Nataly Kelly is a nationally recognized consultant with a special interest in multifaceted quality improvement programs for language services.
She is a Senior Analyst with Common Sense Advisory, an independent market research and consulting firm.
While pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish and a Certificate in Intercultural Communication, she studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Intrigued by the sociocultural dynamics reflected in the unique variety of Spanish spoken in Ecuador due to linguistic contact with Quichua, Ms. Kelly returned to Ecuador as a Fulbright scholar in 2001 to pursue research in sociolinguistics. As a complement to her Fulbright-sponsored research activities, Ms. Kelly participated in the Master’s degree program in Latin American Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar with a Concentration in Cultural Policy and a special focus on Language Policy. Several of the papers prepared in the area of sociolinguistics as part of her Master's degree program were selected for publication by academic journals from universities in Latin America.
Formerly an active conference interpreter, Ms. Kelly is a certified court interpreter (English<>Spanish) as well. She has worked widely in the field of community interpreting in both legal and health care settings.
An admirer of languages from both a scientific and cultural perspective, Nataly has also formally studied French, Japanese, Italian, German, Arabic, and is currently interested in Irish Gaelic. She has completed undergraduate and graduate studies in Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.
Ms. Kelly also has more than a decade of specialized experience in the field of telephone interpreting, having worked for the largest global provider for more than five years. She is the author of the first major book on the subject, Telephone Interpreting: A Comprehensive Guide to the Profession (Language Line University Press, 2008), and has contributed substantially to the development of training programs, assessment and quality monitoring standards in this area. She currently provides support as a consultant for both private sector and government-based telephone interpreting programs in several countries throughout the world.
After working toward her MBA, Nataly co-founded a successful consulting company that provided services to enterprise clients and language services companies on a national scale. Her specific area of consulting interest for language services in enterprise settings involves providing a high-quality experience for target consumers of other languages by ensuring culturally and linguistically appropriate message development and consistent delivery across languages.
More recently, Ms. Kelly has been involved in the field of cultural competence training, infusing information on translation and interpreting technologies into programs from a wide array of industries, such as medical education curricula and training programs for first responders in emergency settings.
Given the nature of her diverse background, Ms. Kelly is keenly interested in improving access to high-quality language services through innovative and cross-disciplinary means in order to enable more equitable social, economic and cultural participation.
She is also a member of the National Project Advisory Committee (NPAC) for the First Responders Cultural Competency Curriculum Project led by the Office of Minority Health, and is frequently cited in the media as a subject matter expert.
Nataly actively volunteers her time to several organizations within the translation and interpreting fields. She is a member of the interpreter certification committee for the American Translators Association (ATA), and currently serves as on the board of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC). Ms. Kelly is also an active member of numerous associations and societies for linguistics and language interpretation, such as the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), the Modern Language Association (MLA), the International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA), and the California Healthcare Interpreters Association (CHIA).
Currently, Ms. Kelly is editing a compendium of personal anecdotes from interpreters about their work titled, From Our Lips to Your Ears: How Interpreters Are Changing the World. To read more about this project, or if you are an interpreter who is interested in submitting a story, please visit the official project website.
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