Track 1-3b
Community

Roundtable: Starting-up and Managing Community Interpreter Banks

For many areas, community interpreter banks are the best and most cost-effective way of delivering community-savvy interpreter services in a wide variety of languages. This roundtable discussion will feature brief presentations on four community interpreter banks in various stages of development. In a moderated Q and A, the panelists will also discuss and explore how each have faced issues of start-up, training, program implementation, service delivery, marketing and financing.

Karen Aidem, MBA
President
Community Wealth Ventures
1511 K Street NW #1000
Washington, DC 20005
212-579-7422, 212-579-2108-fax
aidem@email.msn.com

Karen Aidem is President and Founder of Community Wealth Ventures, a consulting firm assisting nonprofit, corporations and foundations to engage in businesses and partnerships that support a social mission.
  After receiving her MBA, Aidem joined Citibank in 1986 where she managed and marketed deposit, credit and mortgage products. From 1989-1995 she held marketing and business development positions at American Express, where she was Vice President, Establishment Services. While with American Express, she managed consumer lending products, card acceptance industry relations and development of information-based products and services. From 1995-1997 she was the Senior Vice President, Marketing for MobileComm, a publicly traded wireless communications provider, where she directed new product development, customer acquisition and management, telesales, advertising, public relations and sales support.
  Karen serves on the Board of Directors of Share Our Strength and guided the organization in its strategic planning process. While at American Express, Karen initiated the company’s successful cause-related marketing partnership with Share Our Strength, which received Brandweek’s Event Marketing Award in 1993. Karen received the first ever Business Leader Award of Excellence at Share Our Strength’s national conference in 1995. She served as Director, Corporate and Nonprofit Commitments for the President’s Summit for America’s Future. In 1998, Karen served on the Advisory Committee for Fannie Mae Foundation’s Maxwell Awards of Excellence.
  A native of Phoenix, Aidem holds an MBA from Columbia University with concentrations in marketing and international business. She received her undergraduate degree from Occidental College, where she graduated with honors in Political Science.

Shelley Cooper-Ashford
Executive Director
Center for Multicultural Health
105 14^th Avenue, Suite 2C
Seattle, WA 98122
Phone: (206) 461-6910
Fax: (206) 461-4890
shelleyc@cschc.org

Shelley Cooper-Ashford has over fifteen years of experience in managing nonprofit agencies and in designing, developing and implementing health and human service programs. Presently, she is the Executive Director of the Center for MultiCultural Health (CMCH), which houses one of the oldest community interpreter services in the nation. She represents CMCH at the King County BCHP Community Partners Group, on the Community Advisory Group and Steering Committee for Seattle Healthy Homes, on the King County Health Action Plan Steering Committee. In addition, Ms. Cooper-Ashford serves as Chair for the African American Health Coalition of Washington and the National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer (NBLIC) on the State of Washington. Prior to joining CMCH, she served as Director of Operations for Common Ground, Director of Finance and Administration for Neighborhood House, and Assistant Director for Broadview Emergency Shelter. Ms. Cooper-Ashford graduated from Western Washington University with a BA in business.

Priscilla M. Coudoux
Program Director,
Cross-Cultural Health
Northern Virginia Area Health Education Center
1224 Princess St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: (703) 549-3694
Fax: (703) 549-2950
nvahec1@aol.com

Priscilla Coudoux is currently Program Director, Cross-Cultural Health at the Northern Virginia Area Health Education Center. In this capacity, she is responsible for the agency’s community-based cultural competence training and health care interpreter programs. Ms. Coudoux has worked in cross-cultural health for 15 years as a trainer, program developer and filmmaker. Her particular area of expertise is traditional Southeast Asian medicine. She received an AB degree from Harvard College and continues to pursue studies in cultural and medical anthropology. Priscilla Coudoux has lived and worked abroad for much of her life in Switzerland, Vietnam, Laos, Madagascar, Italy, France, and Canada. She is fluent in French and speaks conversational Italian. Ms. Coudoux is married to a French-Vietnamese videographer with whom she co-produced a 1994 documentary on Lao Buddhist healing, Too Much Air to Breathe. Priscilla, her husband and 10-year-old daughter live in Washington, DC.

Linda Okahara, BA
Community Services Director and Language and Cultural Access Program Director
Asian Health Services
818 Webster St., Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 986-6830
(510) 986-6866
Lokahara@ahschc.org
www.ahschc.org/language.htm

Linda Okahara oversees the Health Education Department and Language and Cultural Access Program at Asian Health Services, a federally funded community health center serving a predominantly low-income, non-English speaking Asian patient population. Her involvement in advocating for improved language access to the health care system dates back to the early 1980s when she participated in community efforts to establish and maintain interpreter services at the local County hospital. She served on the California Dept. of Health Services* Cultural and Linguistic Task Force developing standards for Medi-Cal managed care plans. Currently she serves on the interim steering committee for the National Council on Health Care Interpreting and is a member of the California Healthcare Interpreters Association.

Karin Ruschke, MA
Associate Director, Health Care Interpreting Services
Chicago Health Outreach
1015 W. Lawrence
Chicago, IL 60640
Phone: (773) 506-2876
Fax: (773) 506-9872
hcis@enteract.com

Karin Ruschke is the daughter of German immigrants. She received her BA in German with a minor in Business from the University of Illinois at Urbana and has a Masters Degree from the School of Translation and Interpretation at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Ms. Ruschke was a medical interpreter before accepting the position of Associate Director for Health Care Interpreting Services (HCIS). As Associate Director, Ms. Ruschke was responsible for establishing a community-based interpreter referral service, HCIS, a program of Chicago Health Outreach, is dedicated to improving access to health care for limited-English-speaking populations in the Chicagoland area. Ms. Ruschke also provides both in-house and on-site interpreter training courses and technical expertise in areas related to language services.  NEXT >

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