Her interpreting skills in demand in pandemic

BY MARY LHOWE | Contributing Writer

IT

wasn’t until she took a Bootstrap Bootcamp course for entrepreneurs that Shirley Moore, 40, fully realized the idea for her business, something that had been by her side for most of her life.

What no one could have predicted, however, was how essential the business would become during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how its services would lead to a quadrupling of sales.

Moore’s company, based in Pawtucket, is Be Moore Interpreting LLC. She provides both interpreting (oral conversation) and translation (written word) services for non-English speakers.

Since founding the business in 2016, Moore has amassed a database of about 160 subcontractor interpreters, nearly half of whom regularly help her clients, which include educational institutions, attorneys and medical offices.

When she was 6, Moore moved to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico with her mother. They first lived in Boston for a year, where Moore spent time in a bilingual class with pull-out English tutoring. After they moved to Rhode Island, Moore said she was expected to sink or swim linguistically, having entered an all-English-speaking second grade class.

Moore also served as interpreter and translator for her mother, who never learned to speak English. In Spanish families, Moore said, the oldest girl tends to be put “in charge of everything; she is like the second mom.”

At an early age, she continued, “I had to become an adult; I had to help my mom navigate everything.”

For years, this meant Moore was pulled out of school to interpret for her mother, sometimes traveling with her to doctor’s offices or other places of business. She also translated all correspondence that came into the house.

Moore doesn’t want other kids to have to take on that same responsibility.

“The reason why Be Moore is here is because I want kids to be kids,” she said.

Moore was a diligent student in school, but she temporarily ran off the rails in eighth grade when she and a couple friends set fire to the middle school bathroom and were suspended for four months. The suspension meant Moore started ninth grade behind schedule at Mount Pleasant High School, where she

HELPING OUT: Shirley Moore, left, owner of Be Moore Interpreting LLC in Pawtucket, provides interpreting services for the attendees at the Latino Financial Summit at Farm Fresh in Providence.

PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

‘The reason why Be Moore is here is because I want kids to be kids.’

was placed in the teacher academy despite having no interest in it.

“They put me there because they wanted to find a way to keep me out of trouble by giving me the least amount of freedom,” Moore said.

The academy offered benefits, however, including the chance to take classes at Rhode Island College. Another lucky break came after Moore served her suspension, when she was required to do community service, which started with volunteering as an outreach worker at a local community center.

Moore went on to work for various nonprofits for the next 18 years, including a stint as an interpreter for Catholic Charities USA in Massachusetts.

In her 30s, Moore entered college, earning her bachelor’s degree in human services from Springfield College in Massachusetts and her master’s degree in organizational management and leadership from the college’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies in Boston.

Then came the Bootstrap Bootcamp course by the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Leadership. The first several weeks were aimed at the self and internal resources, while the second part focused on business formation.

When a course leader asked participants what they did that they could monetize right away, the answer came to Moore in a flash: “Interpreting. I’ve been doing that all my life.”

Moore also knew quite a bit about securing clients. She said her first year in business led to sales of $2,000. Sales doubled the next year, reached $30,000 by 2019, and in 2020 exploded fourfold to $125,000.

The need for interpreting blew up because of the pandemic.

Along with not speaking English, many of Moore’s clients are in immigrant communities, living close together, doing front-line service work.

“A lot of social injustice was revealed at that time,” Moore said. “Latinos were disproportionately affected, living with large families, carpooling, and so on. People realized we needed to reach the masses [with information about COVID-19] and we could not do it in English.” The pandemic brought a flood of need for communicating information about COVID-19, from health care and hygiene to personal protection and vaccinations.

“We had to get information out to communities,” Moore said.

Previously, the company’s interpreting services were done entirely face to face, but now virtual communication was the rule. Moore spent weeks turning her business on a fast pivot, researching platforms and services such as Zoom and learning about integrated video services and cybersecurity.

Clients and freelance interpreters had to instantly be educated on all these virtual tools. “We did everything we could to be the best asset our clients had,” Moore said. n