Profile of Speakers Presenting at the LISA Forum USA
Suneeta is a seasoned Director level manager with fifteen years managing local and global teams. She currently manages a large team spread across United States, India, China, and the UK, with occasional contractors in Canada as well. Suneeta has built teams from scratch in India and China; this is especially notable as when TIBCO entered these markets, the technical writing profession was still evolving in India and virtually non-existent in China. Suneeta has been with TIBCO since 1990 when she joined as the first technical writer in the company. Before joining TIBCO, Suneeta worked as a software engineer.
Tim is a certified Project Management Professional with over ten years experience managing technical communications projects at Lasselle-Ramsay, Mindjet, Sygate Technologies, IBM, and Kaiser Permanente. At Lasselle-Ramsay, Tim managers globalization and localization projects for medical device manufacturers. Tim speaks and writes frequently about issues related project management, technical documentation and Web 2.0. Before becoming a technical communicator, Tim taught Media Studies at Stanford University, where he received his PhD in German Studies.
Silvia Campos is a Localization Manager at VeriSign, the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the digital world. A native of Brazil who has been living in the Bay Area for the past ten years, she has more than five years of experience in Localization. Silvia is fluent in Portuguese, English, and Spanish and she has an MBA from San Francisco State University.
Ray Chan is the Senior Engineering Director of the Continuing Product Development group at VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for Intel-based systems. He has been with the company approximately four years and is responsible for maintaining and sustaining all revenue release products. Since joining VMware, Ray has built his team from ground zero to its current global engineering team of more than 200 people spread across the US, India, and most recently China. Prior to that, he held engineering management roles of increasing responsibility at Sun Microsystems over the course of 14 years.
Grace Chen is the founder and CEO of Oceansoft International and Simple Cash International which holds her patent-pending payment software. Ms. Chen is a leader in the knowledge-based outsourcing business in a niche that serves U.S. corporate needs in supply chain, procurement and payment automation.
From 1996 to 2005, she founded and served eCommLink as Chairman and CEO. She built this company from the ground floor to become one of the three most comprehensive stored value payment platforms with processing services to more than 60 banks and several major merchants in the USA. Her visionary approach continues to steer eCommLink to be one of the most unique, innovative payment practices in the stored value payment space.
She has served in many different capacities for Fortune 100 companies at an executive management level.
This vast knowledge and experience has gained her seats on the Boards of several major corporations that serve the Asian markets.
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.
Sanford H. Cohen, SpeakLike’s founder, is an experienced serial entrepreneur. He has developed and launched successful software and software service ventures that have affected the direction of both emerging and mature markets. The creator of Send Word Now, a leading a multi-platform emergency notification services firm, ACT! for Lotus Notes, and the CISCO enterprise email management system, he understands ways to develop solutions that improve how groups within enterprises – and whole communities – work together.
Several common factors characterize his ventures:
• integration of existing technologies to create innovations in software and software-enabled services
• continual incremental improvement based on customer feedback
• new technologies accessible and productive for non-technical users
• intense focus on customer satisfaction
Mr. Cohen became fascinated with cross-cultural, cross-language issues during his tenure as CEO of Send Word Now Inc. dealing with partners in other countries and helping Fortune 1000, pubic agency, and college customers solve global communications problems.
Mr. Cohen holds B.A. degrees in Mathematics and English from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Andrew Draheim is founder and principal of KIDD & DRAHEIM, a boutique consulting firm that provides strategic and tactical solutions for operations, globalization, web 2.0, marketing and business development.
Andrew develops high performing operations that meet or exceed desired profit margins, deadlines and quality targets. Leveraging two decades of implementing proven tools and methodologies, Andrew turns knowledge workers into high performing company assets. He understands that localization professionals are not paid to work 9-to-5 but to be more productive. Andrew has celebrated success in leading global organizations, such as Georg Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (Scientific American, The Macmillan Group, and many others), Berlitz GlobalNet (now Lionbridge), The World Bank, Merrill, and thebigword.
