Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Localization Today where we explore how language, technology and community converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Media. Today we are going to talk about women in localization. How leadership, visibility and community have reshaped an industry that once was largely invisible.
What it will take to keep that progress moving forward in the age of AI, should we say. Our guest is Anna Schlegel, global technology executive, author of Truly Global and a co founder of Women in Localization. Anna has spent her career opening markets and creativity space for others to lead. Her work has helped redefine what global leadership looks like and who gets to be part of it. Anna, welcome. It's a privilege to have you with us. How are you doing today?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. So fun.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: 19 years of women localization and I know we shouldn't think about the 20th and enjoy the 19th, but wow, it's almost there. How are you feeling about that?
[00:01:18] Speaker B: I know we just had the. It looks like we just had the 15th year anniversary with a huge party that we had in Silicon Valley in San Jose. But yeah, it's a time flies. So yeah, right now we're entering year 19.
Lots of years, lots of twists and turns, lots of people, lots of progress and changes.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's incredible. Of course the big news as well is as every year you are renewing your board and your volunteers, of course you've got a vibrant group of volunteers. Could you tell us a little bit about what that looks like?
Because you do get a ton of new members every year.
What does the group of volunteers look like right now?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we're usually under 400. So we're a team of usually fluctuates between 350 and 400 people.
And from the top, it starts with the board. So. So usually the board were nine people to 11 people. So we want to be uneven to break some votes.
The board is made out of executives of large teams or agencies. We have people that have been in the localization industry and led really big projects and programs.
Underneath the board or right next to the board, we have all our program directors who really run the show. So the board is there to give guidance and create the brand and define the programs, motivate, mentor, sponsor and keep the nonprofit spirit.
The women that run the show, they're called program directors. And we have several because we have several programs. And so the idea is that these women, they may not be directors on their day job, but we're training them to be directors here.
And the idea also is that program directors are almost like the feeding source of next board members. Because one of the goals that we have, or I always have, is I want women to get into boards. And so this is a nonprofit.
And one of my hidden goals is always that women getting to public company boards at the big tables.
We have a big, big table here, but I want them at the big tables of big tech or hospitals or other boards.
And so the program directors are there and then each program has a gazillion amount of volunteers. And so that's where the other 300 coming. Let's say there's also a board of advisors that have been there for quite some time, like with people like Fabiano seed or Alison McDougal.
And there's several other names in there. Silvia Vari, who's one of the co founders. Eva Claudinova, who's another co founder. They all sit at the advisory board and they are experts in specific topics that when we need them, we call on them to help us think and brainstorm.
All in a very complex meeting sometimes because we are 18,000 members. We do have 30 to 40,000 followers. We are in every region of the world. So this is a highly complex organization, but we're well organized.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: And this is just got me thinking because it seems like a very practical approach where you're having well, you are impacting the very foundation of the ecosystem. At the same time, you are elevating the professional profiles of those that are involved within the organization.
Could you tell us a little bit more about those program directors? What some exciting new ones you have out there perhaps that came in 2025 that you can talk to us about?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Of course, of course, yes. So program directors, you know, just used to run programs that you comment as to this is really well organized is because we at the board come from Fortune 500 companies or from highly well functioning age, you know, localization or globalization agencies. So we come with a heavy, heavy workflow background, engineering background, tech background, localization background, where we know what a great organization looks like.
And I think women in global in localization is so global because we have all run a ton of global programs, right? We've launched into Japan and Singapore and Malaysia.
The program directors, we choose them very carefully.
Many stay for several years and it's difficult to find them.
But we find them. It's difficult to find incredible volunteers because people do not understand what it is to run this as a second or third job.
A lot of these women are Moms, they have partners, they're moving countries and they're still program directors that women in localization. So these people are very community centered and they give a ton of hours every week. So it's not that it's a place, it's a board where you come and sign something once a quarter, once a month. These people, I mean we spend hours a day and we all have other jobs and many of us are married and many of us have children. So our goal is that these program directors run the show with some help from the board. So the board sponsors each one of these program directors. We are like a direct link to the program directors to guide them. Some of them guide us, some of them are incredible. So there's a partnership and we've had many over the years.
Some one program I can't choose. You know, I'm the president of this thing, I can't choose. But I'm going to tell you a few that are incredible.
So we have a program director that runs all our partnerships as an example. And we have so many.
