Management Team

Martin Spethman

Founder & Managing Partner

Mr. Spethman has over twenty years experience providing documentation, software and website globalization services. He began his career in 1985 with Worldwide Communications Corporation, a Tokyo-based developer of machine translation software and services. He served in both administrative and business development positions in their Chicago and Miami offices. In 1989 he founded MS Language & Technology, Inc., a Miami-based translation and desktop publishing agency. After three years of profitable operation serving over 140 clients including IBM, Walt Disney World, Marriott, and AT&T, the company was purchased by Chicago Multi-lingual Graphics (CML). After taking a sabbatical to write and publish two books, he returned to the globalization services profession, and from 1994 - 2001 he served in key executive management roles with localization agencies Welocalize, InterPro and Lazoski, Beninatto (later becoming LMI/Berlitz).

Throughout his career, Mr. Spethman has held numerous production and sales positions, including Project Manager, Operations Manager, Web Master, Account Executive and VP of Sales and Marketing. He has established and managed translation offices in Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland, UAE, and the United States and has overseen hundreds of successful globalization projects each year since 1987, ranging from large volume, multi-million word documentation sets to high-profile Websites for Fortune 500 companies.

In 2001 Mr. Spethman founded Globalization Partners International (GPI) with a very simple goal: "To take on challenging projects for interesting clients and grow one successful project and one happy client at a time." Since its inception, GPI has successfully completed a wide range of documentation, software and website globalization projects for companies, governments and global organizations spanning 19 business verticals.

As Managing Partner Mr. Spethman focuses on strategic planning and execution of GPI's business goals as well as supporting GPI's teams in operations, sales and marketing.

Fotini Limes

Manager: Global Client Services

Ms. Limes has over 13 years experience in the translation/localization industry. She began her career as a translator and interpreter in 1995 providing linguistic services in English, Greek and German. She has lived and worked in Germany, Greece and the USA. In 1999 she joined TransLingua, a Baltimore, MD-based translation agency as a Resource Manager where she managed their global pool of freelance translators and worked with Project Managers to build and assign translation teams on projects. In 2000, she moved into Project Management and for three years she managed an array of translation projects in up to 52 languages for clients including Marriott, BD, Sodexho, Johns Hopkins, National Geographic, and Dentsply International.

In 2002 TransLingua was purchased by ENLASO (formerly RWS Group) and Fotini decided to pursue a sales role in the new organization. From 2002-2004 as a Business Development Manager she was primarily responsible for providing sales and service to both existing and new accounts. She maintained a base of approximately 90 accounts including major medical device / pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies.

Fotini manages global account teams of Project Managers and Business Development Managers helping acquire new clientele for GPI and ensuring all projects are delivered on-time, on-budget and with exceptional quality.

Jacqueline Janeri

Manager: Global Client Services

Jacqueline has lived and worked in Germany, Austria, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. She has more than 11 years of experience in the localization industry.

Ms. Janeri has worked with a variety of localization and translation agencies, including International Language Engineering (ILE), Foreign Exchange Translations, Encompass Translations, and Lionbridge Technologies.

Prior to joining GPI, Ms. Janeri was a Senior Project Manager at Lionbridge where she managed localization, marketing communications, desktop publishing, video and web projects for life sciences, IT and consumer products/services companies. Before that, she led the Marcom Localization Group at ILE, overseeing production and client services. At Encompass, Ms. Janeri was a managing partner and was instrumental in signing and servicing key biotech accounts such as Water Corporation, Corning Costar and Gelman Sciences (now Pall Corporation).

Ms. Janeri has managed functional teams and has been the senior business account manager on localization projects for some of the world's leading multinationals, including Hewlett-Packard, Adobe, Princess Cruises, Exxon-Mobile, 3Com and more. Her experience spans document, advertising and packaging translation, as well as localization of software and websites. Prior to her management roles in localization, Ms. Janeri held project management and web content development roles in the media and publishing industry.

Jacqueline manages global account teams of Project Managers and Business Development Managers helping acquire new clientele for GPI and ensuring all projects are delivered on-time, on-budget and with exceptional quality.

