Andrew Bredenkamp - Chair of the Board
Andrew is chairman of the board of Translators without Borders, a role he took over from the Founder, Lori Thicke, in October 2015. He has been a board member since the organization’s inception in 2010. Andrew has over 20 years of experience in multilingual content development. He is the founder and chairman of Acrolinx, a linguistic software technology company. Before starting Acrolinx, he was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. He also serves on the advisory board of a number of organizations.
Dermot Carty - Board Member
Dermot Carty has had a long and distinguished career in international development. Working initially for Irish Aid and then UNICEF, he has been an active advocate for the realisation of child rights. He has influenced decision-making at the policy and grassroots levels to overcome the obstacles of poverty, violence, disease and discrimination that prevent children from having the best start in life. Over the years, Dermot has held a number of positions, based in Zambia, Mozambique, Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, Indonesia and, finally, as Deputy Director of Emergency Programmes for UNICEF. He now lives in Ireland, enjoying his family, and keeping busy doing consultancies.
Nigel Fisher - Board Member
Nigel is currently COO of Allied BioScience Canada. Previously, he was UN Assistant Secretary-General. A former Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), he has likewise been UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria crisis, as well as Deputy Special Representative and Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN missions in Afghanistan and Haiti. He also advises governments and organizations on disaster risk reduction, preparedness and recovery.
Salvatore “Salvo” Giammarresi - Board Member
Salvo is the head of localization at Airbnb, and also serves on the executive boards of Mosaicoon and EnLabs, and as an advisor to several start-ups. Previously Salvo was head of content and globalization at PayPal, and head of localization at Yahoo. Salvo has helped companies of all sizes with globalization, geo-expansion, scalable and efficient operations, and business management. Salvo is a published author on the topics of localization project management, international product and portfolio management, formulaic sequences, and translation memory systems. He holds a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of Palermo where he has been a visiting professor, teaching and developing classes and curricula.
Simon Hale - Board Member
Simon Hale is an international development consultant with 33 years’ experience in humanitarian and development work. He provides program management and evaluation expertise for aid programs commissioned by government donors, international NGOs and national NGOs. He has provided advice and training to ActionAid, Oxfam, Save the Children, Plan International and several other NGOs on program, partnership and financial management to inform policy development, risk management, and to improve program performance. Before becoming a consultant he worked as a humanitarian program manager and a development program financial manager. He has worked in 45 countries.
Iris Orriss - Board Member
Iris Orriss serves as Director of Internationalization at Facebook. She has been with Facebook since January 2013 and is passionate about eliminating the internet language barrier. Her work focusses on growing Facebook in international markets in over 100 local languages. Prior to Facebook, Iris was a director at Microsoft working on product internationalization and development processes. She is a native of Germany, speaks four languages, and was educated at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Donna Parrish - Secretary of the Board
Donna has worked at the magazine MultiLingual since 1997, and became its owner and publisher in 2002. Previously, she was a computer programmer for 25 years, working for Digital Equipment Corporation as well as various other clients. Donna is co-organizer of both the LocWorld conferences and the local human right task force. In addition to serving on the board of Translators without Borders, she currently serves on the advisory board of the Endangered Alphabets Project. She holds a B.Sc. in mathematics from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.
Francis Tsang - Board Member
Francis leads the international engineering effort at LinkedIn, focused on enabling economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. His personal mission is to help remove language and cultural barriers in the world through technology. In addition to the board of directors of Translators without Borders, he currently serves on the advisory boards of TAUS and the ADAPT Centre.
Olga Blasco - Board Member
Olga Blasco is a Board member of The Rosetta Foundation since 2017, having previously led the merger with Translators without Borders on behalf of the Executive Committee. She brings over 20 years of experience in the translation industry, having held leadership positions in Lionbridge and Welocalize. Now she is an independent growth strategist, M&A advisor, mentor and social entrepreneur. Olga operates out of Dublin and Istanbul, where she co-founded JANA to empower disadvantaged communities towards socially inclusive businesses.
