Marie Flacassier

A world traveler since a young age, Marie is a native of Limoges, France. After completing her Master's in English Studies at the University of Nice, Marie started her career in Ireland at the French Department at the University of Cork. She then moved to the USA, where she started working as a French translator. From there, she quickly moved on to becoming a Project Manager and experienced the world of localization for the first time. And that was just what she had been looking for: she fell in love with San Diego and localization...

A scholar at heart, she received her MBA in International Business in California. In the meanwhile, she continued working in the language industry, managing complex localization, multimedia and translation projects and helping many Fortune 500 companies expand worldwide. In 2009, Marie co-founded BeatBabel and is now the Chief Operating Officer. She supervises our worldwide team of project managers, translators and engineers. After 25 years in the localization industry, she hopes to share her passion for languages and cultures with the world and to continue helping our customers explore international realms.

Marie always likes to stay involved with the international community and in her free time, she is a Foreign Trade Advisor to France. In 2018, Marie was elected to the Board of Directors of the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), where she served as Chair. She had previously served in their Program Committee and helped organize the GALA conferences in Istanbul, Seville, Munich and more. She also served on the Board of the French American Chamber of Commerce in San Diego for several years. Marie has given many localization lectures and presentations at various universities and industry events.

On days off, you might catch her hiking in South East Asia a camera in hand, or listening to singer-songwriters at a local café. If you have still no luck finding her, you can try Le Loir dans la Théière in Paris, where she will be sipping tea with family or friends...

Her personal motto is inspired by Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see in the world". And she is working on it...

Specialties:

• Operations and Finance

• Team Management

• Client relationships

Nickname: Depending on the mood, I’ve been called Maririe, Tasmanian Devil, Peter Pan, EdaMarie (for reading one of Murakami's books).
Chinese Zodiac: Fire dragon
Favorite Hangout: Blind Lady Ale House on Adams Avenue in San Diego.
Can’t live without: Travelling (+ my camera, my flipflops and my backpack).
Last book read: “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee
Last concert seen: Joan Baez's Farewell Tour
Favorite things to do on the weekends: Playing an instrument (currently the cello) and tending to the flowers in my garden.
If you could have another career, what would it be: National Geographic photographer. Or world explorer, oh wait, I already do that…