Andrew completed the implementation of five localization hubs in developing countries for the World Bank. He implemented and managed one of the world’s largest Global Translation Management System (GTMS) installations. He is co-author of the Best Practice Guide To Implementing Global Content Management Systems (CMS) published by the Localization Industry Standard Association (LISA). Andrew has also served as Managing Director for Central & Eastern Europe for Berlitz GlobalNet and Managing Director of HEP, the electronic publishing arm of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group that includes Scientific American, Henry Holt, St. Martin’s Press, Farrar Straus and Giroux, as well as Handelsblatt.
Andrew is a featured speaker, facilitator and participant at many high profile industry events, such as Inter-Agency Meeting on Language Arrangements, Documentation and Publications of the UN network and the European Commission (IAMLAPD), Inter-Agency Language Roundtable of the US government (ILR), Digital Economy Forum of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, Vendor Conference of the World Bank, IMF and Inter-American Development Bank, and ProZ translator conference. He also presents at events organized by Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA), Gilbane Content Management, International Quality and Productivity Center (IQPC), Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), Translation User Automation Society (TAUS), and others.
Dr Joanna Drugan runs the MA Applied Translation Studies programme, training approximately 50 translators and localizers across 12 languages each year. She has extensive experience as a trainer in localization and translation software, in both academic and industrial contexts. Having spent the last three years researching translation tools and their impact on quality across Europe, Scandinavia and Chinese-speaking countries, she brings a wide-ranging awareness of industry approaches to this particular case study.
Ms. Fang has 25 years of experience in L10N industry as a translator, Linguistic QA, program manager and manager of program management team. She worked in Novel in Utah, Documentum in Pleasanton, California and currently work in EMC Content Management and Archiving in Pleasanton.
Holds master degree in Linguistics.
Ben Fitch grew up in suburbs of New York, obtained a Music Performance degree from Northwestern University, and moved to the west coast of the US in 1981. In 2000, Ben switched from a music career to one in software documentation, starting as a technical writing intern. In his spare time, Ben learned programming and became certified in Java. Ben likes to combine the two disciplines of writing and programming by developing tools that make authoring and publishing high-quality documentation more efficient.
Neville Fleet is the Senior Documentation Manager for the Knowledge Management and Delivery (KMD) group in Cisco Systems, Inc., in San Jose, California. This group of 90 technical writers has overall responsibility for the majority of the software documentation for Cisco's Internet Operating System (IOS). Neville has 25 years of experience in technical documentation and product management for major international corporations in the IT industry. Prior to joining Cisco in 2001, Neville held management roles at IBM’s Application Development Group, Mercury One-2-One and Digital Equipment Corporation. Neville has a Masters in Information Processing from Exeter University, UK.
Jaroslava Flodrova is the Executive Manager the International Projects, including International Project Management Center, EU Departnemt, Localization Department and International Business development Center for Skrivanek. Her education includes four years at the University of Economics, Prague. She has been in the translation industry for four years with Prekladatelsky Servis Skrivanek.
Gennady has twenty years of experience in service delivery and software products industries. As Director of Solution Marketing, Gennady leads Exigen Services' global packaged services strategy, positioning and support.
Prior to joining Exigen Services, Gennady was a Director of Product Strategy at I-many, Inc (IMNY), where he led the vision, communication and positioning for the company's portfolio of products. Prior to I-many, Gennady spent three years at Siebel Systems where, as a Product Line Manager, he led multiple product lines including Professional Services Automation and Contract Management solutions. Gennady's experience also includes holding senior consulting positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers and CSC, focusing on business development and delivery of large-scale, integrated ERP systems.
Phil Gochenour, PhD, is currently documentation manager for Metaweb Technologies, developers of Freebase. Prior to Metaweb he managed a TWiki installation for CNET Networks that served as the main content repository for all domestic and international business units. His major interest is information architecture, systems, and design.
Highly respected for his industry expertise, Daniel Gray brings more than a decade of globalization solutions experience to Tek’s West Coast-based IT/Telco clients. At Tek, he provides consultative solution development and account management to clients seeking to adapt products to international target markets.
Before joining Tek, Daniel served as Director of Sales at Lionbridge Technologies, where he managed his own globalization client portfolio as well as a team of senior sales representatives. His career began within the IT industry at IDOC/Bowne Global Solutions, where he was responsible for developing and managing relationships with Fortune 500 to SMB clients.
Daniel holds a BA in International Business Administration from Loyola Marymount University and completed graduate work in International Business at Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro.