And what does it mean to have a partnership? It's a very complex process. We have a program director that runs the operations of the organization, okrs, goals, deadlines. We have a brand new program director for marketing that I'm very, very excited about. We have a program who just really is incredible at data and analytics. So women in localization used to have some metrics and then this lady came in, her name is Priscilla and she's just killing it, you know, she's just so it's them that are making us stronger and it's us finding them that's making us all stronger.
And again, these are all people that work at incredible places. We've had people that work at Google or Amazon or Spotify or you name it, we have all these companies are volunteering in our organization. This is why it's so powerful and.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Unbelievable and congratulations of course. I can infer some of the biggest wins that you've perceived over the past 19 years and it's very unfair to make you peak but I'm sure there are some salient learnings and achievements. You say and there's so many. Yes. And like as you speak, like I said, like I can already make a list for myself.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: It's so exciting.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: I know, I tell you, but from you, coming from you, it's very visceral so it'd be really great.
But yes, Anna, So I was thinking it's very unfair to ask Anna to pick salient moments and specific milestones but please go.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Salient, Salient moments. I mean, the moment we decided to become a non profit. The moment we decided to get out of California because we're like, oh my God, people really want this around the world.
You know, Salient moment where we decided to have guys, man, you know, be part of volunteers and presenters and panels are like, oh no, it's just for women. I'm like, no, no, we need the guys. You know, we've had a lot of salient moments. We had board members that, you know, brought us in incredible ideas. We had a board member that redid our whole image and logo came in from Lisa Leary. We've had, you know, moments where we got into Africa, right? Or moments where we had to get out of China or moments where we had to get out of Russia.
It's very geopolitical. This organization is not into politics. But boy, you know, we get. We need some tough decisions.
We have incredible sponsors also that fund us. We didn't used to collect any money from anybody. It's always been free for all the members.
Nobody gets paid except one person that does some engineering ticketing, you know, tickets. The rest, nobody gets paid. It's unbelievable. So there's a lot of stories on how it runs and it works.
We've had, we have around 150.
Sorry, 130 events a year.
130 events a year. So fun times is when you meet people at the events. There's a lot of people that you've met over camera and you that. And when you meet them in person, it's like super fun.
I don't know. But also some other salient moments is when you see these program directors working really well together.
So that's what we try to do because a lot of these people have never met.
So we have programs being run from Brazil or programs being run from Argentina or programs being run from London. Right. So it's just a lot. I think the best moment in recent times was the 15th year anniversary where I think we were three or 400 people. We just farted like really hard.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: And thank you so much. It really gives us a good context on the role of women in localization, in the broader spectrum of the conversations. And one of those broader spectrums has to do with the future of the industry. If we want to be very dramatic and existential. But in more practical terms, the role that we.
The talent play in, in your case and the work that you've been doing, the role that women play in artificial intelligence. And you have said that artificial Intelligence is women.
The women completely.
What do you mean by that and what can you tell us about this?
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Well, you know, I've trained several LLMs right now. I've trained, put one together here in Catalonia and Barcelona for a team as an example. And if you start chatting with a bot, it will usually think you're a guy, Right? And so we've seen enough examples where I was actually querying something this morning about substack on OpenAI and he kept giving me examples of guys. I'm like, give me a girl, give me a woman. Examples of had a very specific question.
The answers are all men.
So so many stories about female voices and content not being embedded in general AI, Right. And I think there's a trend, as we know, in major big tech, that's where I come from. 34 years in big tech, working with the tech bros, knowing that our voices are there, but they're not there equally.
So we made the decision at Women in Localization to create not just host people talking about AI or not doing panels about AI, but we're going to start working on training AI and doing innovation on AI and doing labs on AI and we're going to start awarding people that are creating ethical and diverse AIs.
Last year, with an intern that we have. Hi, Ian. We came up with a program that now Maria Jesus de Arriba, one of the board members, and Jenny Fravella, program director, are running that we call We Shape AI. And so We Shape AI is the program on behalf of women in localization that's just going to put the battle to the metal on innovation and explaining what is it. So there's going to be several pillars under We Shape AI. One is going to be learn, learn, learn.
The other one is going to be play, play, play with AI. So test it out, test it out, test it out. Another one is going to be an innovation lab because Jennifer, who is the program director and I used to run engineering labs or innovation labs, so we know how to get those things done.