Marcelo Volmaro

Website Globalization Practice

Mr. Volmaro has been an award winning design professional since 1990. He has worked with a wide range of web design and development firms both in fulltime and freelance capacities including Binomic, Neoris, Maple Creative Communication & Services and CopyColor. He has held a variety of design positions including graphic designer, senior graphic designer, web designer/developer and web production manager. He has been an instructor for Web Design, 3D Animation and Flash Animation/Programming with courses taught including Basic Flash, Flash Actionscript, Advanced Flash and Photoshop Basics. His work has won numerous national and international design awards (GPI's corporate website for one) which include Webby's, W3's and Daveys Design Awards.

He has extensive experience in designing, developing and localizing interfaces, applications and websites using a range of tools including the Adobe Design Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Flash). Mr. Volmaro has extensive experience with an array of scripting and mark-up languages including CSS, XHTML, Javascript, PHP, C#, Actionscript, MySQL and MsSQL. He is an Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert, Adobe Certified Flash Developer and Ektron Certified Developer.

He joined GPI in 2003 as a Web Designer/Developer and was later promoted to Lead User Experience Specialist. Now he is in charge of GPI's Website Globalization Practice and works with GPI's teams of top web designers, developers and localization specialists located all over the world helping clients design, develop, and deploy, usable, global websites that fully function for the world's markets.

Federico Pascual

Software Globalization Practice

Mr. Federico Pascual has more than 10 years of experience in the globalization services profession. He started as a Localization Engineer working with GPI's Localization (L10n) and Internationalization (I18n) teams completing projects requiring L10N engineering and I18n discovery, assessment, implementation and testing. He has completed a wide range of globalization projects ranging from the localization of web-applications under the .Net framework to comprehensive database globalization enablements. He has a wide range of experience in multi-language application development using VB.NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Web Services, XSL, XML, SOAP/HTTP, SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 technologies. He also has extensive experience with an array of CAT tools such as SDL/Trados, Idiom, Across, Passolo, Catalyst, RC WinTrans and others.

Federico also serves as part of two multidisciplinary GPI teams one focusing on the development of GPI's in-house suite of global project management, translation, internationalization and localization tools and the other focusing on extensive research and training in global SEM/SEO/SEA strategies, tools and tactics.

He heads up GPI's Software Globalization Practice helping clients create world-ready applications, utilizing development practices that are faster, more economical, and more localization-friendly.

Yasser Ahmed

Global Search Engine Marketing Practice

Mr. Ahmed has 8 years experience working and teaching as a web application developer and Search Engine Marketing Specialist. He has a computer science bachelors degree from the Advanced Academy, Cairo 2002 and holds certifications both as a Microsoft Web Application Developer ASP.NET C# and Microsoft Windows-Based Application Developer. Other skills and programming languages include Web Languages: HTML, DHTML, CSS2.0, JavaScript, XML, AJAX, Dev. Languages: MySql, MS SQL, ASP, PHP, C#, VB.Net, Action Script 2.0 and 3.0 and Programs: Visual Studio.Net, Web Matrix, IIS, Dream Weaver, Flash 9, Swish Max, Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator.

Leveraging his extensive web-based technologies and marketing background, Yasser started to work with GPI's internal Search Engine Marketing (SEM) team in 2007. He has completed extensive research and training in global SEM/SEO/SEA strategies, tools and tactics. Since 2011 he leads GPI's SEM team daily tracking trends globally and by country in search engines, user behavior and search preferences. Yasser is well versed in SEM best practices including; creation of localized and optimized web content including pages and all metadata, research and development of keywords and key phrases with several paid and free tools, web content copywriting, link building, analysis and recommendations for existing websites to increase SEO ranking, and analysis and implementation of pay-per-click programs (PPC) (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, etc).

Yasser helps GPI clients including Search Engine Marketing Firms, Interactive and Ad Agencies and/or an array of end-clients, to ensure global SEM initiatives are successful and the language versions of their websites achieve better rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) throughout international and country-specific search engines.