2025 Board of Directors
The candidates for the Board of Directors are listed below. Click the links under their name to read the candidate’s statement and brief biography.
The terms of current Directors, Nattalia Paterson, and Janis Palma, expire on June 8, 2025; neither Nattalia nor Janis will be seeking reelection.
Per the association’s bylaws, “[w]henever a vacancy occurs on the Board of Directors by death, resignation or otherwise, the vacancy shall be filled without undue delay by the Board of Directors, and the appointee shall hold office for the remainder of the unexpired term.”
Introducing the Candidates
The NAJIT Board of Directors, together with the Nominations Committee, is proud to announce the candidates running to fill the open positions on the Board of Directors. In this year’s election, there are two vacancies and four candidates with a write-in option as well.
Our Board of Directors is responsible for setting policy and supervising the Association’s affairs, as well as laying out the path for NAJIT to follow today and in the future while it represents our interests.
To this end, the Nominations Committee provided a slate of candidates who are active and experienced volunteers, and represent the interests, needs, and profiles of NAJIT’s membership.
The candidates for this year’s election are:
P. Diane Schneider
Vicki Bermudez
Mayra Cardona
BIO: Mayra Cardona has been a Professional Interpreter and Translator since 1988. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the English Department of the University of Puerto Rico in 2023, with her dissertation, An autoethnographic study on linguistic-communicative challenges and myths of court interpreting. She also holds a master’s degree in translation and a juris
doctor from the University of Puerto Rico.
Her bachelor’s degree was a double major in comparative literature and French. During that time, she studied for one summer and one
semester at La Sorbonne where she mastered the French language. She was admitted to the Puerto Rico Bar in 1995, further demonstrating her versatile expertise in both law and language. She achieved the Judiciary Interpreter and Translator Certification from NAJIT in 2004 and was certified by the Federal Courts Administration in 1998. Her interpreting experience spans a wide range of settings, including civil and criminal proceedings, depositions, conferences, simulcast, telephone interpreting, and video conferences.
Her translation of documents has typesetting quality, where translated document mirrors original in format while maintaining accuracy and precision in content. She proficiently handles diverse subject matters, encompassing legal, medical, banking, pharmaceutical, advertising, construction, environmental topics, among many others. As a practicing attorney early in her career, she engaged in the fields of family law, contracts, torts and entertainment law. She is currently the Vice Chair of APTI (Asociación Puertorriqueña de Traductores e Intérpretes).
Jaqueline Nordin
BIO: Jaqueline Neves Nordin is a judiciary interpreter, educator, and researcher with extensive experience in legal and community interpreting. A Brazilian-Swedish citizen, she has worked as a court interpreter in Brazil for nearly a decade, specializing in criminal proceedings. She is currently a PhD student in Translation and Interpreting at a federal university in Brazil, focusing on legal and court interpretation.
Jaqueline has played a key role in developing interpreter training programs in Brazil, designing and leading multiple courses at federal universities, as well as pioneering the first Portuguese-language book on ethics and professional standards for court interpreters. She has also been serving on the Training and Education Committee since 2017 for the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) and has presented at international conferences on interpreting standards and ethics.
With her Conference Interpreting diploma from Glendon-York University in Canada and a specialization in Translation and Interpretation from Gama Filho University in Brazil, Jaqueline is dedicated to enhancing professional standards in legal interpreting. She is also actively involved in interdisciplinary research on the intersection of linguistics, law, and technology, working on projects that develop ontologies to improve the accuracy and accessibility of court interpretation.
Candidate Forum
In preparation for the election, the Election Committee is hosting a candidate forum via Zoom on May 6, 2025 at 6:00 PM EDT. The forum will give you an opportunity to learn more about the candidates’ qualifications, past achievements, and future vision for the association. You can register for the candidate forum here.
You will be able to submit questions to the candidates during the meeting. If you will not be able to attend, submit your questions prior to the forum to elections@najit.org.
A link to the recording of the forum will be posted here afterward.
A link to the recording of the forum will be posted here afterward.
Casting Your Vote
To cast your vote you will need your unique voter key and voter ID sent to you via email when the election is launched. The election will be launched on May 8, 2025.
Voting takes place electronically, and not during the Annual Business Meeting. All Active and Life Members can vote online using the link they will receive via email or requesting a mail-in ballot. If you would like a mail-in ballot, please request one from the Election Committee at office@najit.org. This year, the deadline for voting online is June 6, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET. All votes will be tallied and the results announced during the Annual Business Meeting on June 7, 2025.
This is your opportunity to shape the future of NAJIT. Make sure your voice is heard. Your vote and participation matter!
Elections Committee’s Mandate
The Board approved and appointed the 2025 Election Committee. Our mandate under the NAJIT bylaws is to carry out the election, count the votes, and report on the results to the membership at the Annual Business Meeting. The process followed by the Election Committee protects the confidentiality of each voter’s choices and the integrity of the collection and reporting of votes.
As our bylaws stipulate, the voting methods are determined by the Board of Directors. Members have the choice of voting by mail ballot or online through a third-party election platform called Election Runner.
Note: When you submit an electronic ballot on Election Runner, a ballot receipt will appear on screen. Save or print it as Election Runner does not send an email confirmation.
Secure Web-Based Voting Platform
Election Runner is the platform to fill the voter roster and have emails automatically sent to each voter to access an individualized voter key to use for voting online. Once the votes are cast, and prior to the close of the election, votes are completely confidential, the tally for any of the candidates cannot be monitored, and no active voter can vote more than once without a record being made of each name, email address, and voter key used to cast a duplicate vote.
Election Runner uses a traceable unique key for each voter to cast their vote electronically and allows for the generation of an anonymized report of the raw ballots received and tallied which can only be reviewed at the close of the election.
The anonymized report of raw ballots at the close of the election is an additional safeguard available to the Election Committee by the election platform to fulfill the committee’s fiduciary duty of counting the votes without revealing the identity of the voter during this process.
Mail-in Ballots
Any mail-in ballots received by the cutoff date of May 30, 2025, will be included and documented in the vote tally reported by the Election Committee to the Membership at the Annual Business Meeting. If you would like a mail-in ballot, please request one from the Election Committee at office@najit.org. The address to which to send your mail-in ballot will be provided by the committee by email.
Voting will be open until June 6, 2025, at 11:59 PM EDT.
Respectfully yours,
The Election Committee
Garrett M. Bradford, Chair
Karola M. Rangel
Ernest Niño-Murcia
Amine El Fajri