Editor’s Note: This is the first of several stories we hope to share over the next several editions of BorderLore, highlighting the companies and local businesses which, through their financial and in-kind support, make TMY possible and allow us to offer the festival free to the public.
In Pima County, over 28% of the population speaks a language other than English at home and many of them also speak English “very well.” This has made many Tucsonans ideal candidates for a career in interpreting at CyraCom. CyraCom provides Over-the-Phone and Video Interpretation in over 200 languages for healthcare providers, insurance agencies, and financial services companies to facilitate communication with their non-English-speaking patients and customers in the US. The Company will also be a major sponsor of Tucson Meet Yourself this year.
“CyraCom’s language services provide a bridge for cultural and communication gaps,” said Jeremy Woan, Chairman and CEO of CyraCom. “Just like Tucson Meet Yourself, we believe in supporting and highlighting cultural diversity, and we are honored to sponsor this year’s event.”
CyraCom’s paid training course has provided Tucson residents that are proficient in another language an opportunity to become interpreters. Founded and headquartered in Tucson, today CyraCom employs over 400 interpreters in Tucson and has a staff over 1,000 employees nationwide. Keeping the business in Tucson has been great for their expansion, and the company has attracted many of the bilingual speakers in Tucson to come work for the company.
“I wanted to use both of my languages, and I found out that Tucson had these kinds of jobs,” explained Lilia Garcia, a Spanish Interpreter born in Sonora, Mexico, who lived on the US in Naval bases when she was a child. “What I love about the Tucson community is the diversity of people. You could run into someone from an Arabic country, or students on exchange, or from anywhere else in the world.”
Eddie Hanna, who is from an Arabic country, met his wife by interpreting for her when she was visiting Syria, and the two of them moved to her hometown of Tucson. He has been working for CyraCom for four years, and is impressed by the diversity of Tucson and of his workplace in Tucson. “One of the most outstanding features is CyraCom’s respect for diversity. The company pays attention to diversity and respects interpreters of different backgrounds,” Hanna says.
Daria Harrison, a Polish interpreter who grew up in Poland, Sweden, England, and now lives in Tucson with her American husband, agrees. “I work with wonderful people; every day you get to work with people around the world, and everyone is so interesting and has great stories. I’ve made friends that I’ll have for the rest of my life,” she says.
Min Zhou, who moved to Tucson four years ago with her American husband and started working at CyraCom one month after emigrating here from China, loves the Tucson community and wants to do everything she can for it. She explains, “If I get a call from a client in Tucson, I feel closer to the Tucson community; because any of the people I interpret for could be someone I met in a grocery store or some other place. When I take calls from Tucson, I feel like I’m helping someone here.”
“While for many years Tucson Meet Yourself depended solely on volunteers and in-kind help from the City of Tucson to produce the festival, in today’s economic reality we simply couldn’t do a festival without the support of local businesses and significant partners,” said TMY Program Director Dr. Maribel Alvarez. “It is especially satisfying when the companies that step up are also ones that share our core values. Like TMY, Cyracom is in the ‘business’ of helping bridge gaps of human understanding – we do it through arts, foods, music, customs, and story; Cyracom does it through the most fundamental of all elements of culture, language.”
The Arizona Daily Star ranked CyraCom as the second fastest-growing job creator in Southern Arizona in 2011 and the sixth in 2012. CyraCom International, Inc. is the sixth largest language services provider in North America and is the largest provider of Over-the-Phone Interpretation (OPI) operating solely in the US. In 2013, the American Business Awards awarded CyraCom with a Stevie Award for Company of the Year in Business Services.