Travel to Canada to meet Robin Ayoub, Lionbridge’s General Manager for Canadian sales. Robin serves as president of CLIA, the Canadian Language Industry Association, and is passionate about finding new customers and connecting with other translation professionals across Canada. When he’s not working, he enjoys photography and gardening.

Tell us about your role at Lionbridge.

I play dual roles. I’m the vice president of sales for Canada and the general manager for Canada. A big part of my job is customer-facing, where I work with my sales team to get new business and manage existing business. The other part of my job is representing Lionbridge in Canada and working with the local management team to ensure our staff is creating success in everything we do for Lionbridge and our clients.

What do you enjoy most about your position?

The thrill for me is in finding a customer and landing a customer. I also love working with our team; over the years, they have become my family.

You have also served as the president of CLIA, the Canadian Language Industry Association, for the past two years. What have you enjoyed most about that role?

My position puts me in touch with the entire language industry in Canada. I like that it gives me exposure coast to coast of what’s going on in the industry and allows me to work with various stakeholders to improve it. Right now, I’m working on organizing a national conference for the industry.

Robin Ayoub, Lionbridge's General Manager for Canada

What are some key trends you’ve observed in the translation and localization selling space in recent years?

Compared to when I first started, we’re leaps and bounds in the future. I remember my first day on the job as a salesperson. I was given a beige telephone and a Yellow Pages. And they told me to start selling. Now we have modern tools and modern ways of reaching our customers. Sales have evolved quite a bit, as have the customers. When I started in sales, the customer would trust you a lot more. Now they ask more questions. And rightly so — as translation has become more process-driven and more organized, customers will have more questions before they buy.

We’ve also evolved from a technology perspective. As more and more content comes at us to be translated, we need to keep up with more advanced technology to process the content more quickly.

Where do you live, and what do you enjoy about living there?

I live in the Greater Toronto area, in a suburb called Mississauga. I’ve been here for around 10 years now. It’s a funny story — I used to love to travel before the pandemic, and I used to live on the eastern side of the city. One day, I almost missed my flight after having to sit in traffic for four or five hours just to get to the airport. After that experience, I moved to an area just 10 minutes away from the Toronto airport. Of course, now we’re not travelling as much.

You recently won best holiday lights for your city. How did you go about creating the display?

I started putting up holiday lights when I first moved to this house — I started small the first year, when I noticed our whole street didn’t have any holiday lights. The next year I put up more, and so on. Now I’m at a point where I have help coming in to put up all of the lights. I usually start putting up lights the first week of November and I’m not done until December 24th. It’s amazing to see the reaction from people who come in. Everyone comes to take a look at the display.

I didn’t start putting up the lights for any competition — I just thought people liked it. One year someone invited us to enter the local competition, and this past year we won. This year was crazy — at one point, we had two police cruisers organizing traffic in front of the house, because of everyone coming to see the lights.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I’m a hobby photographer. My favorite ones are slow motion photography using a delayed shutter. Just watching the light streak across the sensors, I really like that.

I enjoy gardening too, in the summer, and riding my bike around the neighborhood.

How many languages do you speak?

I speak three — French, English, and Arabic. I think I could learn Spanish pretty quickly, though.

What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

One of my mentors from years ago told me to never take a deal where both parties are unhappy. If one of you thinks that you have a bad deal, but the other guy thinks it’s a good deal, then you have a chance of fixing it. But if both parties think that they have a bad deal, then it is doomed to fail.