SlatorCon Remote November 2023

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.

Bertrand Gstalder is Acolad’s CEO, renowned leader, and entrepreneur with over +25 years’ experience in executive positions. He has a notable track-record growing digital businesses in several industries, spanning real estate and e-commerce to travel & lifestyle. From 2016-2021 he was the CEO of the renowned French real-estate classifieds marketplace SeLoger Group.

Bertrand Gstalder deeply values technology as a powerful business enabler and believes people are a company’s greatest asset. Curiosity, empathy, humility, and commitment are at the heart of his leadership model as he focuses on creating sustainable ecosystems that generate positive impact and fair value to all stakeholders. Bertrand holds a master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from the ESCP-Europe Business School in Paris.

With a five-year tenure at Uber and prior roles at Moravia (now RWS) and e2f, Pia is an accomplished Localization Leader, specializing in managing, mentoring, and coaching teams to deliver top-tier localizations to diverse stakeholders in Product, Engineering, Marketing, Support, and Legal. Her expertise includes designing and implementing efficient workflows to optimize localization efforts and building cross-functional relationships.

She is a staunch advocate for localization best practices, driving change and championing strategies for high-volume environments. Her strong project, program, and process management skills ensure the efficient operation of the Localization pipeline, even in complex and high-risk situations. As a dedicated self-starter, Pia collaborates seamlessly to meet strategic goals, utilizing her communication and cross-functional collaboration skills to build relationships and manage budgets. A performance management leader and passionate mentor, she extends guidance not only to her team but to professionals across the Localization industry.

Rain Lau is an experienced Global Localization leader with APAC expertise. She leads with vision and strategies, manages changes, also grows and supports cross functional and distributed teams to deliver measurable and sustainable results with data driven approaches.

She has been in the L10n field for 19+ years, 12+ years in leadership position, both at the client (Google for 9 years, currently at Workday) and service provider sides (BGS, Lionbridge, Deluxe Entertainment, TVT Media, RWS) – in different roles from managing language quality to overseeing global operations for 70+ languages managing 100+ people. Rain has experience in product management, system migration, establishing/refining and running L10n operations, managing/engaging vendors, also strategic account management working with some of the biggest clients in both the IT and Media/Entertainment industries.

Specialties: Global Team & Talent Development | Vision & Strategy | Operations Management | Change Management | Scale & Efficiency | Key Performance Metrics | Vendor Management | Localization & Internationalization | Market Knowledge

Alex has 10+ years experience in the Translation and Localization industry, primarily in pre-sales functions (bid management and consultancy), with roles such as Solution Architect, Team Lead – Bid Management, Project and Production Manager.

Gabriel Fairman is a thought leader and entrepreneur specializing in localization and business process automation. He has navigated Bureau Works from a Boutique Translation Agency to a Global Localization Platform/Translation Management System. A speaker of six languages, Gabriel grew up speaking American English, Brazilian Portuguese, and Argentinian Spanish. He then picked up a bit of French, Italian, and Mandarin. Gabriel writes about the first-hand experience of a business leader, entrepreneur, father, and human being. He loves to play the guitar, cook, play tennis, and be in nature in any way or shape.

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.

Konstantin Savenkov is Intento CEO and Co-founder. After getting a PhD in 2008, Konstantin Savenkov led research and development efforts for online content services, then worked as Chief Technology Officer at Zvooq and as a Chief Operating Officer at Bookmate. In 2016, he contributed his experience in Artificial Intelligence (AI), tech and operations to found Intento, Inc., where they build tools to source, evaluate and use machine translation and other cognitive AI services.

Vanessa is a dedicated Operations Manager and effective servant leader currently managing the Language Operations of high-end media entertainment content in over 40 languages with a multi-million pound budget. She provides expert localisation knowledge, operational management and customer service and has a track record in adding value and delivering savings through rate negotiation, RFP reviews, implementing operational efficiencies and new technology.

Giulia Greco has been involved in Localization at Shopify for over 7 years.

She has set-up and scaled a cross-functional, globally-distributed team of localization professionals and has contributed in various roles to making services, products and experiences accessible globally to all Shopify merchants and partners, and today she heads the entire Localization department.

Fluent in localization strategy development, globalization practices and concepts, with a background in foreign languages and cultures, she is originally from Milan, Italy, and has been living in Toronto, Canada for over 20 years now.

Carrie Fischer is the Globalization Services Manager at Subway, headquartered in Milford, CT. Subway is the largest quick service restaurant in the world with over 40,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. Previous localization positions held at Bodybuilding.com, Hyperion/Oracle and Transparent Language. She is also a volunteer at Women in Localization as a Program Director and a mentor. She has been in the industry for over 25 years and still enjoys learning new things and growing personally and professionally.

Charles Campbell is the founder, president and sole owner of tbotalent, a leading provider of talent and localization services with offices in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Ukraine and Vietnam. Originally from New Zealand, Charles has traveled widely over 4 continents and has lived for the last 26 years in South America.

Charles has been a frequent speaker at public events and conferences, having made presentations in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Las Vegas, Lima, London, New York, Portland, Rhode Island, San Antonio, San Jose, San Francisco, Wiesbaden, and Córdoba (Argentina), among other locations. He is a founding board member of JUNTOS, the association representing translation, localization and interpreting companies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Specialties: Talent Services, Localization, Translation, Multilingual Communication, Emerging Markets.

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.

With more than 20 years’ experience in IT, Christos is a champion of Translation Technology and Translation AI. A translator/linguist by vocation, Christos has helped large organisations, such as AstraZeneca, Ricoh, Oracle, and BMS accelerate growth and promote culture change by enabling multilingual offerings during times of change.

In AstraZeneca, Christos leads a global team that implemented a pioneering architecture of language technology at Enterprise level called AZ Translate. The AZ Language Service translates well over 250M words annually and has onboarded more than 40 internal stakeholders and 20 external Language Service Providers.

Christos is a firm believer in making Translation Technology and translation AI accessible to all users and has been acting as an enabler of easy, intuitive, and streamlined translation process for the enterprise.

Christos speaks 9 living languages, and his academic interests lie in semantic shift, focusing on Koine Greek and Latin paradigms as well as rationalising Business Change in implementing Translation Technology.

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.