And then another one that we always like to do is showcase and portray an award. So there's going to be an award piece to this as well.
And so this is just being formulated right now. It just launched, I think last week through LinkedIn and so that's really, really exciting. We have to be part of that conversation because it's exhausting that I fight with my LLM every damn day. You know, I was like, nope, there. Show me women. Nope, I'm not a woman, I'm not a man. You know, like. And also it's not just a man or a woman, right? There's culture, there's ethnicity, there's respect for human rights.
It's so complex. And women in localization. Localization is learning the culture and respecting the local language.
Really respecting the local language is super important for us. So that's the perfect space for us because we have a bunch of techies. So many, so many. And we have. When we look at the 18,000 members that we have, many right now, we see the shift on their titles, their heads of data or Project manager, data or analyst or AIDS or AI dot. Right. So we do a lot of introspection as to who are our members, how old are they, what are they interested in, what programs do we need to build for them?
Because when we started it, we were in our 30s and then 40s, and now we're in our, you know, hitting our 50s.
What we realize is obviously the new workforce needs to be fully fluent on AI if you're in tech. And our base is very much in tech because localization touches the product. Right. And solutions and programs.
So that's. We shape. AI is going to tackle all of that.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Thank you for making that connection with, you know, the talent that needs to be fluent and fluid in technology, but also how the stance of women in localization makes sense in the broader sense of the conversation of hegemonic languages and the risks of having that. In fact, we are about to release a video talking about how 1.5 billion people on the planet speak English. And when you look at it from the linguistic perspective, you know, that that language is affecting the way in which we structure thought, the way in which we sell, the way in which, you know, we respect certain things and not other things, the relationship that those languages have. So I think it's fantastic to see that connection and having these bastions of conversation and introspection like the role of women in technology to help us also resignify other places. And we've seen those.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: It has so many secondary side effects, Right?
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Because that's why I was saying this is no longer about men and women and black or white. This is like culture.
Culture is at stake.
The geopolitics today, the level that it's going on, the direction where it's going on, the geopolitical politics of what we're seeing is at stake is a new norm. It's a new world. Right? And so who's going to protect our beautiful languages?
And who is going to make sure that this technology that's Running so fast respects everybody. Right.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: And it's something that you mentioned earlier, and I wanted to go back to it. You said diversity. And what do you mean by diversity? When you.
To be able to identify it when you see it, which is probably the place where artificial intelligence finds its biggest bottleneck neck, which is not only to capture diversity, but even pretending to predict where that diversity will take, which is a very futile endeavor if we look at it from that standpoint. But what's your take on it?
[00:19:52] Speaker B: My take is that it's not going to be different than when people used to have questions on Pinterest and used to ask, show me a dreadlock and they would show a white woman with blonde hair. Right?
It's whoever is coding this stuff, whoever is putting these content strategies together, they can be very scary or they can be very good.
And so we want to show how to do this properly. This is all about content strategy. AI is a tool, AI, well organized and coded and organized is very powerful. But we already see things like deep fakes, and we see alteration of videos and language. You know, I'm on another board of a company where we can mimic, you know, you and I could be talking about different in different languages, that we would be understanding each other just fine.
So innovation has pushed the boundaries so hard, right? And so now I think we're like, whoop, let's reel it in a little bit. Because it's all about what's in this content layers in these content strategies, that if my daughter or my son or my mom goes and asks something on ChatGPT or any of the AIs, they can find the content that I would expect for them to see. But it's already not happening, right? So whoever is organizing this big tech has a lot of responsibility. And I think for us, 18,000, the board, the advisory board, language is very important.
Respecting languages is very important. And we see it as a part of diversity.
We also make sure that the voices that we hear are diverse. That's why it's so important for us to get into Africa or to get into Thailand or to get into Brazil or to get into France or to get into all the corners of the world, because every culture is so, so very different. Even inside one same region, we're different, right?
So we give a lot of autonomy to the, what we call chapters. So we're right now in 33 regions of the world that to us is a chapter.
And so they tell us how they want to run the show. We give them a lot of autonomy to do Things their way.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: And Anna, thank you so much to all of our listeners, of course, for sticking with our conversation. I think this is an incredible conversation to have at this point in time. You did mention content lakes, and of course, it is one of the conversations that now everyone have of course, made into the upcoming bottleneck for everything. And they've said it for the past three years. They've always talked about the training data, the training data, the training data. And then now you have entrepreneurs saying, hey, be careful with your data. Maybe that's what you want to protect, maybe that's what you want to sell.
