A little more than a decade since Smartling was founded in 2009, CEO Bryan Murphy said the company’s recent growth made it clear that a new leadership position was necessary to capitalize on that momentum: vice president of machine translation and artificial intelligence (VP of MT and AI). The New York-based language service provider announced Thursday that Olga Beregovaya will step into the role as the inaugural VP of MT and AI, overseeing the company’s AI strategy.

Beregovaya brings nearly three decades of experience to Smartling, most recently serving as the VP of AI innovation at Welocalize. MultiLingual spoke with Murphy to learn a bit more about just what exactly the new position entails as well as some of the projects Beregovaya will be working on in the new role.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

[MultiLingual]: Could you tell me a little bit about the VP of MT and AI and what this role entails?

[Bryan Murphy]: Powered by advances in our AI, Smartling’s Neural Machine business has been growing exponentially over the past few years and our customers are using it to translate billions of words at a fraction of the price and time over traditional translation. Olga will be applying her vast expertise in AI and NMT to help us continue to rapidly develop this product and help our customers get even more value.

[ML]: What led to the development of the position and why was now the right time to develop such a role?

[BM]: We realized that this business is growing so fast for us — we wanted to bring in someone of Olga’s caliber to build on that momentum.

[ML]: What kind of projects and duties are you most excited for the VP of Machine Translation and Artificial Intelligence to take on? Why?

[BM]: As the VP of MT and AI, Olga will be responsible for the Smartling Neural Machine Translation offering, vision and delivery. This role engages with all functions across the organization — from development and language services to sales and marketing.

[ML]: In your announcement of the new role, you called Olga a “visionary in Translation & Localization” — I’d love to learn more about Olga’s experiences and what you expect she’ll bring to the table, especially since we also included her on our list of “Women Driving the Language Industry” this past March.

[BM]: Olga has 25 years of experience in language technology, both in R&D and customer-facing roles, and this is what we expect she will bring to the table. These two sides of her experience have helped her understand what the customers need most now and what they will need going forward, and translate these requirements into market-leading product features and solutions.

[ML]: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

[BM]: In this economic environment, we’re hearing from our customers that they need to be even more productive, and generate top line growth. It’s our mission to be their trusted partner to deliver on those objectives by delivering AI-enabled products and services that help them reach their goals.