Paul Barlow
GALA Board Candidate, 2027-2029 Term
Professional Information
Brief Bio
I am a strategic growth advisor, entrepreneur and former senior executive with three decades of experience building, scaling and transforming businesses across the language services and interpreting industry. As Founder of AWGS, I advise founders, CEOs and investors on revenue growth, sales transformation, operational efficiency and business models for the AI era. I have held CRO and VP Sales roles in LSP and interpreting companies with revenues up to $60M, delivering double-digit growth, improving margins and launching technology services. Having built, grown and sold language businesses, I understand the decisions members face and the questions a board should be asking.
Have you served on a board, committee, or working group before? What surprised you about it?
My experience has primarily been through industry committees, working groups and executive leadership rather than formal corporate boards. What has surprised me most is how important it is to separate personal preferences and operational detail from the broader interests of the organization and its members. The best contribution is often not having the answer but asking the question that changes the discussion. Working across GALA committees and with executive teams has reinforced the importance of constructive challenge, listening to different perspectives and staying focused on decisions that create long-term value.
Which skills do you possess that would make you valuable as a board member?
I bring practical skills that translate directly into effective board contribution:
- Strategy and planning: building growth plans that span several years and turning them into clear priorities, owners and milestones.
- Execution and follow-through: I work with discipline, structure and a repeatable methodology, and I see initiatives through to completion.
- Financial literacy: I have held P&L ownership and am comfortable with budgets, balance sheets, gross margin, profitability and return on investment.
- Sales and go-to-market: I have built and led sales and growth teams in LSP and interpreting companies from about $5M to $60M, delivering double-digit growth and margin improvement.
- M&A: acquisition strategy, integration and preparing businesses for sale.
- Communication and engagement: public speaking, facilitation, executive coaching and engagement strategy.
I also offer a vantage point the board may be missing. My career has been on the commercial side, across interpreting as well as translation and localization, and today I work with the small and mid-sized LSPs that make up much of GALA's membership. Most importantly, I understand the difference between running a business and governing one. I know how to ask management the right questions and test assumptions while leaving execution to the team.
Describe your experience with setting strategy.
Strategy has been central to my career. I have developed and executed growth strategies for language service companies, built new business and account management teams, launched new interpreting technology platforms, supported acquisitions and integrations, and advised founders and executives on repositioning for growth.
My approach starts with the market, the customer and the economics. From there I identify where an organization can create distinct value and what it needs to deliver it. Strategy is about choices: where to play, how to win, what to build and what to stop doing. That discipline guides my operating and advisory work.
Candidate Perspective
If you had to give GALA a new tagline to convey the association's future-readiness, what would it be?
Where Language Practitioners Shape What's Next
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?
In three years, GALA should be where practitioners from across the industry come to make better decisions, faster, about the changes AI and technology are bringing to our work.
We should serve practitioners across the ecosystem, not only owners: LSP and technology leaders, sales, operations and project teams, vendor managers, linguists, interpreters and buyers. Few organizations bring all of them together. That is GALA's advantage.
GALA's priorities of professional development and community building are right. What should change is focus and speed, with a bias toward action over speculation:
- Member benchmarks: Expand regular, anonymous data on pricing, margins, AI adoption and changing roles, which no single company can see on its own.
- Peer groups: small groups by role and company size working on live problems together, with practical output every quarter.
- Career development: helping people move into the roles AI is creating, from workflow and quality design to consultative selling.
The value is simple: members leave every GALA interaction with something they can apply in the next 90 days, and GALA can show that it happened.
Which GALA programs have you personally participated in over the past few years? Describe any volunteer roles you've had at GALA.
My involvement with GALA includes:
- Valencia 2024 organization committee
- Rising Star committee, Montreal 2025
- GALA Sales Academy 2025
- Multimedia SIG presentation 2025
- Berlin 2026 workshop
When I became an independent consultant, I was one of the first to join GALA as a paying individual member. GALA's value should reach the individuals shaping our industry, not only the companies that employ them, and moves like that matter to me. These roles have given me a practical view of GALA's programs, members and volunteer community.
What is GALA doing today that you would stop doing?
I would stop measuring success by activity: enrollments, session counts and content volume. Those numbers show effort, not whether members made better decisions or built stronger businesses.
Practically, that means fewer standalone webinars and a review of any SIG or program that can no longer show clear member value. The time released should go into fewer, deeper programs on the questions members face now across the whole business: talent and career paths, compliance and data security, quality, pricing and go-to-market as AI changes how language work is produced and bought.