And having it out there for free might not be the wisest decision because of how economics works. Right?
So the content lakes are missing a lot of things and a lot of it's available in English, but not in low resource languages. From your perspective, your experience, what do you think content lakes are missing at the fundamental levels?
[00:23:30] Speaker B: There are missing training at the government level. For example, let's say I'm in Catalonia right now, okay?
And the Catalan government has an initiative to train Catalan and they ask all the citizens to upload their voice, to upload sentences.
So this is no different than when Google, when Eric Schmidt told everybody, like, Google is going to go global, right? And I was part of the team that let Catalan get into Google.
So as citizens, sometimes we think we don't have a role to play, the technologies are going to do it or whatever. But you can look for some of the initiatives on how can you help. There's usually a lot of efforts on training different languages. And there's a lot of nonprofits making sure that languages don't disappear.
Hello, Latin America, right? I mean, and so there's languages disappearing left and right, which sucks. And we don't like that. There's lang. And you were talking about English imposing itself on others.
And that's when you see places like Japan, right? That there's the Beautiful Forever Green report from Common Sense Advisory about Japan that says Japanese, if you don't speak their language, they're not going to buy from you.
So how does women in localization empower and respect and support this is by opening these chapters around the world and making sure that the local language is respected. What I am seeing is a little bit changing because there's so many knowledge workers and tech gurus working from different parts of the world.
I'll tell you the example of Barcelona. It's full of Italians, it's full of Australians, it's full of Latin Americans, it's full of Californians.
And English is just becoming a thing.
So do we Catalans like that? No, we don't. So it's interesting, you know, like when you move to another country, do you respect that language?
And I think that's why women in localization, we keep it very strong so that local languages don't disappear, are used in technology and all these program solutions, products. Right. Because otherwise, yeah, English is taking over.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: And it has its benefits. Of course, it comes with huge risks. And it seems like we are having a conversation.
I think humans are still very much on top of a lot of things. Without humans, things don't really move.
I don't know if you've seen the images of the most recent World Economic Forum, but it seems like most leaders have this face of concern and everyone is thinking, oh my gosh, things matter almost in that way. That feels scary to some.
I always assume we'll always find ways to communicate as humans and come to terms. It feels like this is a great time to be paying attention to what's going on. You mentioned having a new presence in Africa.
What can you tell us about the African program directors and what's happening with the ecosystems? We are proud sponsors of the two events that happen in Africa.
So, of course, what's happening with women in localization in Africa?
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Yes. So this is all thanks to Gary in our advisory board and Carrie Fisher, who's the board member for Growth. I had been asking Carrie for a long time and others at the board, we need to get into Africa. Because I have a.
A nonprofit in the border of Kenya and Tanzania, different project.
And I was always asking, we need to get into Africa. We need to get into Africa. It's very difficult when women in localization has an idea of, we need to get into just why, you know, you have to find the right person and the right leader.
And so Carrie did that with Gary's help, I think.
And we just opened. We just opened. And instead of opening one country at a time, they made the decision to open East Africa as a pack, you know, and so I have personally not gone there or talked to them, but I can't wait, because I think Africa, I always see it as a place where you can leapfrog so much. I've been there many, many times, and I can be in the middle of nowhere. And they have an iPad, you know, and so maybe they are barefoot and whatever, but they have an iPad. And so it kind of gives you a place where you can innovate a ton. And there's a lot of effort right now. I see more and more on LinkedIn about African languages and respecting African languages and localization there. So this year, one of our goals is to obviously understand what is it that they need, how do we support them, do we have the right team there so that we can expand more into Africa? Because six countries is not enough.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: And I'm also curious about your members in Women in Localization. I know you've said, you know, it's changed over the past two decades, and it's gonna continue changing us as you're bringing newer members, younger members, and anyone who's coming into the industry from other sides of of tech.
What do you see as the members of Women in Localization?
[00:29:23] Speaker B: It started to break the glass ceiling. I always say, you know, where women in Localization I would have been a doctor, would be women in medicine. You know, all I could see is just guys, men. You know, I was already senior manager or an executive producer. I was like, can I go talk to a woman? Or can I negotiate with a woman? Or can I get budget or go present to a woman?
