Business View Magazine | March 2018

212 CLI continues to transform the landscape of language services,enabling its customers to better participate in today’s global economy. “The companywas founded in 1996,bymy father, Bill Graeper,”says its CEO,KristinQuinlan.“Hewas a serial entrepreneur and a lot of his ventures were in theworld of telecommunications and technology.He was on a contract for a company that dispatched live interpreters to locations,and he found that therewas a potential need for interpreters to be sourced and available,anywhere,anytime,regardless of language, to service peoplewho don’t speakEnglish-most spe- cifically in themedical arena,wheremost interpreting encounters were done face to face,not all languages were available in all locations,and a lot of patients had towait a long time.He thought he couldmake a differ- ence bymaking themavailable over the phone,so he wrote someverybasic software tomake this happen. Back then,telephone technologywasn’t veryadvanced, so a call would come in and hewould have to press the receiver button to flash in a conference call with an interpreter.The first couple of years were really,really slow.But he had a vision and he never looked back.” Quinlan became caught up in that vision in 2000, when her dad asked her to help him run the transla- tion department,andwrite a couple of RFPs.“I came on part-time,while looking for a real job,after I got my youngest off to kindergarten,”she recounts.“I had been in the technologyarenawith Pioneer Electronics,and thenwithArrowElectronics,theworld’s largest distrib- utor of semiconductors.I said‘Yes,but I’ll give you six months.’And here I am.” Quinlan says that Graeper backed away fromdaily operations of the company,because,likemanyentre- preneurs,having the visionwasmuchmore interesting to him than executing it.“But it was interesting tome CERTIFIED LANGUAGES INTERNATIONAL