Mimi Hills is Director of Globalization at Sun Microsystems, with responsibility for software internationalization and localization of many types of content. Her team is spread across the US, Europe, Japan, China and India. Mimi has over twenty years of experience in the software and computing industry, having worked as technical editor, program manager, and software engineering manager during her career at Apple Computer, BAM! Software, and Sun Microsystems.
Ioannis Iakovidis is the general manager of Interverbum Technology in Sweden. Interverbum is one of the leading providers of terminology management systems. As founder of Nescit Systems he was instrumental in the development of the TermWeb software. Ioannis Iakovidis holds a M.Sc from the Institute of Technology, Linköping, Sweden.
Priscilla Knoble is the Director of Corporate Product Management at Adobe Systems, Inc. Having been with the company for over 11 years in a variety of roles, she is currently focusing on international market development and Emerging Markets.
Sue Kocher is a terminologist at SAS Institute Inc., where she has worked since 1997. Prior to that, she worked in Japan, Australia and Turkey for 12 years as a university instructor of writing and research skills. Her professional interests include writing and editing for global audiences, and all issues related to terminology management.
As Director of Solutions Development, Joseph Lukasik is responsible for working with sales and production to provide new business models and process solutions for new and existing customers. Joseph joined Tek with over 10 years of experience in localization engineering, internationalization, project management and localization solutions development. Prior to Tek, he held a position at Lionbridge Technologies as a Solutions Architect where he was responsible for supporting the sales team and production with the latest models to support new initiatives as well as existing clients. Other positions held at Lionbridge included Senior Technical Project Manager and Senior Software Localization Engineer. Prior to work in the localization industry, Joseph was the Director of Music Technology of the University of Colorado at Boulder where he directed research and development into computer-aided learning, musical analysis and algorithmic composition.
Mr. Marcus is an innovative designer, analyst, and researcher of user interfaces and information visualization for over 35 years. He has written/co-written five books and over 250 articles, and lectured on the subject of this workshop for nine years. He has won numerous design awards, and his 25-year -old firm has completed approximately 500 projects. In 1992, he received the National Computer Graphics Association's annual award for contributions to industry. In 2007, the American Institute of Graphic Arts named him a Fellow of the Institute.
Mr. Marcus has published, lectured, tutored, and consulted internationally for more than 35 years and has been an invited keynote/plenary speaker at conferences internationally. He is a visionary thinker, designer, and writer, well-respected in international professional communities, with connections throughout the Web, user interface, human factors, graphic design, and publishing industries.
Nic McMahon is the VP and GM Jonckers US and has worked in the localization industry for over 12 years. During his career Nic has been fortunate to hold management positions across many different business functions – purchasing, operations, stock, sales and marketing which provides for a unique insight into the general running of the US for Jonckers. During his time in localization he has also been lucky enough to have had direct involvement in many of the major acquisitions and technology developments that have helped to shape the overall industry.
Tracey Meng joined TIBCO globalization group in 2004. She leads globalization validation and localization friendliness for various TIBCO products. She also trains developers on how to develop a globalized product and provides guidance on globalization/localization. Before working with TIBCO, she was a J2EE developer for five years. Tracey holds a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Scott is currently working for Sun Microsystems based in Menlo Park. He is responsible for the globalization of the products from Sun in the developer and Java Enterprise Systems domains. Before transferring back to the Bay Area in California, Scott spent a few years in Beijing, China and built Sun's Asian Globalization Center over there. Scott has over 20 years of software industry experiences in the US.
Gregg Okunami has been with Hewlett-Packard (HP) since 1996, with varied responsibilities in quality, manufacturing, change management, and web customer experience. Since 2001, Gregg has been based in Roseville, California and has been on a team that is expanding the use of centralized localization workflow tools within HP. In this role, Gregg has worked with HP.com web teams, setting up their translation and test processes, helping them to reduce their costs, while improving their customer experience.
Before joining HP, Gregg had worked in manufacturing and field service, in the U.S. and Europe. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.
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.
Tobias Rinsche is the Vice President of The Language Technology Center Inc. (LTC) in Washington DC. Tobias has over 7 years experience in consulting on business process automation and optimization, and on IT infrastructure. He has successfully managed some of the largest and most complex implementations of LTC’s business systems. Tobias provides comprehensive feedback and ideas for improvements and new features in LTCs software systems. He works with the marketing team, developing company and marketing strategies.
