Michelle Waddle

Experience

1. Manager, Translations & Pmo

   Rockwell Automation

   Feb 2018 — Present · Milwaukee, WI, US

   Lead global localization program, overseeing strategy, roadmap execution and team operations to drive customer growth and cost efficiency. Key Achievements & Responsibilities• Develop and lead high-performing global teams to optimize translation project management, manage almost $1M in annual translation spend and ensure stakeholder requirements are met.• Implement AI-powered machine translation solutions, integrating automated and human post-editing workflows to drive efficiencies and achieve 20%+ cost reduction while maintaining translation quality.• Oversee diverse content localization of technical, marketing, web, and internal communications, ensuring cultural accuracy and regulatory compliance. Including partnering with developers on internationalization (i18n) requirements.• Establish content prioritization strategies to determine workflows for AI-only translation processes, improving translation speed by over 95% for appropriate content.• Maintain strategic partnerships with translation management system (TMS) technology providers, Language Service Providers (LSPs), LLM & Machine Translation AI partners driving continuous improvements, innovation and contracts, SLA negotiation and performance metrics.• Collaborate with cross-functional leadership—including leadership, product, engineering, UX, legal, and marketing—to streamline project execution and align localization priorities with broader business objectives.• Ensure consistency and compliance by maintaining style guides and ISO-aligned procedures.• Monitor key quality metrics and implement corrective actions, reducing post editing distance to less than 20% across core languages.

Education

• Milwaukee School of Engineering

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Technical Communications

  1998 — 2002