Annelise Finegan
GALA Board Candidate, 2027-2029 Term
Professional Information
Brief Bio
Annelise Finegan, PhD, is Academic Director of Translation & Interpreting at New York University (NYU) and a devoted advocate for education across the language professions at all stages. She works toward best practices in online education with a wide-ranging professional faculty across the evolving fields of translation, interpreting, transcreation, localization, terminology management, language access, and language technology, always with an eye to what is needed today to deliver content across languages that is tailored for global and local audiences. Also an award-winning translator from Chinese, Annelise previously worked as an editor, reviser, publishing coordinator, and project manager.
Have you served on a board, committee, or working group before? What surprised you about it?
Beyond volunteering with GALA, I serve on the American Translators Association Education and Pedagogy Committee and the Association of Language Companies Bridge. At NYU I supervise a faculty of over two dozen highly qualified professional educators and have participated in working groups for thought leadership, emerging technology, and online education. Something that surprises me in these environments is how much more effective discussions can be with shared reference points–or, more simply, prep materials!–toward finding consensus or making difficult decisions when our instinctive answers would have differed. This is why I appreciate transparency and sharing need-to-know context in collaborative roles.
Which skills do you possess that would make you valuable as a board member?
Education, pedagogy, setting best practices, some experience with both budget and marketing/promotion, and wordsmithing, of course!
Describe your experience with setting strategy.
My core expertise is in education, especially in online settings, so I can offer value there in GALA’s year-round efforts as a learning and collaborative space. I have background in project management and many years in both administrative and leadership roles, which I think allows me to be either decisive or deliberative as the situation requires. My scholarly training in hermeneutics means that I am always moving between the short and long term horizons.
Candidate Perspective
If you had to give GALA a new tagline to convey the association's future-readiness, what would it be?
Global Access through Language, or
Global Access x Language (x=across), both of which are still the GALA acronym!
What should GALA look like in 3 years if change keeps happening at the current pace? Who should we serve? What should we offer? What value should we deliver?
Thanks to AI and LLMs, this industry is no longer a best-kept secret. In three years GALA will have shaped the future of multilingual services and content proactively through advocacy and knowledge sharing. GALA is the go-to community for each of its members, individually and organizationally, to stay up-to-date and adapt toward successful change.
An important opportunity for GALA in this changing landscape is the evergreen one: being a shared space for learning that matters. As an academic director, I have updated the NYU Master’s curriculum repeatedly to better meet the needs of the profession. That is the work before GALA, too: continuous updates and a virtuous cycle of representing its constituents and supporting their advancement, whether that means education externally about the profession, continuing education within the profession, or education of those who will enter the profession tomorrow; whether that means at conferences and in-person gatherings or well-curated online academies and offerings.
My perspective for the past two years on the Board as one of GALA’s academic members has been novel and deeply engaged. If re-elected, I will bring this attuned and always thoughtful approach to GALA’s critical work of community formation at a transformative time.
Which GALA programs have you personally participated in over the past few years? Describe any volunteer roles you've had at GALA.
I enjoyed facilitating the GALA Roadshow in New York City when it was co-hosted by NYU in 2024. I presented at the last two annual conferences, first as a soapbox speaker and then on an industry-education panel.
For the past two years I have also been privileged to serve on the GALA Board at a time when industry-wide evolutions have affected this association as well. There were meaningful changes and difficult decisions made with deliberation, collaboration, and a focus always on what would be best for this community.
What is GALA doing today that you would stop doing?
I feel that at the moment GALA is discovering its place, voice, and positioning in a new era. The part of that process that encourages me the most involves recentering language as a shared and binding concern. In other words, the language problem is not solved. It has become larger and more complex, with additional stakeholders, different needs, and broader vistas. As for what comes next, it will be crucial to reach out and invite adjacent industries, professions, and communities into the picture to form a larger Venn diagram where GALA thrives in the overlap.