Kirsten Brecht Baker
Kirsten Brecht Baker has 15 years of experience in developing companies and innovative business models to meet market demand. She has accumulated a diverse background in strategy, operations, fundraising, marketing and business development working with companies from start-up to Fortune 50 status. Mrs. Baker is currently CEO and co-founder of Global Professional Search, a tech company connecting global employers with candidates who have overseas experience and foreign language skills. Prior to GPS, Mrs. Baker co-founded four other start-up companies focused on technology, multiculturalism, and global markets, serving as CEO for two of them. She also served as the Chief Officer for Marketing and New Markets for American Councils– an international non-profit organization focused on language immersion and multiculturalism all over the world. She holds an MBA in entrepreneurial management and marketing from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and a BA in political science and Russian from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Richard Brecht
Richard Brecht, Harvard University Ph.D. brings with him five decades of leadership in language research and policy on behalf of education, government, heritage communities, private business and NGOs. He has been a founder and leader of more than a dozen national language organizations and projects, including ACTR, ACIE, NFLC, NCOLCTL, CASL, and ARC. He has convened major public discussions on language in the United States that have galvanized collaboration across education, industry, government, heritage communities and foreign partners. As co-founder of Global Professional Search and its Chief Research Officer, Brecht has designed cutting edge data designs on language acquisition and application to industry in the U.S. Dr. Brecht has testified in Congress before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, and most recently before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Finally, Dr. Brecht has received numerous awards from national and international organizations in the language field
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Matthew B. Christensen
Matthew Christensen is Professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian & Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. He is the academic director of BYU's Chinese Flagship Center, a partnership between the federal government, education, and business, which helps graduates take their place among the next generation of global professionals working with and in China. He began traveling to China in the early 80's and has witnessed first hand the dramatic changes in China. He is particularly interested in the interaction between language and culture, intercultural communication, and culinary culture.
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Ray Clifford
Ray Clifford is Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Director of the Center for Language Studies at Brigham Young University. He received a PhD in FL Education from the University of Minnesota in 1977, and a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa from Middlebury College in 2003. He led the academic programs at the Defense Language Institute from 1981 through 2004, served as president of ACTFL in 1993, and has received national recognition and honors including the Nelson H. Brooks Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Profession. He publishes regularly and served as guest editor of the Winter 2003 special issue of Foreign Language Annals on Oral Proficiency Testing.
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Darla K. Deardorff
Darla K. Deardorff is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), based at Duke University. In addition, she is a research scholar in the Program in Education at Duke University. Editor of The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Sage, 2009), she has published widely on international education and cross-cultural issues. She is also lead editor of the Sage Handbook of International Higher Education, (Sage, 2012) along with co-editors Hans de Wit, John Heyl and Tony Adams. Other recent books include Building Cultural Competence (Stylus, 2012) and Demystifying Outcome Assessment for International Educators (Stylus 2015). With over 20 years of experience in the field of intercultural education, she teaches courses in international education and intercultural communication and is on the faculty of Harvard University's Future of Learning Institute, The Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, OR, is research associate at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (S. Africa), Meiji University (Japan), Shanghai International Studies University (China) and adjunct faculty at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (formerly Monterey Institute. She has given invited talks, trainings and workshops around the world on intercultural competence, international education assessment and global leadership and serves as a consultant and trainer on these topics. The intercultural competence models developed from her research are being used in numerous countries and she is recipient of several awards related to her work. Founder of ICC Global, her areas of specialty include cross-cultural training, assessment and evaluation, teacher/faculty preparation/development, curriculum internationalization, global leadership, and intercultural coaching. She received her master’s and doctorate degrees from North Carolina State University.
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Hans Fenstermacher
Hans Fenstermacher is a 33-year veteran of the language industry, having served as linguist, entrepreneur, and global executive for numerous language-service and technology firms, most recently TransPerfect Translations until 2012.
In 2002, Fenstermacher founded the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), the world's largest non-profit language-industry trade association. He served as its founding Chairman and as full-time CEO from 2012-2014. Today, Fenstermacher operated CEKAI, a strategic consultancy advising language-industry companies. Fenstermacher is a member of the Advisory Board of The Rosetta Foundation, a charity that donates translations to non-profit organizations worldwide. Born in Germany, he speaks six languages and holds degrees from Princeton University and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. For more information, visit www.linkedin.com/in/hansfenstermacher. |
Phil Gardner
Philip D. Gardner is Director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. Dr. Gardner has been with MSU for 28 years after receiving degrees from Whitman College (BA in Chemistry) and Michigan State University (Ph.D. in Resource & Development Economics/Public Policy). His major areas of research include the transition from college to work, early socialization and career progression in the workplace, workforce readiness, and other areas related to college student studies. MSU’s nationally recognized annual college labor market study is done under his direction each fall. He served as senior editor of the Journal of Cooperative Education and Internships. In the spring of 2009 he served as a Fulbright specialist to New Zealand on work-integrated learning.
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Shulamit Gilan
Shulamit Gilan joined ManpowerGroup Solutions Language Services (Quality Translations in the past) in 2011 and is currently the CEO of the Israeli operation. Shulamit joined ManpowerGroup in 1985 and assumed different responsibilities and roles. Since 1995 Shulamit assumed her role as sales and Marketing Director of ManpowerGroup for Israel and Strategic Clients Coordinator for Southern Europe. As CEO of the Israeli operation, Shulamit has contributed to the creation of ManpowerGroup Solutions Language Services globally together with the US and the Netherlands operations to provide global language service coverage around the globe and to benefit from 25 years of experience and joint forces. During the last 4 years Shulamit developed the services portfolio, perfected processes and service level, opened new business units as well as integration of technological tools and platforms. ManpowerGroup Solutions Language Services provides a variety of translation, localization interpretation services together with recruitment and placement of language specialists for global international corporations as well as to local and national in 160 languages. Shulamit was born in Israel, graduated from Tel Aviv University in French Language and Culture and Musicology.