As Director of Program Management, Mr. Rouse is responsible for directing the program tracking, product delivery and management reporting activities. He develops standards and processes that support product delivery, quality testing, metric tracking and product lifecycle flows.
In 1998, Mr. Rouse joined Sybase with more than 20 years of experience in the computer industry. Prior to Sybase he held senior program management positions at Synopsys, DHL Airways, Cadence Design Systems, Sun Microsystems and Molecular Computer.
Mr. Rouse earned his degree from Evergreen Valley College in AA, Engineering in 1981.
Dale Schultz is the Globalization Test Architect in the IBM Globalization Leadership Team and has been involved in globalization software for 17 years. He has worked in South Africa, Germany and the USA.
When he is not delving into subjects such as code pages, time zones and globalization test issues he can be found working on his model train layout, taking photographs, making biltong or camping with mosquitoes.
April Singer is the Practice Manager for Globalization Services, a business unit of the IBM Software Services Group. Ms. Singer has more than 20 years of experience in the I/T industry. For the last 10 years she has been responsible for leveraging the internal capabilities of the Software organization, such as their extensive Globalization and Translation skills, to create and deliver software consulting services to IBM’s customers.
Bill Sullivan (IBM) has been the Strategic Advisor and a member of the executive committee of LISA since 2002. He has worked for the IBM Corporation for more than 32 years, the last 16 of which have been in the GILT arena. During that time he has worked with thousands of software and hardware teams for products as diverse as PDAs and mass spectrometers. Bill is currently IBM's company-wide Globalization Executive and is responsible for all aspects of product globalization; he leads IBM's worldwide team of globalization subject matter experts including the teams that develop the open source International Components for Unicode and leading-edge linguistic technologies. Bill is a graduate of Fordham University, with post-graduate degrees from Trinity College Dublin and New York University. Bill is a polyglot manqué: he speaks intelligible German, embarrassing French and laughable Japanese and Chinese.
Qing Qing Tao is a PMP® certified project manager in Intel Flex Software Globalization Solution Team, focusing on managing localization projects. She has worked as content reviewer, translation reviewer, web designer/developer, and project manager. Qing Qing holds a MSc in Electronic Business Management in Warwick University, UK and a BSc in Information Technology Systems in Sussex University, UK.
Andrew Thomas is the Global Information Management Evangelist with SDL Enterprise Technologies. GIM helps corporations drive global revenue and reduce cost by using software and services to deliver global content. Mr. Thomas has worked in the localization industry for more than a decade, managing the translations of a wide variety of content, from computer games to printed manuals to web applications. Before joining SDL, Mr. Thomas was a language intelligence solutions manager for Adobe Systems.
Francis Tsang is the Director of Globalization at Adobe Systems Inc. overseeing product and content localization, and tools and technology development in the internationalization area.
Kirti Vashee has more than 25 years experience in successful enterprise software marketing and product development, including significant background with small entrepreneurial as well as larger technology companies such as EMC, Dow Jones and Legato. He has extensive worldwide reseller channel building experience and excellent knowledge of the knowledge management and translation industries. An accomplished speaker who has addressed audiences all over the world, Vashee conducted his undergraduate work in international economics and finance at Bombay University, India and received his MBA from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
Tanner Volz is a Documentation Manager at Serena Software Inc. He manages documentation and training development efforts for the Application Lifecycle Management product line, and has helped lead the effort to implement an all new publishing system using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). On his own time, Tanner is an amateur music producer and frustrated film-maker.
Sophia Wang is the Vice President of Beyondsoft, the leading China-based provider of global outsourcing services. Ms. Wang has extensive experience in new business development, corporate investment, sales and marketing. She is leading the company's Marketing and Coprorate Business Development initiatives in Beyondsoft.
Ms. Wang joined Beyondsoft as General Manager of the localization business unit. During her tenure in that position, Ms. Wang played a pivotal role in generating new business opportunities for the company. She then was promoted and in charge of corporate marketing and strategic M&A.
