The Vargas Sisters and
the Art of Rising Together

The Architecture of Independence

Their mother had three rules: learn languages, learn to drive, and learn to swim.

“Para que sean independientes,” she would say — “so you can be independent.” These were survival skills for daughters she was raising to be citizens of the world.

The sisters grew up between Chiclayo in northern Peru, where twins Karla and Karina were born, and Moquegua in the south, where Kathy arrived two years later. As for who is the oldest sister, technically, Karina was born first, but Karla has always assumed the role of eldest by choice — a dynamic the twins find more amusing than worth correcting.

The Vargas household operated like a training ground for global mobility. Their father worked for Peru’s Ministry of Transport, and during school vacations, the family would follow him on assignments across the country. New cities, new contexts, new ways of adapting — the sisters learned early that home wasn’t a place, but rather the people you carried with you.

“We weren’t wealthy,” Karla explains, “but we were resourceful.” This distinction matters. When the time came for exchange programs, it wasn’t family money that sent them abroad; it was determination, applications, scholarships, and the kind of stubborn optimism that turns obstacles into stepping stones.

Surprisingly, it was Kathy — the youngest — who wanted to go first. She’d set her sights on an exchange program, but was too young to qualify; she had to watch as her older sisters claimed the opportunities she’d identified.

So, the exodus began with Karla, who went to Belgium through American Field Service (AFS), a global network that places high school students with host families abroad. She was supposed to land in the French-speaking region but ended up in Flanders, learning Flemish instead. Where others might have felt disappointment, Karla welcomed the exposure to an additional language. After Belgium came New York City to perfect her English.

Karina chose Italy, drawn by culture, fashion, and food — practical passions for someone who approaches life with clear-eyed determination. After Italy came La Jolla, California, and then Germany as an exchange student, each experience adding layers to her understanding of how the world works.

When Kathy’s turn finally came, she was offered Germany — not China as she’d hoped for, but she took it without complaint. This would become her pattern: taking what was offered and optimizing it into what was needed. The youngest had waited the longest, but perhaps that patience became its own form of preparation.

For college, the sisters all attended the Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, where they first connected to work opportunities in the United States (US). The university’s translation and interpretation program provided access to US cultural exchange initiatives that allow international students to work in America during school breaks. Kathy secured a job at Sequoia National Park and encouraged her sisters to apply, too. The next summer, all three converged at the same California lodge: Kathy and Karina as restaurant servers and Karla at reception. Even 5,000 miles from Peru, they were still finding their way to one another.

After wrapping up their studies at Ricardo Palma, the next wave of dispersal came: Kathy to West Virginia University to study German and linguistics; Karina to Kent State University to pursue German translation and international relations; and Karla following Kathy to West Virginia for a master’s degree in linguistics. Through these academic pursuits, each sister was building her own foundation while maintaining the family’s core principle: independence through capability.

The Gravitational Pull

If you ask the sisters how they all ended up in localization, the answer is simple: Kathy. Not because she pushed them, but because she created momentum that would shape their career trajectories for decades. When Kathy took a project management position at a language service provider (LSP) in Maryland, she didn’t know she was establishing an orbit that her sisters would eventually join. She was just solving her own problem: how to build a career that combined her linguistics training with her love of optimization.

This quality — part curiosity, part rebellion against inefficiency — made her invaluable in the LSP world. But it also made her a beacon for her sisters, both of whom were reaching their own crossroads.

Karina was already building an impressive track record. After graduating cum laude from Kent State, she handled authentication processes for all European and Brazilian users at cybersecurity company Symantec, becoming the go-to interpreter for three languages. Next, she worked for several LSPs in Los Angeles before making the move east to Maryland in search of better work-life balance and new opportunities.

Around the same time, Karla was navigating her own transition. After years of freelance translation work, she was ready for something bigger. But unlike her sisters who were focused on operational excellence, Karla was obsessing over a strategic question: Why was localization always reactive, and why were translators the last people to know about projects?

When Karla joined her sisters in Maryland, she found them wrestling with similar frustrations from inside the system. The three of them, working at the same company but seeing things through different lenses, became an unintentional think tank. Kathy attacked inefficiency with technical solutions, Karina transformed chaos into scalable operations, and Karla questioned why the entire industry accepted its place at the end of the production line. What emerged from their Maryland convergence was a discovery that their complementary strengths could reshape an entire industry’s approach.

Karla’s next move was applying to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), widely recognized as the premier graduate program for translation and localization management in the US. The acceptance letter came while she was staying with Kathy. While MIIS offered her a partial scholarship, the remaining costs were still steep. Without hesitation, Kathy offered to help with tuition, joining their parents in making the impossible possible. “That’s what you do,” Kathy says of her decision. “You invest in people you believe in.”

Years later, in what has become family legend, both Kathy and Karina independently enrolled in the University of Washington (UW)’s localization certificate program. Neither told the other. They discovered the coincidence only when comparing schedules weeks into the program. “We’re on a family call, and I mention my UW homework,” Karina recalls. “Kathy goes, ‘Wait, your UW homework?’ We couldn’t stop laughing.”

