Johan is the Managing Director of A2MS, a boutique LSP based in France that specialises in rare language pairs. Before jumping to the “solutions side,” he led localisation at a major iGaming company in South Africa, giving him firsthand experience as an LSP client. His bold move—relocating to France without speaking the language—mirrors his bold views on how LSP and clients need to evolve.

About the session

From Buyer to Builder: Reinventing the LSP Model from the Inside Out
What if we’ve had it backwards all along? While the industry often assumes great client-side Localisation Managers come from vendor backgrounds, I’m here to flip that logic. After leading localisation in South Africa’s iGaming sector, I moved to France—without speaking French!—to run A2MS, an LSP built through the client lens. In this bold talk, I’ll share why the best LSPs are those led by ex-buyers, how this perspective rewrites what “solutions” really mean, and how we can break out of the legacy LSP echo chamber.