SlatorCon Remote June 2022

Andrew is the Commercial Director at Slator responsible for product development and pricing, online ad and research sales, and event sponsorships.

Prior to co-founding Slator, Andrew has worked in the media, internet and finance industries including managing media businesses for Thomson Reuters, Fairfax Media and The Economist Group. He has an MBA in Finance and Investments from The George Washington University in Washington DC and has been based in Asia for over 25 years.

Florian is the Managing Director of Slator and host of the SlatorPod podcast. Based in Zurich, Florian Faes spent almost a decade in Asia before launching Slator in 2015. Slator is the most up-to-date source of news and analysis covering language services and technology and works as a distributed team based in Asia, Europe, and the US.

Marco Trombetti is a computer scientist, serial entrepreneur, and investor.

In 1999, together with Isabelle Andrieu, he founded Translated to solve one of humanity’s greatest challenges: to allow anyone to understand and be understood in their own language. Translated pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to support professional translators and is one of the leading translation companies today, with over 150,000 customers including Google, AirBnb and Uber.

With the profits from these and other ventures, Marco co-founded Pi Campus, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology startups, mostly in the AI field, with 49 investments in its portfolio ranging from Europe to the United States.
In 2017 Pi Campus launched Pi School, an innovative educational reality to create a new class of AI specialists. Pi School offers personalized coaching from AI world-renowned authorities to talented engineers.

Marco is also the author The New Prince – Why and How to Startup, a collection of essays illustrating the counterintuitive reasons and strategies that have led the new generations of entrepreneurs to success. It offers a new and straight-to-the-point perspective on why and how to start an innovative company, without trying to please readers with half-truths.

Petra Angeli is the VP of Products at Acolad Group, the global leader in professional language, content and digital services. She is a language services professional with 10 years of industry experience and the owner of Acolad’s product strategy and vision. Petra is passionate about creating solutions to streamline multilingual projects and workflows, enabling high quality and timely delivery of localization content.

As a Solution Architect at Memsource, Deepan works with clients to develop solutions to address their translation technology needs, help them discover new ways to optimize the Memsource platform, and liaise between clients and internal teams to suggest tool improvements. He brings over a decade’s worth of experience of working within the localization industry.

Bruno Herrmann has more than 25 years of experience in international product, content and customer experience leadership within large organizations and startups and in various industries (Technology, Market Research, Business Intelligence and Life Sciences). Until early June 2022 he was the Director of Localization Operations at IQVIA, creating and leading a truly 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 he had roles of increased responsibility in Marketing, Business Operations and Product Leadership in The Nielsen Company, including Digital Globalization Leader between 2008 and 2019 responsible for global content creation, localization, testing, certification and delivery as well as product management and international customer experiences. Before joining Nielsen Bruno managed online globalization programs at HP and content operations including localization at Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation. Prior to joining Digital Equipment Corporation, he worked in marketing communication and localization startups, taking part in major international projects for high-profile technology clients.

Bruno has been a practitioner, change agent, thought leader and strategist in data-driven and client-first information, transformation and product management, both in the offline and online world. He is a regular speaker, panelist, moderator and workshop leader during conferences and events around the world.

Dr. Rebecca Jonsson is the Chief Product Officer at Tarjama, a language service provider in the MENA region transforming into a language technology provider. She is a computational linguist, holding a Ph.D. in Linguistics with over 20 years of experience developing language technology, both in academia and in the industry. In her product and research-oriented roles, her focus has always been on how to leverage language technology to build innovative products for the Conversational AI market, Text Analytics market or the language industry.

As the CPO of Tarjama, Dr. Jonsson is leading the Product and AI departments and is in charge of the overall strategy and vision of Tarjama’s AI-powered platform with its proprietary TMS and NMT engine.

As the Chief Customer Excellence Office, Sahar is executing Tarjama’s customer-centric strategy and vision to generate a complete overview of our customers’ requirements and expectations, ensuring that each of our clients is achieving their unique desired outcome and that we are building long term partnerships through consistent value creation.

She has more than 15 years of versatile industry experience, managing large customer success programs and international teams at global organizations, and industry leaders.

As a multilingual Egyptian-British national, Sahar developed a natural passion for a career in the language industry. Thanks to her diverse background, she is now working on adapting the global industry standards to the very unique nature of the MENA region.

Mark Howorth is the President of Iyuno-SDI Group, responsible for overseeing customer-facing activities including global revenue, sales, marketing and communications.

