Posts Tagged ‘Wall Street Journal’

Turning a love for language into a career

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

An intriguing profile in the Wall Street Journal of Paula Shannon, who started her career with the language firm Berlitz International and is now an executive at Lionbridge Technologies, “a global firm based in Waltham, Mass., that provides international companies with translation services in over 100 languages.”

Two things from the profile that stuck out for me. One: even though Paula was having trouble getting her foot in the door, she jammed it in there anyway:

I researched the company when I was looking to enter the language translation industry after college and (at first) could not get an interview for the management trainee program locally. So I (reached out to) a senior vice president in New York and asserted that my profile was perfect for their program. I guess he agreed.

And two: her career path, like most everyone else’s, has not been straight and planned:

Never worried about taking detours and accepting lateral moves.