Andrew Bredenkamp - Chairman of the Board
Andrew has been a board member since the organization’s inception in 2010. Andrew has over 20 years of experience in multilingual content development. He is the founder and chairman of Acrolinx, a linguistic software technology company. Before starting Acrolinx, he was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. He also serves on the advisory board of a number of organizations.
Dermot Carty - Treasurer
Dermot Carty has had a long and distinguished career in international development. Working initially for Irish Aid and then UNICEF, he has been an active advocate for the realisation of child rights. He has influenced decision-making at the policy and grassroots levels to overcome the obstacles of poverty, violence, disease and discrimination that prevent children from having the best start in life. Over the years, Dermot has held a number of positions, based in Zambia, Mozambique, Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, Indonesia and, finally, as Deputy Director of Emergency Programmes for UNICEF. He now lives in Ireland, enjoying his family, and keeping busy doing consultancies.
Donna Parrish - Secretary of the Board
Donna has worked at the magazine MultiLingual since 1997, and became its owner and publisher in 2002. Previously, she was a computer programmer for 25 years, working for Digital Equipment Corporation as well as various other clients. Donna is co-organizer of both the LocWorld conferences and the local human right task force. In addition to serving on the board of Translators without Borders, she currently serves on the advisory board of the Endangered Alphabets Project. She holds a B.Sc. in mathematics from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University.
Simon Andriesen - Chairman of the Kenya Board of Directors
Simon is founder and CEO of MediLingua, a linguistic services company based in The Netherlands specializing in pharmaceutical, clinical trial, biomedical, medical technology, and other health-related information. He designed and teaches a series of courses on medical and pharmaceutical translation, and is involved in training courses for authors of patient information leaflets. Simon has been part of the translation and localization community since 1980.
Andrew Bredenkamp - Treasurer
Andrew has been a board member since the organization’s inception in 2010. Andrew has over 20 years of experience in multilingual content development. He is the founder and chairman of Acrolinx, a linguistic software technology company. Before starting Acrolinx, he was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. He also serves on the advisory board of a number of organizations.
Rebecca Petras - Board Member
A founding board member of Translators without Borders (TWB), Rebecca has been on the management team since 2012. She worked to develop the TWB’s Training Center in Nairobi, Kenya, that became TWB’s first field office. She also developed the Words of Relief crisis translation network, the first and only network of its kind in humanitarian response. She has years of experience in the localization industry, handling public relations and marketing for the Globalization and Localization Association, as well as a number of language service and technology providers.
Lori Thicke - Board Member and Founder of TWB US
Lori Thicke is the founder and CEO of Lexcelera, an innovative translation company established in Paris, France, in 1986. Before she founded Translators without Borders, Lori and her Lexcelera partner, Ros Smith-Thomas, set up Traducteurs sans Frontières to support humanitarian organizations in France. Following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, Lori decided to create Translators without Borders as a US-based non-profit in order to better respond to global crises. She was the first president of the newly-formed organization. After visiting East Africa, Lori added access to knowledge to the mission. Lori, who holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, is a frequent speaker on how translation and technology work together to take down language barriers.
Iribe Mwangi - Secretary of the Board
Iribe Mwangi is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Kiswahili at the University of Nairobi. Prof. Iribe, a trained graduate teacher, is a Board Member and Secretary to the Board of Translators without Boarders (Kenya Chapter). He holds B.Ed, M.A and PhD degrees in Kiswahili and linguistics. A leading translation and communication consultant, Prof. Iribe Mwangi is a linguist who specializes in Kiswahili phonology, morphology and sociolinguistics. He has written over 50 books, book chapters and journal articles in these and other areas of language and linguistics. A social commentator and political analyst, he has been instrumental in the mainstreaming of human rights as an academic discipline at the University of Nairobi and he is a great proponent of an inter-disciplinary approach to academics.