Laura organizes pretty darn good language services for all things online.
Laura designs loving learning environments for and with interpreters.
Laura is an interpreter herself.
Laura is a softy.
Laura Holcomb is the director of String & Can Multilingual Online. Surrounded by a team of brilliant humans and linguists, she partners with impact organizations to produce meaningful multilingual interaction in online spaces, providing interpreting for everything from short punchy webinars to multi-day online or hybrid meet-ups, all with a focus on good sound and good fun.
To support organizations before, after and beyond their events, String & Can also provides gender-inclusive document and audiovisual translation, as well as transcription and stand-alone event tech services.
Laura is co-founder of the annual co>lab interpreting intensive (Toronto & Mexico City) where conference interpreting professionals come together to practice, experiment and receive support and guidance from fellow interpreters.
After earning a Master in Conference Interpreting from Glendon College in Toronto, Laura was invited back to co-design and teach the program’s Virtual Healthcare Interpreting Practicum. She went on to co-found Seven Sisters Interpreter Training, a short course continuing education initiative focused on community-driven, horizontal learning across the three primary interpreting settings: court, healthcare and conference.
Laura also had the honor of teaching Cross Cultural Communication's Online ToT of Online Training (very meta!). She is also proud to have served as a trainer, curriculum developer and English retour coach for the Brazil-based online Interpret2B program.
Healthcare interpreter by heart and conference interpreter by hat, Laura’s interpreting career began in 2008 in the halls of a regional hospital in Athens, Georgia—the conveyor of intimacies between embattled cancer patients and oncologists, between midwives and new mothers. She plain loves her first interpreting home—healthcare interpreting—and was among the first to earn the nationally recognized Certified Medical Interpreter (CMI) credential and later, the Certified Healthcare Interpreter (CHI) credential as well.
After completing a Master’s in Conference Interpreting (English, Spanish, Portuguese) in 2015, she became an early adopter and explorer of the very first remote simultaneous interpreting platforms, initially for training interpreters, and later as the bedrock of a virtual events focused language services initiative, String & Can Multilingual Online.
Laura wants to do useful things that nurture the talents of the other humans who are kind enough to lend her a piece of their hearts. A proponent of tenderness early and often, Laura was raised in the US South and is currently based in Guatemala City after a long stint in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Put a bike under her and coffee in her cup and you’ll likely get a smile out of her.
