Linguistics Career Launch
Linguistics Career Launch (LCL) events are open to undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and alums — in short, any linguists who want to transition from academia to industry. LCL is part of the Linguistics Beyond Academia Special Interest Group of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA).
LCL 2021: The first-ever virtual summer “boot camp” happened in July 2021 and focused exclusively on career training for linguists. The Linguistics Career Launch (LCL) 2021 was a four-week series of courses, talks, workshops, and events designed for linguists who want to pursue work outside of academia.
LCL 2022: Occurred from May through August of 2022 on Twitter.
LCL 2024: Interested? Check back soon for information.
Videos of lectures, panels, and workshops are available on our YouTube channel. You can contact us here.
LCL2024 Organizers
Emily Pace (she/her) has a breadth of experience across the non-profit, public, and private sectors, including at several technology companies, the National Association of Attorneys General, the Close Up Foundation, and the Library of Congress. She has served as a convener for the Linguistic Society of America’s Linguistics Beyond Academia Special Interest Group since 2019, and as a leader of Linguistics Career Launch since the inaugural 2021 program. After almost a decade of delivering natural language processing solutions to federal government customers, she is embarking on a career sabbatical. This career visioning period will support her exploration of new fields and expanding interests, beginning with Linguistics Career Launch 2024. She is excited to be joined by new organizing committee members, all of whom are LCL21 alum. Emily holds a B.A. in French and Arabic and an M.S. in Theoretical Linguistics, both from Georgetown University, as well as certificates from the Paris Chamber of Commerce and the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po).
Alfonso Sánchez-Moya (he/him) is a ML/AI Data Linguist II at Alexa – Amazon. At Amazon, he has been contributing to the expansion of the Spanish, Portuguese (and more recently Arabic) Alexa models from a natural language understanding (NLU) perspective. Like many other linguists in tech today, he is currently working on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and Alexa’s large language model (LLM) development. He also lectures at the Department of Applied Linguistics at UMASS Boston. His academic and career interests focus on the interconnections between language and communication in digital settings, with a strong orientation towards socio-political issues. Alfonso has a B. A. in English (Complutense Madrid) and several MAs in Teaching, as well as a MA in Discourse Studies at Lancaster University (UK). He also holds a joint PhD in Linguistics (Complutense/VU Amsterdam). After 2 years as a postdoc researcher at Harvard, Alfonso joined the LCL as a student in July 2021, which was a very transformative experience for him. This explains why he is beyond excited to be a part of the org committee in LCL24!
Lucy Cheng (she/her) is a Language Data Researcher at Amazon, where she applies her expertise in generative AI, automated data evaluation, and machine learning. Lucy obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Kansas, where she developed strong quantitative and analytical skills. After transitioning to the industry, Lucy has grown her knowledge in cutting-edge language technologies and their practical applications. She is grateful for her participation in Linguistics Career Launch 2021, which helped her secure her first role in the field. Now, as a member of the organizing committee, Lucy is passionate about giving back to the linguistics community and supporting students in exploring diverse career paths beyond academia.
Victoria Hamilton (she/they) is a Computational Linguist with experience in training machine learning and large language models. They hold an M.A in computational linguistics from Stony Brook University and a B.A in linguistics and Japanese from Michigan State University. She joined the LCL in 2021 as a master’s student, which is what kick-started her career as a linguist in tech. They are happy to be a part of the LCL24 so they can help inspire other linguists to find careers outside of academia.