Previously, Ms. Wang acquired over a decade of diverse experience at IBM China. She joined as a technical specialist, then served as Business Development Manager for the company's manufacturing arm. She was deeply involved in a host of successful corporate investment and joint venture activities in China. She left the company as its Global Resource Development Manager, and has built up an extensive network of industry contacts through her experience in evaluating, developing and managing IT outsourcing service vendors for IBM global resource in China.
Ms. Wang graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing, the top engineering school in China, with a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering. She also holds an Executive MBA from the China European International Business School, which is ranked the top business school globally. She received International Woman of Influence Awards from GlobalEXECWoman in Dec 2007.
Anderson Wang has been in the localization industry for more than a decade. In the past, he wore many hats, including as a linguist, engineer and project manager. Back in 1999, he had a vision: the creation of a strong vibrant localization leader in the Asian Region. In consequence, he resigned from the Operational Management Board of Alpnet China (now SDL) and set up iLen Technology Ltd. iLen started as an LSP and developed into a major outsourcing solution provider in China.
In year 2007, iLen successfully managed two complex outsourcing projects from CTPC China and Heartsome Technologies Ltd, the latter is well known for developing CAT tools that are cross-platform and in total compliance with the latest versions of open standards. iLen then went on to help Heartsome revamp its latest release of CAT Tool – Heartsome Translation Suite 7.
In Year 2008, iLen has formed a strategic partnership with Heartsome to provide GILT buyers with solutions aimed at cost cutting. In May this year, Anderson Wang joined Heartsome and was appointed as its new CEO. With Anderson at the helm, Heartsome is proceeding at full speed to deepen its technological content and broaden its worldwide relevance.
Kara Warburton is head of terminology development for IBM and is a recognized expert in terminology management. Past chair of the LISA Terminology SIG, she is currently the project leader for the TBX submission to ISO and member of the ISO Terminology committee.
Shirley has been in the localization arena for the past 13 years. Having worked as an I18N software engineer, and subsequently involved in localization project management and senior management role, she finds her calling to be an entrepreneur in 1996. Together with her partners, she set up her own I18N and L10N company, ALSC Consultancy. Only a year into the business, the impressive track record of their main stream of clientele and strong capabilities in Asian localization attracts the eye of an international localization group, LMI who acquired the operation to be their Asian localization arm. Based in Singapore, Shirley worked in LMI, Berlitz GlobalNET and Bowne Global Solutions as their client service manager and senior sales manager.
Today, Shirley is the Senior Sales and Marketing Director for E-C Translation group spearheading their international business development together with her Chinese colleague, Dr James Wei.
Mark Zagrodney is Team Lead for the Localization department at AMD. His responsibilities include process design and automation for software and documentation localization, as well as tool development for the technical writing and localization staff. Mark has more than 20 years of experience developing commercial software for a variety of organizations and has a knack for reforming errant applications and processes.
Paul is a Program Manager in the Knowledge Management and Delivery (KMD) group at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. He counts involvement with Web 2.0 implementation, content navigation, and departmental measurements among his interests at Cisco. Paul has been working in technical communications for over 18 years, including a management position at Lucent Technologies and individual contributions at Octel Communications, Touch Communications, and Comtech Services.
Andrzej Zydroń was born in England. Educated in France he started working in IT in 1976. His experience has covered all aspects of computing, with in depth knowledge of Software Engineering, SGML, XML, encoding methodologies and translation memory. Highlights of his career include:
* The design and architecture of the European Patent Office patent data capture system for Xerox Business Services.
* The design and architecture of the Xerox Language Services XTM translation memory system in 1996.
* Author of XML and SGML filters for SDL International's SDLX Translation Suite.
* Assisting the Oxford University Press, the British Council and Oxford University in work on the New Dictionary of the National Biography.
Andrzej Zydroń is a member of the LISA OSCAR Steering Committee. He is the technical architect and editor of the GILT Metrics proposed specification suite, as well as editor of the proposed TBX Link specification. Zydroń also sits on the OASIS technical committees for Translation Web Services, XLIFF and XLIFF segmentation. He is also a W3C invited expert sitting on the W3C ITS technical committee.
As CTO for XML-Intl, he is currently developing the next generation of XML-based text memory systems to reduce authoring and translation costs for documentation. Zydroń is fluent in English, Polish and French.
