Being a software engineer and a language lover has many interesting crossovers in the modern world. I’m a machine learning hobbyist, and have been fascinated with making computers understand and use language. Developer of Amikumu, traveler, lifetime learner.

Jade Jia Ying Wu completed her Teaching Certificate Program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and TCSOL (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages) from Teachers College, Columbia University and Beijing Language and Culture University in 2016. She has taught Chinese in classrooms of various sizes and to students of all ages, in both the U.S. and China. Jade was born and raised in Guangdong, China, where Cantonese is one of the main dialects. She moved to Michigan at the age of 13 and spent most of her young adulthood living in New York City. Experiencing both Chinese and American cultures, she was often confused yet fascinated by the differences between them. She is also the author of Learn to Speak Cantonese I: A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Conversational Cantonese and Learn to Speak Mandarin I. In her free time, Jade also enjoys learning other languages such as Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean.

Allison currently teaches French at the Marion Cross School in Norwich, VT, and is passionate about providing her students of all ages with comprehensible input. She relishes the opportunity of working with multiple age groups and loves her students and having fun, playing with stuffies, and encouraging circumlocution. This school year Allison is teaching kindergarten and first, second, fourth, and sixth grades. She loves to share with other teachers and blogs about her classroom experiences and ideas at cicanteach.com. Allison holds a BA from Williams College and MAs from Middlebury College and the University of Mississippi. She served as Co-President of the Vermont Foreign Language Association (VFLA) from 2012-2018 and was named VFLA Teacher of the Year in 2019.

Nicholas Walker teaches ESL at Ahuntsic College and has received awards for his teaching (AQPC Award, 2019), his leadership in Education (Sesquicentennial Pin, 2017), and for his Actively Engaged series of ESL textbooks (TESL Canada Innovation Award, 2017). Nicholas holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics (2009), a TESL Certificate (2002), and a B.A. in Literature (1995), all earned at Concordia University. He began developing textbooks in South Korea, where he taught for 5 years, and currently spends his free time writing textbooks for his self-publishing operation Bokomaru Publications, serving the ESL Coordination Subcommittee for the Province of Quebec, speaking at conferences, and developing new features for his popular grammar checker website VirtualWritingTutor.com. You can learn more about him here: blog.VirtualWritingTutor.com.

Julie Morin is a communications advisor at the Translation Bureau’s Language Portal of Canada. She has over 12 years’ experience in the field: she graduated from the University of Sherbrooke in 2008 with a degree in communication, writing and multimedia, and has been a French certified editor since 2016. Julie is enthusiastic about giving people the tools they need to improve their communication at school and work. A seasoned speaker, she joined Toastmasters over 10 years ago to develop presentation techniques for connecting with audience members. Before becoming a proud member of the Language Portal, Julie made daily use of the site’s resources in her role as French revision team leader in a federal organization. She therefore knows the Portal’s writing tools better than anyone and will show you which resources you need to communicate effectively in a Canadian context. Get your questions ready!

David is a Canadian linguist, polyglot and worlds creator who takes a particular interest in language history and in the pronunciation of our world’s languages, created or not. He particularly likes the Nguni languages of South Africa, and the Kartvelian, Turkic and Indigenous languages, mostly of North America.

Dr. Emmanuel Ternon is a software engineer turned polyglot with a passion for Chinese characters. An avid traveller, he has lived in four different countries (France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan) and currently speaks 10 languages, including three from East Asia (Japanese, Korean and Mandarin Chinese). Dr. Ternon recently published the book “Traditional Chinese Characters: A Translingual Writing System” (ISBN 978-1-729-16447-1) to raise awareness about the fact that Chinese characters (especially in their traditional forms) are the key to efficiently learning multiple East Asian languages because they make it possible to write a large portion of the vocabularies of these languages the exact same way. By combining his software development skills with his knowledge of East Asian languages, Dr. Ternon aims to create a variety of software tools useful for people learning or working with these languages.

Kerstin is a native German speaker and comes from the beautiful Moselle valley. She studied 6 languages in Germany and then packed them up and moved England, where she has added 3 more so far including her most recent language crush, Welsh.  Kerstin runs www.fluentlanguage.co.uk. Over the last 5 years, she has built her reputation as an advocate of independent and creative language learning, created retreats, coaching packages and courses, been featured in the Guardian, the Cut, and on BBC Radio, and worked tirelessly to change how the world sees language learning. She is the host of the Fluent Show podcast, and author of the guides Language Habit Toolkit, Fluency Made Achievable and The Vocab Cookbook.

Marc Okrand devised the dialogue and coached the actors speaking the Klingon language heard in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and Star Trek Into Darkness. He also created the Atlantean language heard in the animated feature Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The Klingon language he developed has continued to be used in the later Star Trek TV series. In addition, he created Vulcan, Romulan, Kelpien, and other languages for several Star Trek films and TV series. He is the author of The Klingon Dictionary, The Klingon Way: A Warrior’s Guide, and Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, and is an associate producer of the documentary Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues. He has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist and the author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. She is the Resident Linguist at Wired and the co-creator of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. She lives in Montreal, but also on the internet.