AI ThoughtCon Speakers
2026
Fabiano Cid
Chief Solutions Officer @ Powerling
Fabiano Cid is a seasoned global content strategist and Chief Solutions Officer at Powerling, where he seamlessly connects strategy with execution to enhance brand reach worldwide. With over 25 years of experience in the language services industry, he has successfully led high-performing teams across Latin America, North America, and Europe. In 1999, he founded Ccaps Translation and Localization, transforming it into one of Latin America’s most respected providers before its merger with OXO Innovation in 2018. As a dedicated member of GALA, Fabiano has held numerous leadership roles, supporting strategic growth and community building within the industry. He also serves on the advisory board of Women in Localization, actively promoting equity, mentorship, and greater representation. Recognized as a leading voice in globalization, he was recently named global content wrangler and is the creator and host of SOFA, a series featuring candid conversations with localization leaders.
Chief Operations Officer at Voiseed
Cristina Contini is a localization professional with nearly 20 years of experience. As COO at Voiseed, she helps organizations transition from text-based localization to AI-powered voice experiences, championing linguistic quality, cultural nuance, and new opportunities for language professionals in voice-driven communication.
Emily Diamantopoulou
Founder, Rhyme&Reason Language Services and RIMA Language_Tech_Culture
Emily Diamandopoulou is a Greek-Scottish translator with more than 25 years’ experience. She is the founder of Rhyme&Reason Language Services and RIMA Language_Tech_Culture, where she designs AI-assisted, human-led translation workflows that treat language assets as strategic infrastructure. Her teams deliver high-stakes language work across MedTech, energy, banking, the public sector, and culture, alongside RSI services.
She has translated 30+ published books and 100+ book chapters, and has published seven specialised English-Greek dictionaries. She also serves as editor for a number of English-language academic journals and contributes to research and public-private collaborations on multilingual data, terminology governance, and translation technologies.
She chairs the organising committee of Language_Tech Patras, an annual event connecting industry, academia, and the public sector around language technology. She teaches Translation Technologies at the University of Piraeus Centre for Lifelong Learning, mentors emerging linguists in digital entrepreneurship, and is a member of the LangOps Institute and the Artificial Intelligence Working Group of the Panhellenic Association of Translators.
In parallel, she champions the New European Bauhaus principles - useful, human-centred, and sustainable - as a practical framework for how language, technology, and culture can evolve together.
Ben Hylak
Co-Founder, CTO
Ben Hylak is co-founder of Raindrop, an AI agent monitoring platform that helps teams detect failures, trace root causes, and fix issues fast. Ben spent years at Apple in Human Interface Design (playing a pivotal role in designing the Vision Pro) as well as in engineering roles at SpaceX and Google. Raindrop recently raised a $15M seed round led by Lightspeed (as reported by The Wall Street Journal), accelerating its mission to make AI agents more reliable in real-world production.
Sheriff Issaka
AI Research Lead, Founder of Africal Languages Lab
Sheriff Issaka is a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he conducts state-of-the-art research at the Misinformation, AI & Responsible Society (MARS) Lab. His work focuses on critical areas in Natural Language Processing (NLP), including bias and fairness, low-resource languages, and multimodal models for enhanced language understanding.
As founder and lead researcher of the African Languages Lab (All Lab), Sheriff spearheads a global collaborative project that is revolutionizing NLP for African languages. This initiative creates comprehensive roadmaps, innovative methodologies, and open-source resources to democratize AI for underrepresented languages, addressing a critical gap in current language technologies.
Founder & CEO @ BeLazy
While chess grandmasters solve endgame puzzles, István Lengyel solves the billion-dollar puzzle of localization tech stacks. He is the founder and CEO of BeLazy, the middleware platform connecting over 200 translation and content management systems to automate localization workflows. A multilingual technologist fluent in five languages, István leads an international team building AI-powered, supply chain-aware automation. BeLazy makes systems that were built in isolation work together in perfect harmony.
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Joss Moorkens
Associate Professor at Dublin City University
Joss Moorkens is an Associate Professor at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University, Science Lead at the ADAPT Centre, and board member at the European Masters in Translation Network. His research focuses on translation technology interaction. He co-edits Translation Spaces and coauthored the textbooks Translation Tools and Technologies (2023) and Automating Translation (2025).
Sr. Product Manager, Localization and Internationalization
Hilary Atkisson Normanha is a senior product manager specializing in product globalization and localization strategy. With over a decade of experience across fintech, B2B, social media, and music streaming, she has successfully built and scaled localization programs and products in companies of all sizes. Driven by the mission of making technology borderless, Hilary leverages her expertise in localization and internationalization to create globally accessible products that adapt seamlessly to local markets.
Michael Reid
Intercultural organizational consultant, founder and principal - Alif Omega Consulting
Strategic Interculturalist and DEIJ Executive with over 25 years of experience driving impactful global initiatives across corporate, non-profit, and educational sectors. Michael’s passion is using his linguistic and cultural skills to facilitate communication and true understanding between different groups of people. As a consultant and educator, Michael has led fundamental organizational changes in order to create opportunities for meaningful inclusion and truly equitable culture-building.
Managing Director & Czech Linguist, Language AI Researcher
Daniel Sebesta brings over 20 years of expertise working at the intersection of language, business, and technology. He holds an MBA with a specialization in pricing and strategy and is a Fellow of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting and of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, a sworn translator in Czechia and Germany, and a former Administrator of ATA’s Language Technology Division. In addition to his translation work, he advises LSPs and toolmakers on questions around pricing and profitability. He writes about technology topics for Slator and is a LocLunch Ambassador in Prague, Czechia & Upstate New York.
Dan Taber
Head of Research & Responsible Programming, Trust & Safety - at a big technology company
Most AI strategy focuses on tools and deployment. The biggest failures I see show up later, in the people, incentives, and organizational systems that determine whether AI creates value or chaos.
I've led research and responsible AI programs at Spotify and Indeed, where I've seen the same pattern repeat: organizations race to adopt AI capabilities while underinvesting in workforce readiness, decision-making authority, and governance. The result isn't just ethical risk. It's stalled adoption, internal friction, and missed value.
My work sits at the intersection of AI, safety, and institutional change. I combine analytical depth (PhD in Epidemiology) with experience leading cross-functional initiatives across Product, Policy, Legal, and Data Science. As a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, I developed frameworks like AI Blindspot that help organizations translate ethical ideals into operational practice.
I write and speak about how institutions prepare their workforces, not just their technology, for AI transformation. This includes how human-AI collaboration actually works in practice, why workforce development lags tool adoption, and what organizations getting it right are doing differently.
Senior Researcher, Department of Sociology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Maria Zarifi is a historian of science and Senior Researcher in the Department of Sociology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Trained in philosophy and the history of science, she has published extensively on the history of medicine, public health, and scientific expertise in modern Greece within broader European and global contexts. She is the author of Science, Culture and Politics: Germany’s Cultural Policy and Scientific Relations with Greece 1933–1945 (2010) and co-author of “Feeling uncertainty: power, knowledge and emotions in times of crisis” (JCOM, 2025, with E. Chordaki). Her forthcoming publications include “Between Knowing and Acting: How Experts Constructed and Communicated Uncertainty During the COVID19 Pandemic” (SRO, 2026, with E. Chordaki et al.). Her research focuses on scientific networks, the political and cultural instrumentalization of science, and its entanglements with nationalism, imperialism, and the science–politics–society nexus.
