Speakers & Partners

Speakers

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  Francesca Sorrentino

  Localization Director, Phrase

  Francesca is Localization Director at Phrase and manager of the Loc Leaders community. She has been in the localization industry for 17+ years, with experience spanning the video game industry, language service providers, consulting, events, and community management.

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  Oleksandr Pysaryuk

  Localization Leader, GitLab

  Oleksandr is a localization leader with 25 years in the industry, now building AI-powered internationalization infrastructure and agentic translation platforms at GitLab, following prior leadership roles across sports technologies, telecommunications, HR tech, human capital management, and e-commerce organizations.

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  Melanie Heighway

  Lead, Localization Enablement, Canva

  Melanie has worked in localisation for more than 20 years, on both the vendor and client side, including Appen, SDL, Cochlear and Invoice2go, before nearly seven years at Atlassian leading product localisation and internationalisation, and now Canva, where she leads the localisation enablement team. Across her career, Melanie's focused on moving localisation out of reactive delivery and into a strategic, scalable product capability. Her guiding question isn't simply how to localise faster, but why we're localising in the first place, and how we should do it.

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  Antoine Rey

  SVP Customer Development, Argos Multilingual

  Antoine Rey, SVP Customer Development at Argos Multilingual, started his career in localization in 1997 and has held various technical, sales and management roles in the industry. Antoine's main area of focus is to consult, develop and implement mature operational and business globalization models with clients across various industries. Antoine is a French native and holds a MSc in Information Technology and a BA in International Business and Communications. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

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  Fabiano Cid

  Chief Solutions Officer, Powerling

  Fabiano Cid is Chief Solutions Officer at Powerling, where he drives its shift from language services provider to global content solutions partner. Brazilian, based in Valencia by way of Montreal, he has spent close to 30 years in the language services industry. He founded Ccaps Translation and Localization in 1999, sold it to OXO Innovation, became COO, led three acquisitions, and sold it again to Powerling. He is a former Board Chair of GALA and currently sits on the advisory board of Women in Localization, where he founded and helps lead the Underrepresented Interest Groups (UIGs). He created and hosts SOFA, a series of interviews with industry leaders "where bold ideas find a comfy seat."

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  Jukka Aalho

  Keynote

  Author, Marketer, Science Communicator, Speaker, and AI Poet

  Jukka Aalho (b. 1986) is an Oulu-based creative marketer, TEDx speaker, and author. He has helped build several international health tech success stories, including work at Polar and as Science Communication Lead at Oura Health. He currently works as a marketing consultant, especially for startups expanding internationally.

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  Christiane Bark

  Localisation Manager, Currensea

  Christiane (Nane to her friends) began her career in translation through volunteering with Plan International in Germany, which led to a medical translation job in Toronto, followed by four years working in the occasionally surreal and decidedly unromantic world of online dating in London. She then spent almost eight years as Head of Localisation at a language-learning EdTech start-up, helping it grow from start-up to scale-up and through its eventual exit. After a stint as an independent consultant, she joined London-based FinTech start-up Currensea as its first-ever Localisation Manager, building the localisation function from the ground up.