William Glasser

They say that chance favors the prepared, and it took a good many chances before William Glasser would lock into a career he had unconsciously prepared for over the course of three decades. Serving in business management and marketing positions in Los Angeles, Sacramento and in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he spent his formative professional years bookkeeping, fundraising, copy writing, and freelancing as a Spanish interpreter and translator for various organizations. In 1986, Bill graduated from UCLA and began work as an on-call interpreter for families seeking legalization under the Reagan Administration’s famous Amnesty program.

In 2000 Bill, along with a long-time friend and consummate Spaniard, Jose Fayos, founded Spanish World. The company name was later changed to Language World Services, Inc. and has since grown into Northern California's largest on-site healthcare interpreting and bilingual staffing agency. Under Bill’s leadership, Language World flourished by emphasizing careful preparation of its then contracted workforce and by providing excellent customer service to its growing roster of human service and healthcare customers. Due to the absence of meaningful, in-depth training programs for Language World, the company developed training and professional advancement opportunities in house. It soon became clear to Bill, that the investment required to screen, test, train, mentor, deploy and quality assure a Language World Interpreter would require abandoning the industry practice of using independent contractors. With employees, the company was freed to directly monitor its high standards of excellence and quality assurance for customers and employee interpreters alike.

Bill is the current President of Language World Services and sister company, Fluency, Inc. (www.gofluently.com), an Internet technology company that equips interpreting agencies, non-profit human assistance organizations, and hospital-based interpreting service departments with efficient, web-based back-office management platforms that improve quality, efficiency, and documentation for on-site interpreting.

Many things have changed since those early days, but one thing remains at the core of Bill’s motivation and vision, to be of service to those who have traditionally been left without service because they could not speak English.