In this episode, Dominika D'Agostino joins host María Roa to discuss unicorns, All Things Global, and Women in Localization.

Dominika is a localization expert and problem solver with fifteen years of experience in the translation, media, and telecommunication industries. She currently lives in Austin, Texas, and is the Sponsorship Manager for the Woman in Localization Texas chapter.

Dominika discusses her engagement with Women and Localization, which started in 2019, and shares how the Vistatec company culture encourages you to participate. This participation helps people become more involved in the industry and the wider community and take on volunteering. Dominika explains how colleagues within Vistatec are involved in the community and how she wanted to challenge herself and start a relationship with Women in Localization.

In the early days, Dominka was involved with events for the Women in Localization global team, and the work included servicing industry events such as GALA or LocWorld helping to make sure that the organization has a presence at these well know language industry events.

Unfortunately, this started at the beginning of 2020, when the in-person events were shutting down suddenly, and her role became a challenge as the landscape changed so fast. When Dominika moved to Austin, Texas, she discovered that there was already a local Women in Localization chapter. Fast to join the local chapter and keen to contribute, Dominika shares her engagement and how it is going very well.

Initially, the chapter started with online meetings, mentoring sessions, and panel discussions. Dominika shares how the group had a magician participate in a holiday event, which helped contribute to a great networking experience!

The chapter being in Texas is a little bit of a challenge because it is such a large state, and members are in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Dominika held events in Dallas in June 2022 and is now planning something special in Austin for November.

Dominika explains that she is involved in the All Things Global series, a webcast show from Vistatec with colleague Suzzane Frank. This online show aims to gather as many brains in the industry as possible to talk about academic and intellectual topics related to localization and the language industry. This series is an open platform for people to be part of the live audience, listen and watch the conversation, and interact with the guests to feel part of the All Things Global community. The series has included several guest speakers, including David Rosenberg, the Founder and President of Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc. Before Rosenberg Research, David was Chief Economist & Strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. from 2009 to 2019. From 2002 to 2009, he was Chief North American Economist at Merrill Lynch in New York. David was Chief Economist and Strategist for Merrill Lynch Canada, based in Toronto. He is a frequent contributor to most major financial newspapers and publications in North America and makes regular TV appearances in the financial media.

Other All Things Global speakers have included Professor Sasha Strauss. Conferences and corporations worldwide call upon Sasha for award-winning forums, from Romania to China, Switzerland to Mexico. Media channels like National Public Radio (NPR), Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal seek his expertise in branding everything from presidential candidates to innovative start-ups and Fortune 500s. In 2006, Sasha founded Innovation Protocol, a brand strategy consulting firm that exclusively serves innovators. When not supporting Innovation Protocol’s international clientele, Sasha teaches graduate brand strategy, leadership, and innovation courses at USC’s Marshall School of Business, UCLA's Anderson School of Management, and UCI's Merage School of Business. Sasha also teaches at preeminent graduate programs, having taught in programs such as MIT Sloan and The Johnson School at Cornell.

Dominika shares a recent episode of All Things Global with speaker Don DePalma. Don’s experience has included shaping the globalization strategies of some of the world's largest firms and the market strategies of the industry's most influential language service and technology providers. As the original founder of CSA Research in 1999, Don has been instrumental in establishing the company as the preeminent market research firm in localization and globalization. He initiated CSA’s coverage of localization maturity, enterprise language processing, business-driven globalization, machine translation, return on investment for localization, and multicultural domestic marketing.

The All Things Global series attracts exciting guest speakers, engaging the audiences and community members.

Dominika discusses machine translation with host María Roa and explains how she does not think technology will replace the fantastic linguists, translators, reviewers, editors, and transcreation experts with whom Vistatec works. She shares how there is so much content around the world and that perhaps it's not viable for the end customer, but this content needs to be approached and translated. Dominika conveys this is a great use case for machine translation.

The conversation moves to established companies and unicorns. Unicorn companies can often be at the beginning of their international journey. Dominika comments how there is so much satisfaction when you can work with someone from the start and how Vistatec can help lead them on this journey when their products and services appear on international markets for the first time!

About VistaTalks

VistaTalks has an incredible lineup of guests from around the globe. We love to feature interesting discussions with interesting people from all around the world. Follow VistaTalks on Spotify for all the latest episodes, or subscribe to the show on Apple and Google podcasts. VistaTalks is available on many other podcast platforms. To learn more about VistaTalks, please visit https://www.vistatalks.com.

About Vistatec

We have been helping some of the world’s most iconic brands to optimize their global commercial potential since 1997. Vistatec is one of the world’s leading global content solutions providers. HQ in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in Mountain View, California, USA. To learn more about Vistatec, please visit https://www.vistatec.com