Hello! I’m Zoe Bishop-Beal, and I work from French into English, specialising in finance, corporate communications and life sciences, with a particular professional passion for biotechnology. I live in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire (the North London teenager in me is still horrified), and after 20 years of life in the north, I’m still very much the offcumden: it’s cold up here and my vowels are all wrong!

I set up my business in 2012 after many years in technology and project management roles with a multinational B2B publisher and via an MA in Applied Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. I’m still a relative newcomer to the profession, therefore, and this will be my first ITI Conference. I love what I do these days, and the fact that the only agenda in the office is my own. From time to time, though, I miss the general bustle of office life, so I’m definitely looking forward to catching up with colleagues at #ITIConf15 and putting faces to the names of some of my online acquaintances .

The opportunity to spend two days reflecting on and discussing our profession feels like a real indulgence. I’ll be attending Andrew Morris’ masterclass on Thursday, and Friday morning will see me heading for John Evans’ session on inspiring the next generation of translators and interpreters. I’ve given a couple of careers presentations at a local secondary school and will be returning to do so again this year, so I’m looking for ideas that will really help to fire young people’s enthusiasm for working with languages. After that, there’ll be further difficult decisions about how to spend the rest of the day. If only I could be in two or three places at once …

I look forward to meeting you in Newcastle. In the meantime, you can (occasionally) find me on Twitter @zoebbee.