When Kathy moved to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), she embarked on what she cheerfully calls her “five-year mission to drag them out of the dark ages.” She says it with a laugh, but the transformation was real: implementing SDL Trados as their very first computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool, automating workflows that had been manual for decades, and introducing multimedia localization to an institution that had been text-only.

Meanwhile, through project management roles at LSPs and work as an in-house scientific translator, Karina was building her reputation for implementing CAT tools and managing complex projects. Karla was cutting her teeth at a sophisticated San Francisco localization company, learning to negotiate million-dollar contracts, manage enterprise accounts, and lead international teams.

As the years went on, their paths would cross at the same companies, but never on the same teams or timelines. A couple of years after Karina left GoPro, Kathy joined the company in a different division. Similarly at Salesforce, Karla built and optimized marketing localization frameworks that Karina would later complement through her product localization work in an entirely different business unit.

“People who don’t know the details sometimes assume it’s nepotism,” Karina notes. “But we’ve never worked on the same team. We just can’t help sharing when we find companies that truly value global thinking.”

It’s professional matchmaking meets family dinner conversation — each sister recognizing when a company’s culture would suit another’s strengths, but each earning her place entirely on her own merits. They remained in their own orbits, close enough to share insights but far enough apart to build distinct reputations — always within the same professional galaxy.

Different Paths Through the Same Forest

Karla: The Marketing Strategist

Karla thrives on scale, rapid change, and complexity. The bigger the challenge, the better. Where others see chaos, Karla sees opportunity to build something greater — not alone, but by bringing everyone forward.

She’s spent a lifetime creating structures that help others succeed. Since landing in Silicon Valley, she’s navigated both sides of the localization ecosystem — from the supplier side to enterprise roles at eBay, Salesforce, and now Meta. As Localization Program Manager, she doesn’t just manage campaigns; she notes requirements, connects the right people, and works tirelessly toward creating value-added programs while ensuring everyone rises together.

“Success is never individual,” she maintains. This belief started early; at just 19, she was leading the local AFS chapter in her hometown, recruiting families, schools, and companies to support international students. It drives the volunteer work she does now: running Women in Localization (WL)’s global mentorship program and Silicon Valley chapter, serving as a LocLunch ambassador in the Bay Area, and volunteering as an interpreter for undocumented immigrants. Every action creates pathways for others.

Her daily reality reflects constant strategic thinking as she figures out how to accelerate localization without risking quality, encourage stakeholders to follow documented best practices, help teams excel through education rather than criticism, plan launches with cross-functional partners, and track metrics to justify localization’s value. “My days are strategy, education, alignment, planning, and measuring results,” she explains.

Experience with burnout has taught her about strategic prioritization. Now, when stakeholders arrive with “urgent” requests, she asks for context: Is this critical to business, or just late planning? This reframing transforms fire drills into partnerships.

Her networking philosophy reflects this same intentionality. “Networking needs to be meaningful and personal,” she says. “There’s always something we can learn from someone, no matter where they are in their professional journey.”

Karina: The Product Builder

“Don’t tell me I can’t do something.”

This isn’t defiance — it’s fuel. Karina has spent her entire life turning skepticism into motivation. From being the only non-native English speaker in her class to becoming an honors graduate, from project manager to Senior Localization Program Manager at Salesforce, her career is built on proving possibilities.

Karina knows that solo success is an oxymoron. When navigating the pandemic job market, she discovered the immense power of community. “I reached out, asked for help, and learned from an entire village of mentors and peers.”

Now, she gives back to that very community through volunteering: creating interview and resume guides for WL, co-running the Los Angeles LocLunch events, and distributing food to Latino communities through Salesforce’s volunteer program. Every success becomes a template she shares.

The achievement she’s most proud of? Speaking at VAMOS Juntos, sharing the stage with her sisters. “Four years ago, I was unable to speak in public without babbling.” Now she commands stages, but more importantly, she remembers the fear — and that makes her a better mentor.

Kathy: The Systems Architect

Ask Kathy to describe herself, and she’ll give you one word: practical. Ask her peers and bosses, and they’ll give you a dozen: innovative, tireless, curious, and generous, to name a few. The gap between her self-perception and her impact tells you everything about how she operates — focused on the work, not the credit.

When I first met her at the American Translators Association (ATA) conference in Miami in 2015, she was teaching the software program Déjà Vu, already neck-deep in translation technology when others were still debating whether to trust CAT tools. What I remember about our conversations there is that she wanted to understand everything — not just how to use the tools, but why they worked the way they did.

This hunger for understanding the “why” drove her biggest achievements. At the IMF, she didn’t just implement new tools — she revolutionized how they thought about multilingual content. “Every creative team had different needs,” she explains. “My job was to find the right solution for each one, then connect them all together.” She’s at Airbnb now, managing critical localization components, but she’s never forgotten that technology serves people, not the other way around.

Kathy believes in mentorship — serving as a LocLunch ambassador in Washington, DC — as well as staying curious and proactive. She recently completed courses in International Product Management, Multilingual Artificial Intelligence (AI), and User Experience Content Design, plus a Language Tester certification. At a stage when many professionals coast on expertise, she’s still accelerating.