Curious about how East Asian languages & cultures (EALC), Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, and Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) could enhance your future career? Come and hear from our EALC and FLAS/LCTL alumni! The event will include a 90-minute career panel followed by a 30-minute networking session. During the panel, panelists will answer questions about their current positions and how foreign language skills and international experiences have benefitted them in the workplace. During the networking session, panelists will be in individual breakout rooms and attendees can move freely from room-to-room to meet with each panelist.

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Moderator:
Yihan Zhou (PhD candidate in Chinese linguistics)

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Panelist:
Grace Cho Adams (BA, EALC-Korean 2008)

Grace Adams is a Solution Architect at Lionbridge, a language service provider (LSP) whose core service offering is in localization. Until the end of January 2022, Grace was a Global Program Director, responsible for the localization program for 3 large clients who are in different industries but all have one thing in common, which is the need to have all digital assets localized for each of their target markets. Grace graduated from UIUC with a BA in International Studies with a concentration on East Asia and the Korean language, and a Minor in Sociology. After graduating during the 2008 recession, Grace worked as a Rehab Services Aide at NorthShore University HealthSystem for almost 2 years, and then decided to pursue a Masters in Translation & Localization Management to utilize her undergraduate studies and knowledge of the Korean language, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. After graduating from MIIS, she started as a Localization Project Manager at Lionbridge in 2012, and gradually worked up to her current role.

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Anthony Chan (MA, EALC 2021; FLAS Fellow – Japanese 2019)

Anthony graduated from UIUC in 2021 with an MA in EALC, where he focused on Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy, taught JAPN201/202 for two years, and wrote a thesis on video games and language learning. As part of his MA program, he also attended the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama for a year through the FLAS fellowship before returning in 2020. Before coming to UIUC, he worked as a freelance video game translator and was a double major in Cognitive Science and Japanese at Vassar College. He currently works as a curriculum designer for Japanese at Duolingo.

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Maddi Kopija (BA, Linguistics 2018; FLAS Fellow – Japanese 2016)

Maddi is an alumnus of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Class of 2018. During her time at UIUC, she majored in Linguistics and minored in East Asian Languages and Cultures, and she studied Japanese and Korean language to the advanced level. Since graduating, she has pursued a career with the Japanese-American biopharmaceutical manufacturing company, Asahi Kasei Bioprocess America, Inc. as a Quality Assurance Specialist. In her free time, she has a second job as a teacher of Korean pop choreography in Chicago.

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Yiyi Wang (PhD, East Asian Languages & Culture, UIUC, 2017) 

Yiyi Wang is a research scientist in natural language processing at RWS Group. She is responsible for developing machine translation and artificial intelligence products and services. Prior to joining RWS, she was a language engineer at McDonald’s Tech Lab working for conversational AI to create faster and more accurate orders at the drive-thru window. Before that she was a research fellow at Boston College working on automated analysis of pragmatic language development in autism spectrum disorder. Yiyi did her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.