Speaker Bios and Presentation Descriptions

​​Ms. Jeannette Stewart is a strategic leader and has worked with mainstream brands helping them achieve global growth, business revitalization and transformation. Currently she is leading international launches for Nest cameras at Google. She founded Translation Commons, an online volunteer-based public charity aiming to offer and share tools and resources and to facilitate community initiatives. The Language Digitization Initiative creates resources specifically for Indigenous communities to enable their languages online. She is the former CEO of CommuniCare, a life-science translation company with offices in London, Paris, Athens, Budapest and Los Angeles. Jeannette has been involved in high-profile projects such as the Genome Project and prototyping the online Unified Submission Process for the European Medicine Agency. Jeannette has founded, served on the board of directors, moderated, and volunteered in various educational and health charities.

Mr. Jaco du Toit is Chief of Section for Universal Access to Information, Communication and Information Sector at UNESCO. He previously held the position of Programme Specialist, providing support to the UNESCO Information for All Programme and serving as regional adviser for UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector in Eastern Africa, Southern Africa and North Africa. He has an academic background in information sciences, political sciences, information for development, communication and telecommunication and media and international relations. He has worked on projects related to knowledge society development, Right to Information laws, disabilities and Information and Communication Technologies and Information and Communication Technologies in Education.

Dr. R. Siva Prasad is a retired professor of Anthropology at the University of Hyderabad, and currently an Honorary Professor in the Center for Digital Learning, Training and Resources (CDLTR) there. He has both teaching and research experience of more than 40 years, during which he guided research students in diverse areas. He is actively associated with UNESCO-IFAP programmes. He is a member of the Information Ethics Working Group (IEWG) of UNESCO-Information for All Programme (IFAP). His current areas of interest are AI ethics, different aspects of marginal and indigenous communities, including indigenous knowledge systems, languages, education, and conflict management.

Tabea is presenting on behalf of the Keyboards Team at Translation Commons. The team works on developing keyboards for languages all over the world, as well as associated processes and training.

Vicki is a community language practitioner, language advocate and ‘actionist’ with 45+ years applied, lived experience in reclamation and revitalisation of knowledge and practice towards community capacity strengthening and legacy.

Aiyana Twigg is an Indigenous youth activist who focuses on Indigenous rights, issues and language revitalization. She is a researcher, and linguist within her community and a member of the Youth Advisory group for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and is part of the International Decade for Indigenous Languages Working Group led by CCUNESCO.

Fulbright Scholar (VT, USA), Prof. Gaur has visited 24 countries in relation to various professional assignments. Prof. Gaur has received / honoured with over 14 National and International awards. Prof.Gaur is the first Indian nominated as Member- International Advisory Committee (IAC) UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) Programme (2018-2025) as well as Member UNESCO Global Task Force on Indigenous Languages (2020-2032). 

Prof. Gaur was one of the key members of UGC-MHRD Draft Regulations committee for UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Education Institutions) regulations 2018. Prof. Gaur has also been appointed as Chairman of Project Monitoring Committee (PMC) of a NITI Aayog Project (under the directions of PMO)- Networking/ integrating Libraries amongst various Union Ministries/ Departments, to enable Libraries to deliver higher quality services in an integrated manner.

He has worked with several national and international networks of terminology and created Multiple congress / seminars / conferences / publications / projects / studies / articles etc. His expertise is in terminology, specialized translation, language industries, linguistic diversity and multilingualism, languages in cyberespace, presence of languages in the knowledge society, presence of the indigenous languages in the digitized world and is the promoter of the first prototype of indigenous automatic translation and first chat in indigenous languages.

Mr. Hero Patrianto, is a linguist at Language of East Java Province; currently he is a PhD student at the Victoria University of Wellington where he is conducting comparative research on 4 languages of Indonesia.

Dr. Gatut Susanto, Senior Lecturer at The Department of Indonesian Literature, Universitas Negeri Malang (Indonesia) is an associate professor at Universitas Negeri Malang; he is an expert on teaching Indonesian for foreigners. 

Mr. Awaludin Rusiandi is a translator at Language of East Java Province. He took part in the mapping project of Indonesian indigenous languages back in 2008.

Mr. Wynne provides support, outreach, and training for Mukurtu CMS, and runs community workshops and training focused on digitization and digital curation workflows.

Michael Running Wolf, Lakota and Cheyenne, was raised in rural Montana with intermittent water and electricity; naturally Michael is a Computer Scientist, former engineer for Amazon’s Alexa, taught at Northeastern University, and Co-Founder and Lead Architect First Languages AI Reality. Michael uses AI to reclaim Indigenous Languages and has been awarded an MIT Solve Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Patrick J. McGovern AI for Humanity Prize.

Dr. Wakoko Wanjala is a translator and indigenous language activist from Kenya.

Altaci Correa Rubim is a member of Kokama Nation, a Tupian People currently living in Brazil and Peru. She is Professor of Linguistics at Brasília University and Coordinator of Indigenous People Ministry of Brazilian Governments. She is also co-chair of the Global Task Force for Making a Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages.

Mr. Tex Texin is an industry thought leader specializing in software globalization services. Mr. Texin has contributed to several internationalization standards and open source software and has been an advisor to several globalization non-profits.  He is an advisor to Translation Commons where he has been architecting their Language Digitization Initiative, bringing the languages of indigenous communities to digital systems.Mr. Tex Texin, and his consulting company XenCraft, help numerous companies create global products and guide companies in taking business to new regional markets. Mr. Texin is a popular speaker at conferences around the world. He is the owner/author of the popular, instructional I18nGuy.com site.