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t’s 2 a.m. over the Atlantic, and Mitch Donaldson is doing what he once did from a desk: managing turbulence, time, and expectations. Only instead of localization projects, now he’s responsible for passenger and crew member safety at 33,000 feet. Having spent most of his career in the language industry, three years ago, Donaldson decided to make a major change and become a flight attendant.
Donaldson’s story of reinvention is just one of many. As artificial intelligence (AI) and changing priorities reshape the localization industry, language professionals are finding themselves at a crossroads. Some are upskilling to stay relevant, others are reskilling into newly created roles, and still others are drawing on transferrable skills to remake themselves entirely. From corporate leaders to independent linguists, professionals across the industry are reimagining their careers and proving that adaptability is the industry’s most enduring skill.
Ask anyone in localization right now, and you’ll hear a similar story: The work is changing, and so are the opportunities. AI and shrinking budgets are rewriting the rules, making traditional career ladders feel less stable than they used to be. In response, many professionals are learning new skills — either to improve in their current role (upskilling) or to position themselves for a new type of role (reskilling). Others are using transferable skills like communication, cultural fluency, and problem-solving to enter a different industry. For this article, I spoke with seven people who exemplify this trend and whose stories show how localization professionals are rethinking what it means to build a future in an industry that never stands still.
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For Donaldson, entering the airline industry was less about starting over and more about picking up a thread from his past. He had worked as a flight attendant in his 20s, so when roles in localization became harder to find, he decided to return to aviation — bringing years of project management and language experience with him.
“Both of my client-side localization roles were eliminated due to budget cuts,” he explains. “The industry already felt unstable, and then AI came into the picture, reducing opportunities even further.”
That uncertainty drew him back to the airplane cabin. Working as a steward for United Airlines offers stability, travel, and opportunities to speak the languages he knows.
“I interpret inflight announcements and interact with customers in French and Italian — sometimes even on domestic flights,” he says with a laugh.
Off duty, those same flights have turned into a way to bring pieces of the world back home.
“My friends love it when I return with Belgian waffles or a jar of pistachio spread from Italy,” he says. “Some ask me to bring back items such as hard-to-find candy or even industry-specific magazines, giving me a chance to discover neighborhoods I may have not otherwise visited and to make new connections in the cities in which I layover.”
Training for the flight attendant role demanded new skills like firefighting, first aid, and performing evacuation drills. While the subject matter was different from office work, the precision and sensitivity required felt familiar.
“In localization, you’re constantly adapting communication styles across cultures and making sure the details are right,” Donaldson says. “On board, it’s the same. You need to read situations quickly, respond with care, and keep people calm under pressure.”
For colleagues considering a change, Donaldson emphasizes that many of their skills are not unique to localization.
“Localization project managers possess so many transferable skills, such as budget management, negotiation, and the ability to juggle technologies and hard deadlines. Those skills can be taken into other industries.”
Sometimes a moment of personal change can open unexpected doors. Allison McDougall learned this in 2021 when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a turning point that reshaped her priorities and brought a new focus to her career.
McDougall was determined to find a role where she could use her background in localization to support patients and improve health outcomes. After decades helping global companies connect with translated content, she recently joined IQVIA, a Fortune 500 leader in clinical trials and healthcare data.
“I find it extremely rewarding to work for a company that is addressing some of the largest challenges in healthcare today,” she says. “I lead a team that partners with pharmaceutical, medical device, and emerging biotech companies on solutions to help inform study design, patient-reported outcome strategies, and best practices to ensure global inclusivity, data accuracy, and integrity.”
McDougall’s role extends beyond product delivery to influencing how clinical trials are designed and executed. She admits the steepest learning curve has been learning about the types of clinical and post-clinical trials, and how the patient voice can be best captured across each one. She also challenges herself to experiment with generative AI (GenAI) in new ways, from summarizing meetings to drafting sales-related messaging.
“I think of it as upleveling, which includes becoming more proficient, confident, and versatile,” McDougall explains. “For me, it means applying more than 20 years of localization experience up the value chain, to a place where clinical trials and protocols are being designed.”
She has clear advice for professionals wanting to future-proof their careers. “Position yourself as closely to the customer as possible,” she says. “Try to be on the revenue side of the company, helping a company to grow and expand. Global business acumen is critical. Present your solution in terms of return on investment (ROI) and how it will move the company forward.”
McDougall’s journey shows that localization is a foundation that can expand into new domains when guided by purpose. By carrying her existing skills into a new field, she demonstrates that growth can come from building on what you know and using it where it can make the greatest impact.
Allison McDougall
Director of Account Management at IQVIA
Aurélie Perrin
Co-founder of LocQuest Localization Studio
Georgia Kokkinou & Vicky Ghionis
Digital Content Strategists and Managing Partners at Red Owl
Guido Di Carlo
Co-founder of LocQuest Localization Studio
Johanna Behm
Co-founder and CEO of Envire
Photo credit: Natasha Renée of
Featured Founders
Mitch Donaldson
Flight Attendant at United Airlines
Johanna Behm discovered a new trajectory after a conference. Walking through an event hall piled high with discarded signage and plastic bottles, she began to wonder, “Why can’t events be designed more sustainably?”
Up until that point, Behm’s career had spanned many aspects of localization and marketing. She first saw how language shapes business during a marketing internship. Later, her Finnish language skills took her to California, where she worked on projects that included product launches, trade shows, and digital campaigns.
