PANDEMIC pivots Quick, decisive changes created long-term results
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rior to COVID, translation and interpretive services provider INGCO International did nearly all of its work in person. The company flew interpreters all over the world, paid them a per diem, sent equipment and a project manager onsite. “It was a big expensive cost,” says Ingrid Christensen, president and founder. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Just as a contracted Japanese interpreter was getting on a plane to fly to a corporate conference, the client called Christensen to let her know the meeting was canceled. “We called her and said, ‘can you get off the plane now,’” Christensen says. “She said ‘yeah, they haven’t closed the doors.’ I would be lying if I didn’t say that sparked a moment of panic.” INGCO was not alone. Media accounts indicate around a year into COVID that between one-third and nearly 40 percent of small businesses closed, at least temporarily, during the pandemic. And, yet many pivoted in ways that
not only got them through the difficulties of 2020-22, but also created lasting improvements. Adapting quickly For INGCO, after a short time of worry, clients started calling in a panic indicating they still needed to find ways to meet and talk. “That gave me a moment of pause,” Christensen says. “I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, we can do that.’” In truth, she wasn’t sure the company could do that, but the demand and the technology were there. With the help of her teenage son Oscar Sanchez-Christensen, INGCO figured out how to deliver its services digitally. “He was, of course, home and he heard me on Zoom saying, ‘How the heck are we going to figure this out,’” Christensen says. “He came up with a whole solution.” “It was so important for language access and equitable access to language that we just did,” she says. When you’re in the thick of things you just go. You do.”
by Andrew Tellijohn photographs by Tom Dunn
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UPSIZE NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2023
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