Susanne_Evens_SocialCapital
Susanne Evens' work during the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the difference she makes for society. AAA Translation

"It's important," Susanne Evens said about communication in her exclusive interview for Social Capital. As the founder and CEO of AAA Translation, which provides translation and interpreter service to countries globally, she speaks from personal experience when she says, "The world is so much smaller and we need to be able to communicate with each other, no matter where we are in this world; even in the Midwest where I am and the middle of Ukraine, we need to be able to communicate."

Working in this arena is a calling that comes from an Aha! moment she had as a young teenager in her native Germany. She talks about what led her to her fascination with language and culture it's part of, and what happened when, at age 16, she placed an ad in her local newspaper offering German to English translation--and how she felt when she got her first taste of the difference she could make for someone.

And her work during the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the difference she makes for society. In fact, she says, "Working with the community is always in the back of my mind." The recent Covid-19 pandemic underscores the tremendous value of the service she provides--and, in many cases, donates. "Especially when Covid started. I saw huge need for some of our civic organizations and our Hispanic community, and we reached out and said, 'Hey, if you need help explaining how to wash hands in Spanish, you know, I started working with all our healthcare clients from the beginning … And we were approached by some communities to here, asking, 'Can we have translations, but we cannot pay for them.'" Her response was a resounding yes. And reinforcing the very value we honored her for in "Information As An Economic Power," she says, "And that's knowledge sharing." During the first few months of Covid, she says, her team was working almost 24 hours a day. "We were translating nonstop."

Of course, business needs this type of knowledge service to operate effectively and safely in our globally connected world. Think mergers and acquisitions, for instance, and international meetings--where Susanne often plays an integral part, providing translators and interpreters who aid the mutual understanding through the appropriate cultural lens and not just word-to-word equivalents. And accuracy is critical, as she makes very clear in describing an incident she heard of where faulty directions had been provided for assembling a piece of machinery: It exploded and burned the engineer working on it over 80% of his body.

A more fun example she shares comes from a recent soccer match. "I'm in St. Louis, and we have a new MLS soccer team. They're our client. We translate all their materials in multiple languages. The coolest thing just happened on Monday," she says, speaking with us four days later, on Friday, March 8. What was it? As it happened, the inaugural game, held in their brand-new stadium, was played against a German team sponsored by a German company, and many from that German company had come to town for the game. "Monday afternoon at 4 o'clock, we received a phone call from a local hotel: 'Hey, can you provide an interpreter tomorrow for a tour of St. Louis?'"

Sharing examples from community to business to tourism, Susanne's examples explain her attitude that "it's just fun to see how you can make a difference." Watch the video below to hear the whole story.