Language Industry Hires at Xplanation, SuccessGlo, Bureau Translations, and Morningside

Véronique Özkaya, who joined Xplanation as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer in 2012, stepped up to the position of CEO in February 2018.  

She is based in the company’s European headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, with all C-level executives and regional managers reporting to her. “My former position will be covered by two colleagues who have been part of the Xplanation journey for many years,” she said.

Before joining Xplanation, Özkaya worked as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Moravia, VP of Sales at Lionbridge, and Language Manager at Donnelley. She had also served as board member and eventually Chairman of the Board of Globalization and Localization Association (GALA).

“I’ve been involved with the industry for about 25 years, working most areas of the business including production, language, business development, and marketing,” she affirmed.

Özkaya said what she wanted most to do is encourage women to grow in this industry and trust themselves.

“Isn’t it strange that there are so few women CEO in the global [top] 50 language service providers (LSPs)? In my career, many people have asked how I could do all of it with a family (I have three daughters) like it was a burden. I believe, perhaps naively, that if you love what you do, you make it happen,” she shared.

How does she see the demand in the language industry today? “I often compare demand for our services to two different types of roads: one [is a] fast highway and [the other] a winding country road. The highway is where you need to apply the latest technology such as neural machine translation. The winding country road is for high-impact marketing content, where transcreation, ISEO, and other value-added services come into play,” she said.

Fiona Chin — SuccessGlo

As the newly appointed Business Development Director at SuccessGlo, Fiona Chin’s primary responsibility is to identify and grow the company’s base of regional corporate clients based in Singapore and develop them into key accounts through consultative selling.  

Chin joined SuccessGlo in January 2018, shortly after she returned to Singapore in late 2017 after spending a few years living in Shanghai, China where her husband was posted.

“I met up with a former colleague when I returned, and she spoke passionately about the company and the localization industry that she has been in for the past 20 years, and that got me really interested,” she shared. “I thought the timing was perfect, as I was ready to re-enter the corporate market after taking some time off from work to raise my family.”

Chin has been in the sales and marketing function for over 15 years and comes to SuccessGlo with years of organizational experience.

“I took a break from corporate for a few years to raise my family.  I hope that through this article I can encourage a woman who has taken time off from work to know that re-entering the corporate workforce is not that intimidating and daunting. It all starts with a positive mindset, a learning attitude, and the right expectation to get the ball rolling,” she said.

SuccessGlo’s profile states that its business “focuses on eastern Asian languages — simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CCJK). Chin said these languages have always been the first tier languages in terms of the market-driven demands and with the increasing growth of Southeast Asian companies going offshore, demands for these languages are also increasing.

“The challenge for localizers is to ensure an integrated and consistent communication and messaging across the client’s various platforms, including software, websites, marketing collaterals, mobile apps,” she said.

Aaron Schliem — Bureau Translations

Aaron Schliem, Bureau Translation’s new Chief Marketing Officer, is a ‘lifelong’ language industry person.

He started his career in a language learning company called Horizon Learning in Chile where he taught both English and Spanish. He moved on to work as a medical interpreter (Spanish-English) and started working for the Seattle Language Academy not long after.

He then founded Glyph Language Services and served as the company’s CEO for 15 years. He also launched Idiosynch, a consulting firm dedicated to promoting a more holistic vision of globalization.

As CMO of Bureau Translations, Schliem said his role is to manage all things related to marketing and communications. “In my role, I’ll be leading the common marketing functions (lead generation and conversion, events, PR, digital advertising, thought leadership, etc.),” he said.

Schliem is based in Madison, Wisconsin, and reports to CEO Gabriel Fairman.

Interestingly, Schliem has a Bachelor of Science degree in International Relations and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin (Madison).

“I have always loved science and thought I wanted to be a doctor until I landed a job working for a cystic fibrosis lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison hospital. Spending a lot of time at the hospital made it clear that although I loved the science, the day to day work of medicine would not be a good fit for me,” he explained.

Albert Reynolds III — Morningside Translations

As Associate Director of IP Business Development at Morningside Translations, Albert Reynolds III works with organizations to provide solutions to their patent translation and global patent filing challenges. 

“I’m responsible for establishing long-term relationships with clients that help streamline their translations process, lower their costs and increase quality, allowing them to focus on substantive work,” he told Slator.

Reynolds works remotely out of his Sacramento, California home office and reports to Shai Jalfin, Senior Vice President of Global Sales.

“The global market is shrinking as the multi-billion-dollar IP translation business is growing. This is an exciting time to be a part of the industry transformation,” he said.

Reynolds joined Morningside from Sterling Talent Solutions where he worked with Co-CEOs Thomas Klein and Roland Lessard.

“I have had a passion for sales for the past 23 years. I love the opportunity to meet new people on a daily basis, build long-term relationships, and turn these relationships into solid referrals. The challenge is to sell into new clients and new industries,” he said.

Daniel Schwartz — Morningside Translations

Morningside Translations’ new Associate Director of Marketing, Daniel Schwartz, transitioned into language services from a career in higher education about four years ago. He has a degree in Journalism and had worked for the Northeastern University until 2014. 

His entry in the language industry is via ForeignExchange Translations where he helped produce e-learning and educational audio content in support of their life sciences practice. Following the acquisition of ForeignExchange by AMPLEXOR, he moved into a role that oversees making traditional marketing collateral as well as events and campaigns.

He joined Morningside in February 2018 and he now oversees the marketing efforts of the company’s legal and localization verticals. “That includes strategy, content development, and cross-channel marketing campaigns,” he said.

He is based in New York and reports to Ethan Perlson, Vice President of Marketing.

What is the key challenge that he sees in marketing language services now? “‘End-to-end’ is a phrase that’s used pretty ubiquitously in language services and it’s what I see as the greatest challenge in language services right now – identifying opportunities to get in earlier and support clients throughout the product or project lifecycle,” he said.