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Debra Humphreys
Debra Humphreys leads AAC&U’s national and state-level advocacy and policy efforts related to issues of student success and the quality of student learning in higher education. As part of AAC&U's campaign, Liberal Education and America’s Promise: Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College, she is helping to build communications capacity on the part of college and university leaders and faculty members and educate the public about the value of an engaged liberal education to prepare for the changing global economy. Humphreys also leads the policy strand of AAC&U's Lumina Foundation supported initiative, Quality Collaboratives, working in nine states to advance transfer and assessment policies that better account for students' demonstrated accomplishment of learning.
She oversees all of AAC&U’s policy, public, and employer engagement and outreach, media relations and the development of all of AAC&U's publications, marketing efforts, and Web resources. Humphreys supervises the publication of many books, monographs, and quarterlies, and multiple Web sites. Under her leadership, AAC&U has dramatically increased its publications sales and coverage of its issues in various print and electronic media outlets. Since 2001 when she became Vice President, AAC&U's institutional members has also grown to more than 1,300 members. Humphreys regularly serves as AAC&U's official spokesperson. In that role, she has appeared on Fox News, NBC Nightly News, the PBS program, To the Contrary, and has had op-eds published in USA Today and The Chronicle of Higher Education. |
Renee Jourdenais
Dr. Renee Jourdenais is Dean of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). She oversees the MA programs in Translation, in Translation & Localization Management, in Conference Interpretation, in Translation & Interpretation, in Teaching Foreign Language, and in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She also oversees the Institute’s Language and Intercultural Studies programs, which prepare the Institute’s graduate students in International Policy and Management to successfully communicate in the multilingual and multicultural settings of their international careers.
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Jonathan Levy
Jonathan Levy is the Director of Linguistic Services at TransPerfect Remote Interpreting. Previously, he was the Director of Language Services at CyraCom International, the Assistant Director of the University of Arizona’s National Center for Interpretation, and the president and founder of his own language service start-up. He has extensive experience working in healthcare, legal, education and defense/intelligence settings, is a Commissioner on the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI), and has overseen development projects for the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Jonathan is a former teacher of history, English and ESL and was a participant in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program. He holds a master’s degree in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in East Asian History from the University of Chicago.
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Gary Oddou
Gary Oddou, professor emeritus, California State University, San Marcos, directed and taught in the Global Business Management program from 2001-2013. He is most known for his work in cross-cultural competencies, global leadership, expatriate adjustment and repatriate knowledge transfer. He has co-authored or co-edited several books and published over 35 peer-reviewed journal articles in these areas. His co-authored article on global competencies has been cited in over 1200 journal articles since it was written. He has taught in universities in England, France, Switzerland, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and the U.S. He is a founding partner in The Kozai Group, a firm which specializes in assessing individuals for their competencies to be effective in a diverse environment. He is an avid skier, surfer and paraglider.
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Bill Rivers
Dr. Rivers has 20 years of experience in culture and language for economic development and national security, with expertise in research, assessment, program evaluation, and policy development and advocacy. He chairs ASTM Technical Committee F43, Language Services and Products and the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO Technical Committee 232, Training in the Informal Sector.
Before joining JNCL-NCLIS, he served as Chief Scientist at Integrated Training Solutions, Inc., a small business in Arlington, Virginia, where he focused on strategic planning, management, and advanced technologies for language and culture programs in the public sector. While at ITS, he served in a contractor role as the Chief Linguist of the National Language Service Corps. Prior to working at ITS, he was a founding member of the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) at the University of Maryland, and was a staff member of the National Foreign Language Center from 1994 to 2003. During his career, Dr. Rivers has also taught Russian at the University of Maryland, worked as a freelance interpreter and translator, and conducted field work in Kazakhstan, where he regularly returns to teach at several universities. He received his PhD in Russian from Bryn Mawr College and his MA, BA, and BS from the University of Maryland. |
Scott Sprenger
Scott Sprenger is the Provost of The American University of Paris. His graduate degrees in French Studies are from Johns Hopkins University and Emory, and he is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar award in Brussels/Paris in 2009 and an Andrew W. Mellon post doc at UCLA in 1999-01.
Before joining AUP, he was an associate dean in the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University. His administrative work covered a broad range of areas, such as faculty development, tenure and promotions, program assessment of study abroad and internships, international program oversight, college and university advising, international business language, and more. He directed the European Studies program from 2006-09 and has been on the executive committee of a Title VI Center for the Study of Europe from 2003 to the present. His main publications are on modern European literature and culture and he has recently taught interdisciplinary courses such as The Idea of Europe, European Anti-Americanism and Gothic Marriage. While at BYU, Scott Sprenger’s main assignment for the past 5 years was to create and develop a program called Humanities+ whose aim was to bridge the humanities and liberal arts with global career opportunity. Humanities+ has been acclaimed in the national press and by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as one of the most innovative initiatives in the liberal arts in the United States. He has also actively promoted the humanities and liberal arts, with Congress via the Humanities Alliance Conference, on the radio and in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. |