Meet the Board of NITA

Judy Jenner, M.B.A.

President – email: president@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.

Alvaro Vergara-Mery, Ph.D.

Vice President – email: vicepresident@nitaonline.org

Prof. Alvaro Vergara-Mery is Certified Medical Interpreter, trainer and researcher at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas. He is also a national director of the National Board for Certification of Medical Interpreters, the IMIA (International Medical Interpreters Association) Nevada State representative, and faculty member at MITIO (The Medical Interpreting and Translating Institute Online). He has and is continuously presenting at various national and international conferences. Dr. Vergara-Mery’s BA (English and Education) is from Universidad de La Serena, Chile. His MA in Education and Spanish is from Minnesota State University at Mankato and his Ph.D. in Spanish with a minor in Humanities is from Arizona State University. He was a faculty member at Arizona State University, Western Kentucky University, and the Kentucky Institute for International Studies.

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.

Sandra Rentas, M.S.

Treasurer – email: treasurer@nitaonline.org

Sandra Rentas, MS is the Hispanic Management Consultant for Nevada Small Business Development Center. Some of her responsibilities are to conduct business opportunities research and to advise and provide information to potential entrepreneurs on how to start, expand and operate a business. Sandra Rentas was born and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico. She worked as the Marketing & Purchasing Manager for a women’s attire retail family owned business. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from the University of Pontificia Católica of Puerto Rico and a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Nevada, Reno Sandra also works as an independent consultant doing translations and interpretations, primarily English to Spanish, in the areas of business, law and medicine. She is a certified instructor for the Nx Level entrepreneurial course. Sandra also collaborates with Nevada Museum of Art on a monthly basis and the School of Medicine, University of Nevada, Reno. Sandra also serves on the Renown Community Advisory Committee and is the Treasurer of NITA.

Maria C. Davis

Membership Director – email: membership@nitaonline.org

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.

Ligin Baker

Director – email: gp168@globalparlance.com

Ligin Baker works as a conference and phone interpreter for English and Mandarin. Born and raised in Taiwan, she has always loved the art of languages. She is a native Taiwanese and Mandarin speaker. She also learned to speak French in college, and German while pursuing advanced studying in Switzerland. Ligin received a bachelor of arts in foreign literature and languages in Taiwan. She also received her diploma for hotel management at Les Roches, an esteemed hotel management school in Switzerland. Having worked in the hospitality industry for 8 years, she is very motivated and customer-service orientated. She lived in Taiwan, Switzerland and Canada. Currently, she resides in Las Vegas with her husband and their dog, Casino. Ligin loves to travel, enjoy good food and take photographs.

Lorena Pike

Director – email: lpike@exetranslations.com

Lorena Pike, originally from Mexico City, is a native Spanish-speaker with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, certificates in finance and taxation from the Escuela Bancaria y Comercial and Colegio de Contadores Públicos de México, and a certificate in interpreting and translation from the Universidad Iberoamericana. Before coming to Las Vegas, Lorena worked in Mexico City for U.S.-based companies with branches in that City, such as Coin Acceptors, Inc. and NextiraOne, where she held managerial positions. Lorena decided to make a new life in the U.S. by joining her husband and also began a new career in translation and interpreting –a task she has been performing for several years as an independent translator and interpreter and owner of Executive Translations, Inc. It was because of her passion for the Spanish language that she set out to study a master degree, choosing the M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the UNLV, where she is a graduate member. Lorena is also a Nevada Court Certified Interpreter and an adjunct faculty member at UNLV’s Foreign Languages Department.

Adriana Willard

Director – email: ai_willard@yahoo.com

I came to live permanently to the United States in the year 2000 from Mexico City with the background of Business Administration and as a teacher for English as a second language. For the past eleven years I have had highly successful experience developing strategies, proposals, operations and management in multiple industries including international business companies. As a native Spanish speaker, I had always full responsibility for the customer relations with non-English speaking clients from translating documents to interpreting. Currently, my goals are to graduate in Nursing and accomplish the certification in Medical Interpreting.

Álvaro Degives-Más

Director as ACTION representative – email: alvaro@renolanguages.com

Álvaro Degives-Más serves as a liaison with and represents the Associated Court Translators & Interpreters Of Nevada (ACTION) before the NITA Board of Directors. Álvaro 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.