Prior to the 2021 acquisition of SDI Media by Iyuno Media Group, Howorth was the CEO of SDI Media. He led the global provider of localization services from 2016 through a period of growth, overseeing its operations across 24 countries including the opening of the Tokyo office, expansion of the European operation and negotiating the acquisition by Iyuno-SDI Group.

Howorth brings almost three decades of experience to the team and a track record of helping investor-backed companies achieve their full potential through strategic focus and operational improvement. He has held C-level positions at an impressive number of companies in the M&E industry. He was the COO of Panavision, the leading supplier of cameras and lenses for cinema. He was also the CEO of National Mobile Television, a Los Angeles-based provider of television production trucks and OB vans. He was also a Partner with management consulting firm Bain & Company within its Media/Technology practice.

Howorth has a Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is currently based out of Los Angeles in the Iyuno-SDI Group headquarters.

With over thirty-years of distribution and localization experience at The Walt Disney Company, Andy is a seasoned leader in international content operations. Andy has served in many roles during his career at Disney, including: European Technical Manager for Buena Vista Home Video, Director of European Operations for Disney Character Voices International (DCVI), VP of Dubbing for DCVI, and currently VP of Distribution Operations.

Expansion outside of Disney’s domestic market and the need for a world-class localization function was identified as a strategic priority for The Walt Disney Company in the early 90s by former CEO Michael Eisner. Andy was a leading contributor to building a global organization for Disney which has helped shape the business of localization as we know it today.

In 2019, Andy was awarded an Emmy for technical excellence and innovation in localization technology. A testament to three-decades of industry leading work to bring beloved Disney characters and franchises to international audiences, from the advent of VHS to the launch of Disney+. In his current role, Andy is focused on working with strategic partners to help transform localization operations to meet growing consumer demand, reorienting the function towards a model of supply chain excellence and scalability.

Monica has started her career in the industry at Venere.com, a company acquired by Expedia in 2008, and has since covered different roles in the content and localization domain. In her current role at Expedia Group she leads a team of localization experts who operate in a fast-paced environment across a multitude of content types and product lines. She drives programs to assess the quality of localised content and supervises her team’s operations. In her spare time, she enjoys long walks with her dog and learning piano.

Anna is a language services industry professional with expertise in project management, management and quality systems, and a special interest in the life sciences sector. Starting her career in data annotation in Sydney, she then gained 10 years’ experience in London and Madrid with major LSPs before joining Slator as a research contributor. She holds a B.A. (Hons) in Linguistics from the University of Sydney.

Chi-Wei Chang is Head of Localization at Asana, a leading work management platform for teams. Prior to this role, she built the localization programs at SaaS companies Elastic and Opower where she created the strategy for international content prioritization, spearheaded a process with localization integrated from research and development through product deployment, and led a team that ran qualitative behavioral research for international markets.

Chi-Wei has a background in international business and international relations, has experience on both vendor and buyer side, in product and engineering as well as in marketing, and has been based in Japan, The Netherlands, and now Ireland.

Giulia Tarditi is Head of Global Experience for American-headquartered Experience Management company Qualtrics. A strong advocate for merging the crafts of user experience and localization, she has held a number of high-profile client-side positions with some of the fastest-growing startups and scaleups in EMEA. Her holistic view of localization and her determination to stretch the boundaries of our craft have really made hers a strong and instantly recognizable voice in the translation and globalization community.

Jonny Steel is a seasoned marketing leader who has scaled several consumer, B2B and fintech companies from startups to successful global businesses. Jonny has been the Vice President of Marketing at Payoneer since 2014, where he is responsible for building the company’s brand all over the world. Jonny holds a degree in law and an MA in War Studies from Kings College, London. He is the proud dad of two bi-lingual boys!

Melisa is a passionate marketing and localization professional with over 10 years of experience in the fintech industry building connections and growing communities through social media. As the Director of Social Strategy & Localization at Payoneer, Melisa helps bring Payoneer’s mission to entrepreneurs everywhere, empowering them to build a successful future in today’s digital world.

Andrew is the Commercial Director at Slator responsible for product development and pricing, online ad and research sales, and event sponsorships.

Prior to co-founding Slator, Andrew has worked in the media, internet and finance industries including managing media businesses for Thomson Reuters, Fairfax Media and The Economist Group. He has an MBA in Finance and Investments from The George Washington University in Washington DC and has been based in Asia for over 25 years.