Language Industry Hires at BTI Studios, Eriksen, Semantix, and Teneo Linguistics

BTI Studios has appointed veteran 20th Century Fox executive John Koscheka as its new Executive Vice President of OTT Operations.

The company said in a statement that his role will be a wide-ranging one. He will oversee and lead OTT operational staff across BTI Studios, optimize global OTT operations workflows as well as coordinate with the sales team and work to support new US-based customers.

Koscheka will be based in BTI’s new and expanded facility in Los Angeles, reporting directly to CEO Björn Lifvergren.

During his 20-year career at 20th Century Fox, he oversaw worldwide customer service, localization, and television and film mastering. He also led an initiative to convert Fox’s delivery operations from physical media to digital distribution and helped build Fox’s cross-studio Enterprise Operations division.  

“Throughout my career, I have been inspired by collaborative, innovative environments. This is an exciting time to be a part of a service supplier that is increasingly playing a critical role in the global content distribution industry,” he commented on his transfer to BTI Studios.

As EVP of OTT Operations, he said he is looking to help align the OTT organization within BTI with the company’s vision and culture.

Koscheka is currently a student at Stanford University’s LEAD program and is actively training for the LA Marathon. “I regularly try to keep a commitment to cycling ~90 miles a week,” he told Slator. “I am blessed to have a wife, Trish, who consistently supports my pursuit of a purpose-driven life as well as my two sons (Jack and Cole) who soon will embark on their own journeys.”

Will Lach — Eriksen Translations

Will Lach, Eriksen Translations’ newly appointed Director of Sales, has spent a good part of his career developing publications and communications services for the world’s greatest cultural institutions — the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden.

“Many of Eriksen’s clients are in fact the same, so working as Director of Sales at Eriksen is a natural extension of my background,” he told Slator.

In his new role, he will provide language services solutions to clients in the cultural and creative services sectors, as well as in the financial services, diplomatic, education, and healthcare fields.

Lach is based in downtown Brooklyn where Eriksen Translations is based and he reports directly to CEO Vigdis Eriksen.

“It’s a thrill to finally work in Brooklyn as I’ve become pretty rooted here through several nonprofits, in addition to being a decade-plus member of the famous Park Slope Food Co-op (the country’s oldest),” he shared.

Lach had also been a 15-season coach of Brooklyn’s American Youth Soccer Organization and currently serves as co-chair of the board of the Brooklyn Youth Music Project, which provides kids with high-level jazz and classical training.

The key challenge he sees for the highest-level language service providers (LSPs) is how to effectively communicate their expertise to reach their client base.

Peter Brown — Semantix

Following Semantix’s acquisition of Textminded in 2017, the Stockholm-based language service provider has been consolidating the operations of the two organizations.

“My role is to make sure we execute on the new long-term strategy for the Semantix Group,” said Peter Brown, the company’s new Sales Manager (Denmark & Norway), adding that he manages a team of six and is also responsible for current sales activities in Norway. 

He joined Semantix in February 2018 from Lionbridge. Previously, he also worked as Sales Manager for Xplanation and as Country Manager at translate plus in Denmark.

Brown is based at Semantix Denmark’s headquarters in Aarhus and reports to Britta Aagaard, Head of Translation of Semantix Group (formerly CEO of Textminded).

“This industry has been about technology for a very long time. My own goal is to create optimal solutions for my customers and not just really good ones,” he shared.  

On the other hand, he also sees the industry has an ocean of decision makers, each with their agenda, goals, file formats, which he says is a big challenge, albeit a motivating one.

“Oh, and let’s add Machine Learning, Neural Machine Translation, and AI to the mix. We will not get bored in the years to come,” he said.

Allison Shipman — Teneo Linguistics Co.

While attending the University of North Texas in 2016, Allison Shipman joined Teneo Linguistics Co. (TLC) as a marketing intern for the summer.

Now with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in Marketing and experience working in retail and brokerage industries as a marketing specialist, she rejoined the company as Marketing Manager in January 2018.

“TLC’s CEO Hana Laurenzo contacted me to see if I was interested in working for the company again. And, of course, I was!” she shared.

Based in Fort Worth, Texas, Shipman is in charge of creating targeted marketing strategies and implementing all marketing activities, including SEO strategy.

“I monitor and analyze our TLC Translation & Institute for Language Professionals website traffic, and create original content for our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If I see an opportunity to better our website’s content, I design and implement the project with our web developers. I create targeted email campaigns to distribute and strive to increase brand awareness,” she added.

One of the biggest challenges she sees in the industry is putting language services at the forefront of clients minds.  “Companies and organizations tend to think of translation as an afterthought,” she said.

However, she sees the demand for professional language services growing every day. “With every company that wants to take their business abroad, with medical facilities who provide language services to their patients, with law firms who need to communicate effectively with their clients, with the increasingly diverse world that we live in, demand will continue to grow,” she said.