“What localization gave me was the instinct to think about the audience first,” she explains. “When I worked on events, that meant adapting the message and making sure every detail was right for the people in the room.”
The waste she witnessed at conferences pointed to a larger problem. The global events industry accounts for more than 10% of worldwide carbon emissions, roughly equal to the annual emissions of the United States. For Behm, it was impossible to ignore the environmental cost and the opportunity to make change.
That led her to found Envire, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that helps event venues and organizers measure and reduce their carbon footprint. By combining AI and data analytics, Envire shows organizers exactly where waste is generated and how to create experiences with sustainability in mind.
“Once you see the numbers, you can’t ignore them,” Behm says. “Events can be powerful drivers of community and change, but only if we rethink how they’re designed and delivered.”
Founding a company meant building skills beyond her localization foundation. Behm had to learn the ins and outs of recruiting, as well as pitching investors to sell a vision. She credits adopting a Nordic style of openness, where leaders admit mistakes, with helping her grow into the role.
“It’s one thing to sell your services as part of a company,” she says. “It’s another to sell your own idea and convince others to believe in it with you.”
For others considering a leap, Behm recommends not waiting until you feel ready.
“You’ll never have all the answers before you begin. The important things are to learn by doing, to surround yourself with people who support and mentor you, and to stay transparent. That’s how you grow into the role.”
For many translators, today’s market has become a tough place. Rates are under pressure, AI is eating away at traditional work, and stability can feel out of reach. For Aurélie Perrin and Guido Di Carlo, the solution wasn’t to compete harder — it was to change the rules.
Over the past few years, Perrin noticed a shift in what potential clients were asking for at industry conferences. Instead of working with individual freelancers, they wanted partners who could cover multiple languages and manage more of the localization process.
Di Carlo’s catalyst for change was frustration. “The breaking point was when conditions started to deteriorate,” he says. “I found it harder and harder to work on my own terms: picking the people I wanted to work with, charging decent rates, and doing things in ways that led to high-quality output.”
Both translators were already active in the gaming localization community, and the idea of collaboration grew naturally. In 2023, they founded LocQuest, a boutique gaming localization agency.
Starting their own business has meant learning fast. Perrin oversees operations, juggling the schedules of dozens of linguists while keeping clients in sync. Di Carlo focuses on localization engineering and enjoys onboarding new translators so they feel at home.
Marketing and business development brought their own challenges. Approaching new clients and decoding their needs felt daunting at first. Both founders have also had to navigate the role of AI. Because art, craftsmanship, and emotions are still important in gaming, they find that their clients still value a human touch. By focusing on building relationships and delivering quality, they gradually found their confidence.
“Localization is usually only mentioned when it’s bad,” Perrin says. “So, when we hear that players loved the experience, it feels like we’ve made a real impact.”
Di Carlo recommends starting small and testing the waters by working as a collective with others. And he stresses not to underestimate the time needed for brainstorming, discussions, calls, and networking — he and Perrin spent six months exploring and learning before launching their company.
“It’s a rollercoaster,” Perrin admits. “Some months, everything clicks, and other times you wonder if you can sustain it. But it’s ours, and that makes all the difference.”
The turning point for Vicky Ghionis and Georgia Kokkinou, the founders of a boutique content strategy agency called Red Owl, came during a two-year digital transformation project for a major Greek bank. Immersed in design, user experience (UX), and brand strategy, they began to see communication in a new light. Translation was only one piece of the puzzle; what excited them was the chance to help shape a digital voice that felt cohesive and alive.
“We realized that what we loved most wasn’t only the linguistic side,” Kokkinou says. “It was helping companies find their voice and connect with audiences in a way that felt authentic.”
Both women had started their careers as Greek-to-English translators, but as the wider translation industry moved toward machine translation post-editing (MTPE), they chose a different course. They enrolled in classes on UX writing, content design, search engine optimization (SEO), and brand strategy — expanding their skills into areas where human judgement matters most. Working side by side with designers, marketers, and UX specialists, they showed them how the right words could define a brand’s presence.
Just as the pandemic was driving businesses to reinvent their online presence, Ghionis and Kokkinou launched Red Owl. The company’s name is a playful nod to their surnames: Kokkinou means “red” in Greek, while Ghionis is a type of owl. Its services include brand positioning, digital campaigns, and UX writing.
“Our background in translation taught us sensitivity to nuance,” Ghionis explains. “That’s exactly what brands need when they’re trying to stand out in a crowded digital space.”
The career shift meant creating a new professional identity. No longer polishing text at the end of the pipeline, they now sit with clients at the beginning, helping define voice and strategy.
“It’s one thing to refine a message,” Kokkinou says. “It’s another to shape it from the ground up. That requires a different kind of confidence.”
For people considering a similar leap, their advice is simple: Trust the skills you already have.
“Cultural awareness, precision, and adaptability are exactly what companies need in digital communications,” Ghionis says. “If you’re willing to keep learning, you can make the move.”
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Careers, especially in localization, rarely move in straight lines. Each transition is a chance to step into a new market, role, country, or even version of yourself.
That mindset, echoed in different ways by every professional in this story, may be the most transferrable skill of all. Reinvention is more than survival. It’s how the industry — and the people in it — keep moving forward.
Mimi Moore is owner of Netherlands-based Wolfson House Writing, a content marketing agency for language service providers and B2B technology companies. She has 25 years of experience in the localization industry, and is Program Manager Content and Social Media for Women in Localization.
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