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Gerardo Laster

Computer Software

• West New York, NJ
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Hi, I'm Gerardo Laster: Localization and Globalization Expert

Gerardo Laster's Bio:

Gerardo Laster's Experience:

• Manager Globalization Services at Citrix

  November 2010 - March 2013

  Chosen and promoted into newly established role to drive a major transformation of a distributed globalization organization to support rapid organic and acquisition growth. Analyzed needs and issues, identified opportunities, defined the strategy and approach, communicated the vision, and effectively aligned people, processes, and technologies with business goals. Held complete oversight for the management and optimization of processes, programs, and operations for this multi-site and multi-cultural organization charged with internationalizing software, validating localized products, and creating and publishing technical documentation in more than 19 languages. Oversaw efforts of a globally dispersed team. * Created, Implemented and Led the Operational metrics and tracking program, driving increased visibility and discipline in the allocation of operational resources * Created, Implemented and Led the Operational Excellence Program, introduced and trained teams on Lean Six Sigma best practices, and led numerous multimillion process improvement projects that strengthened end-to-end globalization processes * Reduced translation production costs by 50%, increased localization productivity by 47%, and increased quality of the localization process by 20% * Developed the Customer Engagement Program, simplifying how the organization communicated and delivered services to their internal customers * Led the conceptualization and development of the Citrix Localization Management Solution, accelerating the production of localized software * Recruited, and trained software developers in Lean development best practices, Agile methodology techniques, Design Thinking, and on Rapid Iteration development approaches that enabled the creation of the highly adopted Localization Management System, Terminology Management System, and other intuitive tools

• Principal Automation Engineer at Citrix

  November 2007 - November 2010

  Advanced to new role to oversee the introduction of new tools and standards across the translation services organization to increase productivity, improve customer satisfaction, and enable continued business growth across international markets. * Project Manager for the technical implementation of our technical documentation Web publishing solution across CMS, TMS, and the Web http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/ * Researched, evaluated, designed, and oversaw the adoption of continuous improvement and automation best practices that increased the productivity of the documentation translation process by 4-fold within 2 years * Championed and implemented Lean methodology that enabled just-in-time translation and publishing of documentation in 5 additional languages * Lead the integration of the CMS (Astoria Content Management System), with the TMS (SDL Translation Management System) and the Web Publishing Platform (Eclipse Help) in a single-click Web publishing model * Spearheaded the implementation of the Translation Management System (SDL TMS) that increased capacity of the documentation translation process by 10-fold and reduced time-to-market of translated documentation by 75% * Created a Web provisioning system for VDI, reducing operating expenses and improving productivity with a simple to use and powerful desktop virtualization solution * Developed internal tools/scripts to improve productivity, with a focus on L10N productivity * Managed customer service needs of L10N team members and establishes general processes for working with the CMS/TMS systems for L10N team members and pubs team Skills: C# Development, XML/XSLT, HTML, PHP Development, Web development, Scripting

• Journalist/Startup Founder/Publishing Manager at Several International Companies

  1990 - 2008

  Over the years, I've worked as a writer or editor for several publications/organizations: * Consorte Media (web content for SEO optimization) * Empresario Nacional and Latinoamericano (Editor for a bilingual --Spanish - Portuguese -- business and finance magazine) * Pagina 12 (Newspaper columnist) * Ambito Financiero (Newspaper columnist) * The Buenos Aires Herald (Reporter) * Worked with some of the first independent Web news organizations in the early 90s: Venezuela Headline News (Argentine correspondent), American Reporter (Argentine correspondent) Skills: Portuguese, Spanish, English, SEO, multilingual SEO, Publishing

• Principal Localization Specialist at Citrix

  March 2000 - November 2007

  Recruited as the first localization specialist within newly created department to localize company's flagship product for the Spanish marketplace. * Pivotal role in defining the methodology and processes that enabled Citrix to localize products and drive growth throughout the international marketplace. * Created many of the tools and methods used to grow the localization services team to support 4 languages and 400M in revenue to the 2B mark.

• Co-founder/Developer at antiques-store.com

  2004 - 2007

  Rapid deployment, proof of concept and implementation of an ecommerce site to aggregate goods from antiques stores from across South Florida. * Bootstrapped startup. * Grew revenue to low $100,000s. Skills: SEO, Online Marketing, C#, ASP.Net, .Net, SQL, MySQL, Business Development, Startup development

• Spanish Division Coordinator at All Language Web

  1997 - 1999

  * Managed a team of 10+ linguists working across the globe * Responsible for P&L of Spanish division * Developed business with customers in the health and drugs industry, software localization, and entertainment and marketing communication industries * Pioneered using globally distributed translation teams reducing operational fixed costs and enabling on-demand augmentation of teams * Pioneered using Machine Translation with Post-Editing as a low-cost alternative to higher quality localization and translation services

• Desktop Publishing Manager at Lazoski, Beninatto & Asociados

  1996 - 1997

  During the startup phase, I organized the desktop publishing operations of a large multi-million translation project involving complex graphics, blueprints, and diagrams encompassing thousands of individual files in different formats.

• Sr. Manager International Operations Strategic Planning and Alignment at Citrix

  April 2013

  Promoted into new role to head the Strategic Planning and Alignment Program to drive the customer-centric transformation of the organization. * Implemented the new Customer Engagement Model, leading to the streamlined delivery of services * Lead the introduction of the Agile Product Portfolio Management, VOC (Voice of the Customer) Program, and Strategic Planning and Alignment Program to manage the efficient allocation of a multimillion operating budget to deliver just-in-time services to our internal customers, and enable the just-in-time delivery of products to our international customers. * Oversaw the product portfolio and product life cycle from strategic planning to roadmap implementation of new functionality and improvement projects in support of revenue targets and KPIs * Oversaw the development of KPIs and measurements of process and products effectiveness leading to the increase in accountability, visibility and results across a globally distributed organization * Provided product management leadership for the globalization product portfolio, partnering with cross-discipline teams including: the regional teams, development, user experience, operations, and technology. * Introduced Big Data and Analytics to capture Customer Insights, Voice of the Customer, and generate International Markets Opportunities Intelligence, leading to increased clarity in the portfolio definition * Oversaw the development of an internal terminology database using NoSQL (?MongoDB) for storing documents describing linguistic data, supporting the branding unification efforts across the enterprise * Oversaw the development of an internal Twitter reader to collect and summarize information shared by our international customers providing actionable business intelligence through the International Voice of the Customer Program

Gerardo Laster's Education:

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2014 – 2014
  Professional Certificate

• Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

  2013 – 2013
  Introduction to Marketing
  Concentration: Marketing

• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Rutgers Business School

  2011 – 2013
  Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

• Universidad de Buenos Aires

  Bachelor's degree
  Concentration: Communication, General