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Leadership Reflections on
Successes, Challenges, And What’s Ahead
Twice a year, CSA Research asks its CEO Council members a focused and timely question. Their responses provide strategic insight into how language industry leaders assess performance, navigate challenges, and adjust priorities in a changing market.
Read CEO Perspectives by Year and Topic
Insights are displayed alphabetically by company name.
Mark Evenepoel
President, Board member
Acolad EX Amplexor
Like in many industries, AI adoption, hype, and real use cases combined, lead to doomsday thinking. Although the language and content management services industry has always dealt with technological evolution and transformation, the pace and public visibility has dramatically increased.
The role of the industry has fundamentally not changed. We are there to help our customers communicate and eng...
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Bertrand Gstalder
CEO
Acolad
A Year Focused on the Future
2025 marked a major milestone for us: a true operational transformation, driven by the large-scale integration of AI across our services through our Lia platform—interpreting, translation, and multimedia—along with the expansion of our Data Services.
It was also the year we launched Lia Go, our self-service solution for translation, multimedia, agentic AI, and interp...
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Alexander Ulichnowski
CEO
Argos Multilingual
The AI Paradox: Why Automation Demands Stronger Market Ownership
For enterprises scaling globally, AI has fundamentally changed how fast products and content can be localized. Translation, adaptation, and even market-specific copy can now be generated almost instantly. Yet many organizations are discovering an uncomfortable truth: while AI accelerates execution, it exposes a gap in market ownershi...
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Matthew Taylor
CEO
DA Languages
2025 was another strong year of growth in UK Interpreting. Ever more public bodies recognise the value that investment in Interpreting brings: preventing hospital re-admission, preventing re-offending, and ensuring justice is served. The final quarter of the year was affected by UK Government budget speculation. Now that clarity has been provided, better investment decisions can be made. It’s impe...
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Konstantin Iosseliani
President, CEO
Janus Worldwide
2025 was the first year when everyone in the language services industry truly felt the cold breath of AI. This effect was further amplified by the current geopolitical landscape, in particular, the slowdown in international trade driven by tariffs and sanctions.
So what lies ahead for our industry in 2026, and what strategy should we follow? When thinking about this, I often recall a Chinese p...
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Simon Yoxon-Grant
President, CEO
LanguageLine Solutions
The preoccupation with AI in our industry is understandable. Every week seems to bring another breakthrough, another model, another claim that language services are about to be transformed forever.
We're focusing on the wrong story.
The story isn't AI. It's the shrinking window between innovation and commoditization.
Every technology begins life as a competitive advantage. Then competitors adop...
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Pedro Luis Díez Orzas
Founder, CEO
Linguaserve
By early 2026, the multilingual content industry has reached an inflection point. The era of AI experimentation is over. What we’re witnessing is a fundamental restructuring that has divided the market into two camps: those who treat AI as a cost-cutting mechanism and those who recognize that AI’s real power lies in orchestration, amplifying human expertise rather than erasing it.
The data tells...
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Ludmila Golovine
President, CEO
MasterWord
In our industry we’ve often said, "AI should amplify human expertise rather than replace it.” What’s changing now is that the evidence is becoming specific enough to guide real buyer decisions, especially as AI interpreting moves from demonstration to deployment. A recent two-year California evaluation led by UC Berkeley showed what happens when community
clinics use qualified medical interpreter...
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Chris Hodgson Castillo
CEO
Mother Tongue
2025 was another big year in our industry, and one of rapid change and evolution. Mother Tongue sits at the more creative end of the market, and that change is as true for us as anyone.
Things have changed so much in fact, that we now see ourselves serving an entirely new category: Creative Language Intelligence.
This reflects the AI-powered shift in how we support our clients today, and how we...
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Pierrick Mathieu
Co-Founder, COO
Powerling
AI s a Catalyst — Not a Substitute
Artificial intelligence is a powerful accelerator for our industry. It enables faster go-to-market, more customized solutions, and the ability to manage content at a scale that was previously out of reach — often with lower costs and greater global consistency. AI also democratizes access to media and content, allowing organizations of all sizes to think and ope...
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Marina Ilari
CEO
Terra LLC
Over the course of this year, I have noticed a meaningful shift in how our industry talks about AI. The conversation has evolved from "AI for everything" to "AI, but." AI, but with governance. AI, but with accountability. AI, but with human expertise guiding the process.
That change is encouraging because organizations are becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of where AI creates val...
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Lorcan Malone
CEO
XTM International
As I look back on my first year in the localization industry, it is abundantly clear that I joined at a time of profound change. This disruption, however, is not unique to localization. We are witnessing dramatic shifts across the board, with clear parallels to the rapid evolution currently reshaping software engineering and other industries. Yet, amidst all this technological upheaval, one truth...
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