Middlebury Institute graduates discuss where they are working today, how the Institute helped them get there, and what advice they’d give to current and future MIIS students.
My name is Autumn Smith and I graduated with an MA in Translation and Localization Management from the Middlebury Institute in 2021. My language of study was Japanese. Prior to coming to Monterey, I earned my BA at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. I was a localization program manager with Meta in San Francisco, California from 2021 to 2024 and am now the inaugural localization program manager at Datadog, a SaaS (software as a service) company headquartered in New York.
After working as a localization program manager at Instagram, where I enabled the global launch of Instagram Stories and Reels, I also headed the localization of the Threads app launch. I interned with Meta during the summer of 2020 and was offered a full-time position at the end of my internship. The Meta localization team hired interns directly through the Institute. After working at Meta, I was directly recruited to start the localization program at Datadog, thanks to my expertise in localization and my experience at Meta.
The coursework in the TLM program—including but not limited to our coding classes, desktop publishing classes, SQL classes, and advanced business applications classes—helped fill the technical gaps I had to enable me to thrive in the tech field. I already had the soft skills and was able to build a solid network during my time at the Institute through my classmates, industry events, and conferences.
My best advice for current students is to make the most of your time in school and establish a network. MIIS is the Ivy League of localization, and you are given this amazing opportunity to connect to an industry that is still niche and growing. If people know your name while you are in school, you will be able to thrive after you graduate.
Also, take group projects seriously—your classmates will go on to lead localization and internationalization teams and become future industry leaders. It’s also important to supplement your Middlebury Institute education by continuing to network in the localization community and building additional coding, data, and AI skills to bolster your skill set and make yourself more competitive in the current market.
| by Sierra Abukins
Marcel Bregman leverages his experience in Silicon Valley to help localization students build their technical skills and learn to be effective bridges between language experts and programmers.
| by Nadia Pshonyak
Almost 70 Middlebury Institute students are practicum this semester spending their time and gaining invaluable skills in locations all over the globe from South Korea to Washington D.C to New York City.
| by June Jiang MATLM ’24
Translation and Localization Management graduate June Jiang shares how her coursework and the Institute’s alumni network helped her launch a career in localization.
