CQ fluency has appointed Clio Schils as Global Director of Life Sciences to oversee the rapid expansion of its life sciences segment and manage its global strategy for the division.

An interpreter by education, Schils has spent almost her entire career in life sciences.

“I started at Medtronic as a localization manager, then on to Lionbridge where I continued to work in the same highly regulated field. Additionally, I have held two management positions in life sciences with Sajan and Commit,” she told Slator in an email interview. 

At CQ fluency, she said she is thrilled to be taking all her experiences to assist the growth of the organization.

“I’ve known the CEO, Elisabete Miranda, for a few years and have always admired her company’s healthcare focus and mission “to improve lives,” she said. “I felt it was a good opportunity to explore. I’ve been given an opportunity to help shape, refine and deliver on the strategy and it is very exciting.”

Schils is based in The Netherlands and reports to Senior VP of Operations, Michael Marsan.

Asked to comment on the challenges she sees in the language services industry, she said, “We look at things in the industry through a lens of opportunity, not challenges.”

Shakil Ejaz Iqbal — DictionApS

Shakil Ejaz Iqbal joined DictionApS as Head of Bid Management in August 2018.

He is responsible for bid management and public sales with a focus on bidding for public sector tenders or contracts of translation services in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

“I work primarily with bid management but also deal with sales management (with focus on business-to-government sales (B2G), and key account management,” he said.

Iqbal has worked with strategic procurement since 2007, starting out as a strategic procurement consultant at The Capital Region of Denmark, where he was in charge of procurement of products and services to the public hospitals in Copenhagen Region.

His most recent employment was a sourcing manager at PostNord, a state-owned postal company in Sweden and Denmark with business activities in Norway and Finland.

At DictionApS, Iqbal works at the company’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark and reports directly to CEO Martin Boberg, who founded the company in 2010.

Based on his public procurement experience, Iqbal shared that there is quite a high competition in the public procurement market for translation services, especially on the Danish and Swedish markets.

Among the challenges he sees include “too high and bureaucratic requirements in connection with bidding on public tenders  as well as the high cost of bidding and the time and resources spent on the bidding phase.”

At DictionApS, he said he wants to bring his understanding of frameworks and processes within the procurement world for a higher win rate for the company.

Edward Carlin — SeproTec

SeproTec Multilingual Solutions has hired Edward Carlin as Business Development Manager to expand the company’s client base in the Americas.

Based in his hometown in Austin, Texas, a fast-growing city and major tech hub in the United States, his role is primarily to manage existing accounts in the US and develop new relationships with potential clients all the way from Canada to Argentina. 

His transfer to SeproTec was a timely move. After completing a European Master’s degree in conference interpreting in Paris, he said he started to plan his wedding and decided to return to the US, at which time he joined SeproTec.

Carlin had also studied International Relations and French at Texas A&M University and spent a semester in Normandy. After graduation, he moved back to France to do two internships at the United States Embassy in Paris.

In 2014, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he worked as a site specialist for a private study-abroad company, counseling American college students on which courses to take. He also worked at a health and wellness company where he helped develop their Canadian market, particularly their French-speaking market in Québec.

“I’ve always loved languages and meeting people from other places, so my personal experiences and connection to Austin seemed like a great combination for my role here,” he said.

The main challenges he sees in the language services industry are the highly segmented market and the ability of LSPs, linguists, and clients to adapt to this fast-changing industry.

“Speaking for the Americas Region, one of the challenges we face in this competitive landscape is the hard work we in the industry have to do to educate small- and medium-sized businesses on the benefits of internationalization and how we can help them in the process,” he shared.

Mathan Sivaloganathan — Xillio

Mathan Sivaloganathan joined Netherlands-based content and migration company Xillio in October 2018. He said his job is to focus on building a localization sales department.

“The challenge of actually connecting systems, and reducing redundancy by increasing productivity,” he told Slator when asked why he joined the company. “I love the dynamics within the company, there is the possibility to do things differently and make tough decisions as we position ourselves in this new market.” 

As a computational linguist, with more than 15 years of experience in localization, IT, telecommunication, software and services, Sivaloganathan had worked as a project manager, consultant, business development manager, and had led the global sales team at memoQ.  

Based in Bonn, Germany, he reports to CEO Rikkert Engels.

In the language technology industry, he said the main challenge is that the amount of content is rapidly increasing.

“The technology landscape in this industry is fragmented. By taking a holistic approach and streamlining workflows, you connect the dots between technology, services, and business models,” he said. “Exciting times ahead of us.”

Łukasz Rejter — Xillio

As the new Sales Manager at Xillio, Lukasz Rejter said he will also focus on building a localization sales department for the Netherlands-based company.

He is based in Warsaw, Poland, and reports to CEO Rikkert Engels. 

Rejter has been in the translation industry for over ten years. A linguist by education, he had worked with translation technology in various roles.

“My main focus is always on optimizing the way the technology is applied, and to make it more efficient,” he said.

In his last role as a Sales Manager at memoQ, he was responsible for managing a team consisting of account executives, account managers, solution engineers, and professional services.

“The localization industry deals with a tremendous amount of systems and repositories, and everybody works independently from each other. There are silos that make it difficult to be efficient and automate translation workflows. I think that the biggest challenge we have right now is to link the systems, and focus on productivity and automation on a new level,” he shared.

In his previous company, he said he had worked with Sivaloganathan in building a well-oiled sales department. “I’m looking forward to continue and use this synergy also at Xillio,” he said.