MCIS AGM 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As Executive Director you have to brace yourself for the bad years as much as you bask in the glory of good ones.  This year proved to be one of those when I had to dig deep within myself for the courage to make unpopular decisions, find middle-ground and constantly negotiate the boundaries of what services we could deliver on and how. 
 
I knew in the way my hands were forced I was not about to win popularity contests in a hurry.  So I am going to tackle this issue head on first and then talk about some internal work we have done to help us scale future challenges. 
 
MCIS is unique in that it is a generic language services company.  Other than the core grant from the Ministry of Citizenship (MCI) to provide free services assisting victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking, for which we are extremely grateful, we rely on contracts.  The world of language services is getting extremely competitive.  It takes a lot of effort, resourcefulness and aggressive  pricing to successfully bid on these multi year contracts now .  Relative novices to this game, we at MCIS were blind- sided when we lost a key multi- year contract to a private sector competitor early in the fiscal year. This made us realize that till we got to a place of financial security we would have adopt new ways of doing and to play it safe when it came to bidding.  This meant that we had to price lower to have a chance at winning.  For this we had to reduce our unit price by reducing our variable and fixed costs.
 
Our variable costs were the rates we paid our subcontractors.  To incent them, we concentrated the work among a few.  We booked them through their google calendars to reduce the call and despatch effort at intake. 
 
To reduce our fixed costs, we undertook two initiatives.  One, an IT infra structure upgrade for better stability and efficiency of our systems.  Two, we restructured our human resources to streamline service delivery to do more with less.  These two initiatives resulted in some investments which the net income at year end will pay for in this year, at the conclusion of these projects. 
 
In this fiscal year, we also laid the groundwork to get out off the bloody waters of competitive pricing, and to explore blue oceans.  We translated our website and training into french enroute to becoming fully bilingual.  We expanded our range of services to include transcription in same and other languages and from audio and video.  We now provide a full suite of services for the deaf and blind.  We also specialize in certain areas of high end technical interpretation and translation,  niche services for advertising and marketing companies with "transcreation" and online services, and for the documentary industry with subtitling and voice-overs.  We hope the increased diversity in our service mix will prove equally beneficial to our language professionals, several of whom have multiple areas of expertise. 
 
I thank you our interpreters and translators for believing in us during this difficult transitional year.  We will return the favour in spades.  We thank our dedicated board and committee members and bid our goodbye, with heavy hearts, to our Vice Chair Lisa da Rocha. 

 

Thank you to an amazing staff group, many of whom transitioned into new roles and adapted with unparalleled enthusiasm, never losing sight of our vision to remove language barriers, and to our volunteers.  We saw two senior staff Peer Flach nd Felipe Villegas leave to pursue other opportunities and thank them for their foundational work at MCIS. 

 

We could not achieve our vision of creating a world without language barriers, particularly for vulnerable persons, without the support of our funders, MCI, City of Toronto, Trillium Foundation and Ministry of the Attorney General.   We are extremely grateful to them.  

 

This story will not be complete but for the tireless efforts of our service providers who bridge communication barriers everyday working in partnership with us.  

 

Without naming them, since they are too numerous, I want to thank them all for their commitment to use MCIS ' high quality language services for their clients.  
 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Latha Sukumar, 

Executive Director, MCIS

 

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Latha Sukumar M.A., LL.B (On) is a lawyer and social entrepreneur whose crowning moment was winning a National Award from the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund in April 2010, for being one of 15 lawyers in Canada who has advanced the equality rights of women.

An advocate for the rights of new comers, Latha has served on a number of community boards and has spoken in the media, before legislative committees and at public gatherings on victim rights issues. Latha believes in applying new discoveries she makes to grow personal and professional life and work and she loves creating and participating in entrepreneurial opportunities.  Besides being a social entrepreneur, Latha is an avid blogger, a yoga teacher and Vipassana meditator.  MCIS Board and Latha have led the transformation of MCIS into a social enterprise that engages local talent to provide a full suite of language services globally, engaging 5500 professionals representing 200 languages and ASL. Interpretation services include Consecutive and Conference, Immediate Phone, Video and In-Person. In 2013, MCIS has received grants to expand its online training for interpreters and translators, and to translate all content into French. With several full-time bilingual staff, MCIS now has in-house capacity in 40 languages and has dedicated French Account Managers to take on large French translation projects. Recent wins include a large federal Service Canada contract and one to serve the entire education sector in Ontario.

 

Follow Latha:  lathasukumar.com