2025 End of Year Plenary

Sch

BIOS

Marcela P. Avalo- Court Interpreter Supervisor and Staff Developer at the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County; AOC CICAP Education Committee member. Tier III Arizona Certified and Credentialed Court Interpreter. Mesa Municipal Court interpreter for five years (2005-2010). Former Adjunct Faculty of Theory of Translation and Legal Translation at Arizona State University. Agnese Haury Institute of Interpretation graduate. Bilingual Speech Pathology Graduate. Undergraduate studies in Speech and Hearing Science, Graduate studies in Applied Linguistics both at Arizona State University.

Lazaro Fernandez is a medically Certified Spanish interpreter by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI), and attended the Cuban Politécnico Jose Ramon Rodriguez. Mr. Fernandez is a Tier 3 Arizona Credentialled Spanish Court Interpreter and currently a Court Interpreter and Translation Services staff member at the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County. He is a  Peer Support Program member, and a Crisis Prevention & Intervention Instructor with Specialized training in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Trauma-Informed care.

Dr. Jeff Gabbitas was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. He lived in Colombia from 1991-1993. After his return, he received his Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Spanish Pedagogy from Brigham Young University. In 2000 he and his family moved to Tucson to further his education earning a Masters’ and PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. In 2009 he was hired at Pima Community College to direct the Translation and Interpretation Program and has been teaching Spanish and Translation and Interpretation for 30 years at a post-secondary level. Outside his academic life, he has served as the President of Arizona Translators and Interpreters Inc. and works as a freelance translator and interpreter. He is the father of six children and loves to sing, play pickleball, and break dance.

Elaina Cano is the Court Administrator for the Surprise City Court, where she leads all aspects of court administration. With more than 20 years of experience in judicial administration, Elaina previously served in leadership roles at one of the largest trial courts in the nation, the Maricopa County Superior Court. There, she was Court Administrator for the Probate and Mental Health Courts, overseeing six locations, 25 employees, and 12 Judicial Officers. She also directed the Superior Court’s Interpreter and Translation Services Division, where she managed 21 staff members and over 150 contractors.

Elaina’s leadership has been recognized nationally. Her departments have earned multiple awards from the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the National Association for Court Management (NACM) for program innovation, mediation, guardianship reform, and large-scale organizational reengineering. In addition, she has contributed to influential national and state resources, including the NACM Adult Guardianship Guide and the Arizona Supreme Court’s Guide to Hiring a Court Interpreter. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration with a concentration in public finance, budgeting, and policy implementation, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management, and an Associate’s Degree in Legal Studies.

Juan Carlos Cordova has been working in the interpreting field for over 30 years. He has been a staff interpreter with the Federal Public Defender's office since March of last year and worked for the United States District Court in Tucson, Arizona.  He has interpreted in thousands of court events from initial appearances to jury trials.  Previously, for over 17 years, he was the lead interpreter and supervisor for the interpreter’s office at the Mesa City Court.  He has also served as faculty for the University of Arizona National Center for Court Interpretation, where he tested and rated interpreters’ performance and provided training on modes of interpretation, ethics, protocol, Spanish regionalisms, and court language. He also has extensive experience interpreting in commercial, medical, and conference settings.  He was also a faculty member for the Arizona Supreme Court, Committee on Judicial Education and Training (COJET), providing training to interpreters and other court staff. As such, the Court Trainer Excellence Award was awarded twice.  Was also an accredited representative before immigration courts.  He is a certified Court Manager by the National Center for State Courts.  He is also certified as a court interpreter by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the State of Minnesota, and the State of Arizona. 

María Fernanda Arámbula is an ISIT graduate. In 2000, she started working as a legal translator at Basham, Ringe y Correa, S.C., a well-known Mexican law firm, under the leadership of Javier F. Becerra. In 2003, she began her law studies at FES Acatlán. By 2005, she had become a freelancer , and since then she has worked as an English and French court expert translator, both at state and federal levels. She taught legal translation in the MA in Translation and Interpreting at Universidad Anáhuac del Norte, in theTranslation and Interpreting Diploma Course at Universidad Intercontinental, and currently in the BA in Translation at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. By 2008, she had completed the Oral Criminal Procedure Diploma Course at FES Acatlán (UNAM) and, in 2016, she concluded the MA in American Law at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas (UNAM). She is currently involved in the syllabus design of the online MA in Legal Translationand Court Interpretation at ENALLT, and she recently concluded the MA in Institutional Translation in French at Universitat d’Alacant. She has been a conference lecturer at Transius, the Latin American Conference of Sworn Translators of the City of Buenos Aires and CITEI 2024 in Peru. She is a founding partner of Proyecto Cenzontle and Linguatique, Consultoría Lingüística. 

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