| Bio: | Don DePalma has more than 30 years of experience in the fields of technology, language services, and market research. As the company’s original founder, he is responsible for launching and developing the preeminent market research firm in the language services sector. He initiated Common Sense Advisory’s coverage of localization maturity, enterprise language processing, business-driven globalization, practical machine translation, return on investment for localization, and multicultural domestic marketing.
As the company's chief strategist, Don serves as an incubator for new ideas and projects that support the organization's vision and growth. He drives strategic decisions affecting the future direction of the research and consulting services. And, he is involved in shaping the strategies of many of the world's largest technology firms and the industry's most influential language services providers via large scale consulting projects.
Prior to founding Common Sense Advisory, he co-founded Interbase Software, served as vice president of corporate strategy at translation technology supplier Idiom Technologies, and was one of the first analysts at Forrester Research, where he consulted to senior management at Global 2000 companies. While at Forrester, Don launched the firm's coverage of various sectors, including content management, application development for strategic internet systems, digital marketing technologies and customer relationship management, ethnic marketing, knowledge management, and business globalization. He lectures, writes, and is frequently quoted on the topics of online marketing, content management, multicultural marketing, localization, return on investment, and website globalization. His book, Business without Borders, is widely used at university and business training courses.
Don holds a PhD in Linguistics from Brown University with specializations in generative grammar, computational linguistics, and the historical phonology of Slavic languages. He has also studied at Moscow State University and Moscow Linguistic University in Russia, Univerzita Karlova in the Czech Republic, and ELISA in Costa Rica. As a linguist, Don studied a range of Indo-European languages and has visited 40 countries. |
