Long-term Members Join Veteran Board
Seattle, Washington, USA (8 November 2011) – Members of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) have elected four new board members for the 2012-13 GALA Board of Directors. The board members, who were elected from a strong pool of nominated professionals, are veterans of the language services industry and have been long-time members of the association; two are current board members now re-elected for additional two-year terms.
The board members elected for the 2012-2013 term are:
Fabiano Cid, (Ccaps, Brazil)
Hans Fenstermacher, (Transperfect/Translations.com, USA)
Kim Harris, (text & form GmbH, Germany)
Gary Muddyman (Conversis, U.K.)
Cid and Muddyman are long-time members of GALA who will be joining the veterans on the board. Fenstermacher and Harris are on the current board and will begin new two-year terms following several past years of service. They will work with three continuing board members: Serge Gladkoff (Logrus International, Russia), Xavier Maza (iDISC Information Technologies, Spain), and Shelly Priebe (Priebe and Associates, USA). Board members Aki Ito (TOIN Corporation) and Arturo Quintero (Moravia Worldwide) will be finishing their service on the board at the end of 2011.
“The board sincerely thanks Aki and Arturo for their dedicated service over the past two years—they have worked hard with the GALA staff to spread the word about the association and our industry and to create new services and programming for our members,” said Hans Fenstermacher, who is the current Board Chair. “I’m also delighted to begin working with Fabiano and Gary, both of whom have been active members of GALA for years.”
The new board will preside over growing member services for the GALA membership. Under the stewardship of the current board, GALA has introduced a number of new programs and initiatives, including the GALA Standards Initiative, which is run by industry veteran, Arle Lommel. In addition to GSI, this year GALA launched its affiliate membership level for localization buyers and launched GALA Marketplace to give members discounts on business services. The association also continued to expand its educational webinar program and local networking events. In 2012, GALA will hold its fourth Language of Business conference: GALA 2012, 26-28 March, in Monaco.
About the New Directors
Fabiano Cid. Managing Director, Ccaps Translation and Localization
Fabiano is the Managing Director of Ccaps Translation and Localization, a company that has been providing language services in the Latin American region since 1999. With a degree in Liberal Arts (Portuguese Language & Brazilian and Portuguese Literatures) from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Fabiano is responsible for the company’s long-term planning and strategic partnerships. He started his career as a translator at Lazoski, Beninatto and Associates in 1996 and later that year moved to London, where he worked as a freelance translator for two years. Returned to his home town of Rio de Janeiro to found Ccaps in 1999 and since then has positioned Ccaps as a market leader in its segment.
For six years Fabiano was the Chairman of the Board of Milengo, when he raised the investment necessary for the company’s restructuring. He is also a very active member of the industry who is frequently invited to speak at conferences and write articles for specialized publications, especially in matters related to Latin America. He is one of the leading organizers of Think Latin America, whose last edition happened in Silicon Valley, with the presence of distinguished players from inside and outside the localization industry.
Hans Fenstermacher. Vice President, TransPerfect/Translations.com
Hans has been in the language business for 30 years. A speaker of 6 languages, he began as a translator and worked in virtually every production position possible over the decades. In 1994 Hans founded ArchiText Inc. in Massachusetts to provide localization and language services. Over the next 12 years, Hans grew the company, developing ABREVE®, a proprietary content globalization system, and working with end-clients around the world. Hans merged his company with Translations.com in 2006 and became a corporate Vice President. He now oversees 4 divisions of the TransPerfect family of companies and lives and works out of the Washington D.C. area.
In 2002, Hans was a principal founder of GALA, one of his proudest accomplishments. He served as GALA’s first Chairman of the Board until 2006. He returned to the Board in 2010 and serves as its current Chairman. Hans is also an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). He is a frequent speaker in the industry and contributor to publications worldwide on the topic of language, communications, localization, and globalization.
Kim Harris. Co-Owner and Managing Director, text & form GmbH
Kim co-founded text & form GmbH, a translation and localization solutions provider, in 1996. She has been actively involved in the language industry for several years, publishing articles and speaking on a variety of industry-related topics such as quality standards, and language and the internet. Most recently, Kim was invited by the Directorate General for Translation to speak in Brussels about trends in the language industry, and by the Washington State Chamber of Commerce to discuss the importance of language in a global economy.
Kim serves as Vice Chairperson on the current GALA board. She has served on conference program committees for a number of industry events including Localization World Berlin, LISA Paris, Networking Days Paris and Lisbon, and GALA 2009 and 2010. Kim is also a member of the Editorial Board for the EU Language Industry Web Platform, an EU DGT initiative whose objective it is to help our industry become more visible through professional knowledge. A native of Toronto, Canada, Kim studied French and German at the University of Toronto.
Gary Muddyman. Managing Director and CEO, Oxford Conversis Ltd.
Gary Muddyman is Managing Director and CEO of Conversis. Established in 2003, Conversis is a U.K.-based leading provider of Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation (GILT) services. As Managing Director and CEO, Muddyman leads the Conversis’s strategic business development as well as overseeing a variety of other business interests throughout the Group. Prior to joining Conversis, Muddyman served as Director of Operations for K International Plc. In this position, he was responsible for all the development and implementation of business strategies.
Muddyman previously spent 16 years working for London-based HSBC Asset Finance U.K. Ltd., one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world. During his tenure there he led various strategic, product, commercial and business development divisions. He was responsible for running a variety of central divisions as well as operational business units giving him a wide experience in all business disciplines particularly marketing and operational strategy. He helped create Metropolitan Collection Services, the debt management arm of HSBC and now the template for successful debt recovery throughout the world. Muddyman received his master’s degree in business administration from Warwick University and is also currently actively involved in a number of not for profit organizations.
About GALA
The Globalization and Localization Association is the largest global non-profit association within the language industry, providing resources, education and research for companies working with translation services, language technology and content localization. GALA member companies are vendors and buyers of language services and technologies. They deploy sophisticated multilingual strategies and proven tools to take content and products to markets around the world. For more information, visit www.gala-global.org.
