Nothing predisposed me to be a linguist. So many colleagues have an international family history. For me it was fascination with the big wide world and a fervent belief that we are free to become what we dream. I graduated from high school early, added a gas-station job to my busboy job for a few months, sold my motorcycle, hitchhiked from California to New York and took the cheapest flight available to Europe. I discovered that reality does indeed surpass fiction as richness, history and mystery dazzled my mind. Languages seemed to hold some key to it. 15 years later, following extended stays teaching English (and windsurfing) in France, Spain and Portugal, and training at University of California, Berkeley, and ESIT, Paris, I began my career as a conference interpreter. For someone with my appetite for learning and digging into the essence of things, listening to and interpreting the world's foremost experts and leaders could not disappoint! Heads of state, ministers, high United Nations officials, but mainly just people trying to get stuff done in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the U.S. have been my clients. From helicopters in Angola and Rwanda, to hospital operating rooms and high-security prisons in the U.S., to NATO commanders and local officials in Kosovo, UNESCO in Cartagena de Indias and Paris, European Union meetings, the International Criminal Court (The Hague), the U.S. State Department projects, presidential, ministerial and senatorial visits to San Francisco, to conferences on every imaginable subject over four continents (North and South America, Europe and Africa), the tough and intensely rewarding profession of interpreting has taken me back to my roots in California.
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2011 World Tango Championship, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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. Lower left above: Interpreting 1984 at a Champagne producer for a visitor from Mozambique.
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