Meet the Pride: Jerry Wish

Travel to New York City to meet Jerry Wish, Managing Director of Global Alliances for Lionbridge. Wish works with companies looking to implement digital transformation and omnichannel strategies and helps them integrate Lionbridge language capabilities. He enjoys helping clients find omnilingual solutions and exploring New York museums and cuisine.

Tell me about your role at Lionbridge.

I am Managing Director of Global Alliances. I focus on helping Lionbridge ensure we are involved in the ongoing digital transformation revolution for customer experience. Clients are buying a range of solutions to guide their digital transformations, from Adobe to Sitecore to Twilio, ServiceNow, Salesforce and beyond. They buy these platforms to help digitally engage their customers and end users.

But these solutions tend to not have language capabilities built in. For an inclusive customer experience for all end users, regardless of the language they speak, companies need a partner to deliver the best possible language capabilities. Lionbridge is that partner. I’m focused on ensuring that Lionbridge is integrated effectively into all the top customer experience and digital transformation platforms. I also work with our services partners who implement new projects for each of these platforms.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I’ll give you an “inside and outside” answer to that question. Internally, the partners role lets me work with many constituencies across Lionbridge, from sales to product to marketing to operations to legal to finance. I also enjoy working with our external partners, who are working hard to identify and address new and emerging customer challenges. Services partners help us always stay on top of the biggest challenges and priorities of our customers and prospects on the digital, content and customer experience fronts.

What does a typical workday look like for you?

It’s always something new. But a typical day right now is a mix of meeting with our team, meeting with sales, meeting with new partners and working with the team to shape our partner program. We haven’t had a formal partner program in the past, so we’re heavily focused on getting that program off the ground.

How long have you been at Lionbridge? How have you seen Lionbridge change over that time?

I’ve been at Lionbridge almost two years, and in that time, I’ve seen Lionbridge’s continuing commitment to our customers every day. It’s that obsessive customer focus, coupled with our strong legacy and continuing commitment to ensuring inclusiveness, diversity and equitable experiences, that makes Lionbridge stand out.

You’ve been a major proponent for omnilingual strategies in digital transformation. Why do you think these strategies are so important in today’s digital landscape?

Companies are heavily focused on building out omnichannel customer experiences, or using all the channels that consumers communicate through, from chat bots to knowledge bases and SMS messaging. But without embracing an omnilingual strategy alongside omnichannel, too many people are left on the sidelines. By working with the leading language solutions provider, Lionbridge, all these companies can ensure that their omnichannel solutions are truly omnilingual. They can make sure they’re inclusive and equitable, and that everyone can engage with them.

What is the most exciting opportunity on the horizon for your team this year?

We’re focused on ensuring we’re fully connected to all the channels in which clients want to communicate and interact with their customers. We have a holistic and comprehensive suite of application capabilities that we can integrate with, and we’re working to make sure that we’re able to deliver a robust and comprehensive omnilingual, omnichannel experience through those applications.

How long have you lived in the New York City area? What do you enjoy most about the area?

We’ve been in the New York area for quite a long time, and we’ve been in New Jersey since the late 1990s. What I like most about the area we’re in is that it’s a mix of extraordinary culture and restaurants and half an hour away from everything New York City has to offer. But we’re also able to live in the suburbs and experience the outdoors which is always much appreciated. 

What is something a tourist visiting New York City shouldn’t miss?

I’d say my favorite thing in New York is the High Line, which is a beautiful, elegant, one-of-a-kind elevated park that is on the far west side of Manhattan. It’s about 20 feet above street level, so you’re able to watch all the traffic and the pedestrians go by. It goes for a few miles and is continuously expanding. You can see people from all over the world there, speaking all kinds of different languages. I also like the Whitney Museum of Art, which focuses on Modern American art and is coincidentally close to the High Line. It’s a beautiful, serene, light-filled building.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I love spending time with my wonderful family and our friends. We have three children who are now in high school and college, and it’s great to be with them. We also love traveling, so I’m looking forward to upcoming travel this summer and beyond.