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Sponsors

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Dr. William P. Rivers – Keynote Speaker

Dr. Bill Rivers, Principal, WP Rivers & Associates, leads language access and language advocacy projects for a diverse clientele. He has more than 35 years of experience in language advocacy and capacity, serving as an interpreter and translator (Russian<>English), an academic researcher, an intelligence community leader, CTO of a defense contractor, and as a lobbyist and consultant since 2012. He has a distinguished research career, with publications in second and third language acquisition, proficiency assessment, program evaluation, and language policy development and advocacy. He is the Chair of the Stakeholders Advocating for Fair and Ethical use of AI in Interpreting Task Force (SAFE-AI TF), Treasurer and founding President of 7000 Languages, Founding and Past Chair of ASTM Main Committee F43 on Language Services and Products, and Chair of ISO Technical Committee 232 on Education and Learning, among many volunteer activities. He was co-founder of the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland, the nation’s first research center dedicated to language, culture, cognition, and national security. As a contractor, he served as the founding Chief Linguist of the National Language Service Corps. He has taught Russian language from first year through graduate levels, as well as qualitative and quantitative research methods, historical Russian linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and language policy at the graduate level at the University of Maryland and at the al-Farabi Kazakh National University, where he was Visiting Professor from 2003-2022. Dr. Rivers earned the Ph.D. in Russian from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. in Russian Linguistics from the University of Maryland, and a BA in Russian and a BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland. He speaks French and Russian at the C1 level, Spanish and Irish at the B2 level, and German at the B1 level.

Dr. Sigrid Berka – Keynote Speaker

Sigrid Berka is the Executive Director of the International Engineering Program (IEP) at the University of Rhode Island, Professor of German and also the Director of the German IEP and the Chinese IEP. Dr. Berka is responsible for building academic programs with exchange partners abroad, internship placements for IEP’s dual degree students, corporate relations, and fundraising for the IEP. Bi-annually the IEP organizes the Colloquium on International Engineering Education (ACIEE). Under Dr. Berka’s leadership, the IEP received an NEH Connections Grant “A New Model for Integrated Humanities and Engineering Education(2023); NAFSA’s Senator Paul Simon Spotlight award for innovative campus internationalization (2011), and the Andrew Heiskell Award for study abroad (2012) by the Institute for International Education. She serves on the Provost’s Global Education Steering Committee. In her previous appointment as Managing Director of the MIT Germany program, she developed innovative collaborations between MIT students, faculty and German companies and research institutes as part of the MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI).

Berka was educated at RWTH Aachen, Washington University, St. Louis and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and previously taught German Studies at Barnard College in New York.

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