extensively throughout Europe and Asia Pacific. Since 2000 he has based himself in Tokyo, Japan.
Veli-Matti has gained a Masters of Science in telecommunications from the University of Oulu, Finland and MBA from Helsinki School of Economics, Executive Education in Singapore. He speaks 5 languages - Finnish, English, Japanese, Swedish and Indonesian.
As Senior Business Development Manager of Great China, Ms. Tao is responsible for the strategic development and growth of Great Chinese business, with direct focus on growing units and revenue in the marketplace from both direct and distribution channels. Nancy is also responsible for the strategic growth of the SDL TRADOS Certification program.
Nancy joined SDL in 2006 with over seven years of experience working in IT markets with highly recognized brand names in China. Her previous roles with IBM and Lenovo included marketing activities, building sales channels, direct sales to corporations and governmental bodies.
Ms Qui is a graduate of Newcastle University in Communication Engineering. Heng joined SDL TRADOS Technologies in 2005 as a translator.
In her current role as Support Engineer Heng is responsible for providing technical support to SDL TRADOS’s customers in the APAC region. Ms Qui is also an SDL TRADOS Certified trainer and conducts internal and external technical training.
Mr ZhiHang has worked in the Aviation industry as a high ranking pilot and trainer for over 30 years. He has extensive experience in flying many different types of Aircraft including Boeing and Airbus and is renowned within his field as one of the top pilots in China. During his career at Air China he attained the level of General Chief for ZheJiang, in Air China as well as being given the prestigious award of ‘Star Captain’. More recently Liu has been concentrating his efforts on creating and establishing pilot training systems for Air China. With his wealth of experience as a pilot and trainer he has a real understanding of the processes involved in the localization of flight training materials needed to create world class pilots.
Mr ZhiHang studied Civil Aviation at the Civil Aviation Collage in SiChuan and in his spare time enjoys swimming, playing basketball and hiking.
Karl Kelly is the manager of the Localisation Research Centre (LRC) at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He has worked at the LRC since March 2003 and has contributed to the ELECT and IGNITE EU projects, as well as working on a variety of LRC tasks, including summer schools, conferences, providing localisation training and lecturing at the University of Limerick. Karl has a B.A in European Studies and a Graduate Diploma in Software Localisation, both from the University of Limerick. He also has NCVA and RSA qualifications in Information Technology and Business Administration.
Michael Bourke has been with the Localisation Research Centre since February 2003 where he has worked on the ELECT and IGNITE projects. He was responsible for the development of the ELECT Online localisation portal and designed and developed the IGNITE Factory. Michael is a graduate of the University of Limerick and holds a BSc. in Computer Systems.