This is a little bit why it started. This was Sylvia, Evan and I were on the same team. They used to work for me at VeriSign, and it was an Israeli company in Mountain View in California.
And I think I needed to go negotiate some budget. And I couldn't find anybody. I was like, I'm tired of negotiating with guys that don't understand what we do. You know, the typical thing that we always say, and nobody understands localization.
And I found the woman, and she did help us. And then I'm like, wow, where are these women? Who are these women? So that's why we started it. We wanted to see who else, if anybody else, was going through the same stuff we were going through. And it turned out that there were many that we were feeling the same. You know, now what we're seeing today is I think we've broken a little bit of the glass ceiling, but not enough.
Because I'll give you my own example where I've been a general manager of a Fortune company or vice president at NADA for nearly 12 years, where VP, female VPs, I think we were like 2%, 3%, 4%, right?
So not good enough. Not good enough. That means that 90% of the vice presidents or the executives are our counterparts, which we love. But come on, let us share a little bit, because I think the world would be a very different place if there was not so much testosterone in there.
And the other thing that we saw is that the women were Legal officers or chief marketing officers or HR officers, and the world where we all come when we are women in localization, we are in product, we're in the technology groups, we're in R and D, we are in several, are in the data science teams, many are in analytics, some are in marketing, some are owners of smaller agencies. But many, many are in AI already. So it's already changing.
But we need more women in the tech, in the actual technology, in the actual product.
And that's where we're hurting. If more women were at the tech level, at the code level, at the design level, at the content strategy level, this would all look very different.
When people tell me, oh, there's already 30% women in the company, I'm like, but they're not touching your product.
They're signing a legal contract, they're hiring or firing, they're preparing the money, but they're not touching the technology.
And I think this is why we shape. AI is going to be very good for the community because we need these women in the R and D or product and technology teams. That's where I want them. You know, and this is the typical forever conversation of little girls, you know, are watching the Kardashians or think that women in tech are all, you know, look weird and don't wear makeup.
And so it touches how we raise our daughters and our sons from a very young age to make sure that women are respected and that there is diversity.
And then that these women do not drop out of stopping of learning math or technology or physics or science or chemistry or, or whatever. And then they head into technology and engineering. Who's designing our cars, who's designing our roads, who's designing our phones, is mainly guys.
And so that's why when we see a woman that made it, it's like, oh my God, what did she do to make it there? Right? It's like a phenomenon.
It's a very long conversation. There's a lot of guys that are like, oh, but I have a daughter. Oh, but I have a wife. Oh, but I have a cousin or I have a neighbor. Yeah, but help them. You know, it's the guys that need to get us in. And I'm not saying without merit, but they are there. Go find them.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: And I think it's a great way to segue into the ending of our conversation. It's been incredible and I'm looking forward to an in person interview eventually. You're definitely making us think today not only about what we've already achieved, but what coming ahead And I think that's a very important conversation to always have. Anna, a message that you want to put out there on top of the great thoughts that you've already shared, but a message to put out there for the female future leaders of the world.
What is your message to them right now?
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Be intentional.
Understand what an incredible impact you can have. Anybody can be a leader.
Anybody can be a leader and we need you. That's what I would say. Step it up. Step it up.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Thank you, Anna, so much for your thoughts, for your words. And before we go, what's next for women in localizations? What events, what sessions? Where can we catch you, the people of Women in Localization?
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Well, there is a website that's called womenalocalization.com and there's a calendar that's packed already. So we have events in France, events in Catalonia, events in Argentina. So people need to look at either your local or an event that's closer to you or go to what we call the global community because we do a lot of online sessions and we're about to have a very interesting, well being Healthcare Live event also. So it's all coming up.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: We are gonna be looking into that and of course we'll continue our great partnership between multilingual media and women in localization.
It's of course a pleasure and a privilege to be able to inherit such a great relationship from our previous cities CEO Marjolaine Groot into me becoming CEO.
And that being our conversation for today. I want to thank you and of course thank our listeners for listening today to our conversation about, of course, women in localization, but also leadership, visibility and community with Anna Schlegel and of course co founder of Women in Localization and author of Truly Global Catch new episodes of Localization today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Subscribe rate and share so others can find the show. I'm Eddie Arrieta with Multilingual Media. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.
