Meet the Board of NITA
Karen McMillan Tkaczyk, Ph.D.
President – email: president@nitaonline.org
Karen Tkaczyk is a French and Spanish into English freelance technical translator based in Gardnerville, Nevada. She is ATA certified from French into English. She became involved with NITA in 2008, and was thrilled to have an association representing the profession in Nevada. Karen’s particular personal interest is on training and education for established T&I professionals, and in working with newcomers to translation; she has written and given presentations on getting established as a freelance translator. She also encourages translators to work in a narrow area and be highly specialized, because she feels this has been the secret to her success. With this in mind she gives presentations on specific, technical subject matter at conferences of the American Translators Association and abroad. Before becoming a translator, Karen earned a PhD in Chemistry and a Diploma in French from the University of Cambridge, UK. She then worked in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. She has lived in the UK, France and Ireland as well as the US. Her translation work focuses on chemistry, its industrial applications, and chemical intellectual property.
Judy Jenner, M.B.A.
Vice President – email: vicepresident@nitaonline.org
Judy Jenner, MBA is a Spanish and German translator and health care and community interpreter based in Las Vegas, NV. She joined the NITA board in the fall of 2008 and is delighted to help shape the future of the organization. A native of Austria, Judy grew up in a trilingual household in Mexico City and moved to Las Vegas as a teenager. Her native languages are German and Spanish. She received both her undergraduate and MBA degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She serves on the advisory board of the Spanish/English translation certificate at the University of California, San Diego. Judy enjoys sharing her knowledge and business sense with her fellow translators and entrepreneurs. She pens a translation blog, Translation Times, where she provides tips and suggestions about the world of freelance translation. Judy is a frequent keynote speaker at workshops and conferences around the world, focusing on entrepreneurship, time management, and marketing to direct clients. She writes the monthly Entrepreneurial Linguist column for the American Translators Association’s Chronicle and contributes to the Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s Bulletin. Her book, which she co-authored with her twin sister, will be released in May 2010 and is titled “The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation.” In January 2010, the business weekly In Business selected her as one of the “Women to Watch 2010.” Together with her twin sister, Judy runs her boutique translation business, Twin Translations. Their work focuses on e-commerce, travel and tourism, marketing, financial, and legal texts.
Glady Paulino, B.A.
Secretary – email: secretary@nitaonline.org
Glady Paulino is originally from the Philippines and has lived in Reno, Nevada for 11 years. She graduated from University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelors Degree in International Affairs and a minor in Speech Communication in 2005. She became a member of NITA in June of 2009 upon learning about the organization and became actively involved since. Her native language is Tagalog. She hopes to learn other languages and travel other countries in the future. She is currently pursuing a career in court interpreting. Prior to becoming a board member, Glady worked for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges providing administrative, logistic support and travel/ meetings coordination and operations. Her professional background includes experiences in sales, banking, and non-profits.
Alvaro Vergara-Mery, Ph.D.
Director - email: vergaramery@yahoo.com
Alvaro Vergara-Mery is a medical interpreter and trainer at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. He is also a National Director of the National Board for Certification of Medical Interpreters and Chair of its Fundraising Committee. Dr. Vergara-Mery is the Nevada State Representative for the International Medical Interpreters Association. Dr. Vergara-Mery has presented workshops in the U.S. and abroad and is very involved in advancing the interpreting and translation fields.
Maria C. Davis
Director – email: mcdtranslations@yahoo.com
I am a native of Northern Mexico. I came to this country in 1989, leaving behind an incomplete Accounting major at the University of Coahuila. My husband, Mike, retired from the USMC in February of 2005 and we decided to make Reno, NV our permanent home. I have been working as a freelance interpreter/Translator since 2006, in the areas of education, court and warehousing. I also facilitate classes for the Strengthening Families Program, and for the Washoe County School District Parent Involvement Resource Center both in English and Spanish. One of my goals when Interpreting is to ensure that people are able to recognize that the fact that someone may speak little or no English does not describe his/her level of education and/or intelligence.
Álvaro Degives-Más
Director & Site Administrator – email: admin@nitaonline.org
Álvaro Degives-Más is a professional interpreter and translator with Spanish, Dutch and English as his A-languages; he is a Nevada Certified Court Interpreter for the Spanish-English language pair, and is since April 2010 a member of the Nevada Court Interpreters Advisory Committee of the Nevada Supreme Court, Administrative Office of the Courts. His career spans a broad gamut of communication-related disciplines in governmental, commercial and industrial settings. As such, he previously gained extensive international senior management experience, in marketing, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, publishing, journalism, as well as print media and TV production. As a full-time independent interpreter and translator he provides his language services throughout Northern Nevada and Northeastern California. His passion is to facilitate effective, on-target and precise communication, for the betterment of our whole community, while doing right by our common yet uniquely human trait: our language.
