Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Communities and Large Tech

Priscilla Colón
Founder, Casa Areyto
Co-chair, Ad-hoc Group 1: Provision of Education and Domains for Indigenous Languages, IDIL 2022–2032

Priscilla Colón is a writer, artist, educator, and language enthusiast with over 20 years of experience in language programs, training diverse students and educators ranging from government personnel to public school teachers and students.

Driven by the search for her own Indigenous roots, Ms. Colón founded Casa Areyto, an organization dedicated to revitalizing the Taíno language and culture. Casa Areyto's mission is simple: to create a world where every Taíno descendant knows who they are and where they come from. Through public events, partnerships, and free online resources—including the first digital Taíno course—Casa Areyto is breaking barriers and making education accessible to all.

Casa Areyto actively contributes to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022–2032) as a partner, supporting global efforts to reclaim the Taíno language.

In June 2024, Ms. Colón was appointed Co-chair of Ad-hoc Group 1: Provision of Education and Domains for Indigenous Languages for IDIL 2022–2032. She is thrilled to honor the rich linguistic and cultural legacy of her Taíno ancestors, using her voice, expertise, and passion to help shape global policies for Indigenous languages.
 

Craig Cornelius is a senior software engineer on the International Engineering team at Google, Inc., joining in 2007. He works on language support across Google, including Android, Search, GMail, and Google Translate. He contributes to the open source Unicode Standard and the work of the Unicode Technical Committees.

Craig’s indigenous language experience began with Cherokee, and he continues to collaborate on projects with the Cherokee Nation and other communities. He serves on the governing boards of the Endangered Languages Project (www.endangeredlanguages.com), Translation Commons (translationcommons.org), and Endangered Alphabets (endangeredalphabets.com).  He is a contributing author to “Zero To Digital: A Guide to Bring Your Language Online” with Translation Commons. 

He has enjoyed a variety of academic and industry positions, from teaching to academic research and medical imaging. Craig holds a B.A. in chemistry and mathematics from Luther College, and both the Ph.D. in Chemistry and the M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.”

Steven R. Loomis is the owner of Code Hive Tx, LLC, a software consultancy focussing on globalization enablement. He was with IBM’s corporate globalization group for 22 years where he worked on translation workflow modernization, assisted with the formation of the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) project, and served as IBM’s Technical Lead for the International Components for Unicode for C/C++ (ICU4C). Steven is the chair of the CLDR Digitally Disadvantaged Languages Working Group, and is also the editor of the CLDR Keyboard specification. He has implemented this keyboard specification in SIL Keyman, and is currently working on a visual keyboard editor.

Ludmila Golovine is the President and CEO of MasterWord, a top ranked LSP globally and partner organization of the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages. Dedicating over 30 years to the language industry, she is one of the founding members of the Interpreting SAFE-AI Task Force and the community driven Mayan Languages Digitization and Preservation Project. Ludmila also serves as the Strategic Partnerships Manager for Global Community Programs of Women in Localization and is a founding member of the Global Coalition of Language Rights. Her work has been recognized with the NCIHC 2024 Language Access Champion Award, Congressional Recognition G7 “Excellence in International Service” award, and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Gulf Coast Area regional winner (2023).