Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan is the Founder and CEO of Kaplan Interpreting Services, a leading provider of certified medical and court interpreting services across the United States. With over 17 years of experience as a certified Spanish court interpreter, she is renowned for her precision in high-stakes environments, including courtrooms, hospitals, and corporate negotiations. In 2017, Alexandra founded Kaplan Interpreting Services, which now offers services in over 200 languages, supported by a global network of over 7,000 certified linguists. She holds a master’s degree in healthcare administration from Washington University and is also an alumna of the Latino Business Action Network’s business scaling program at Stanford University.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:39] Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan shares childhood stories of entrepreneurship in Venezuela
- [6:24] Pivoting from medicine to healthcare administration for better work-life balance
- [9:05] Lessons learned from a failed bedding business launched by a friend in China
- [10:58] How Alexandra started an interpreting business
- [16:25] Transitioning from solo interpreting to hiring contractors and growing the business
- [19:25] Managing reputation and scaling operations through a network of freelance interpreters
- [23:20] Balancing interpreter and client relationships while maintaining service quality
- [25:55] Impact of COVID-19 on the business
- [31:39] Alexandra’s perspective on AI and technology’s future in interpreting and translation
In this episode…
Running a business based on freelancers can feel like a juggling act — especially when you’re also raising four kids. How do you manage a team of independent interpreters, serve critical healthcare and legal clients, and still preserve your family time?
Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan answers this challenge by sharing the systems, mindset, and professional networks that allowed her to scale from solo interpreter to founder of Kaplan Interpreting Services. Drawing on her healthcare administration background, Alexandra highlights how she built trust with clients, vetted contractors, and responded with resilience during crises like COVID-19, all while maintaining personal balance. Her strategy of building strong relationships with both clients and interpreters has been key to her success, proving that clear communication and mutual respect are crucial in maintaining a well-functioning business ecosystem.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan, Founder and CEO of Kaplan Interpreting Services, about scaling a nationwide interpreting network. Alexandra discusses managing quality across languages, adapting during the pandemic, and the entrepreneurial programs that shaped her leadership. She also offers insights on building reputation, navigating AI disruption, and balancing work and family.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan on LinkedIn
- Kaplan Interpreting Services
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
- Small Business Development Centers
- Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses
Quotable Moments:
- “I realized I needed to step out of interpreting myself so I could focus on growing the business.”
- “If I’m not there, who’s going to do it? That’s how I saw my role during the pandemic.”
- “When you value someone’s time and expertise, they start seeing you as a reputable partner.”
- “AI may change translation, but interpreting still needs that human touch for nuance and accuracy.”
- “Scaling a business means learning to delegate and trust others with your reputation on the line.”
Action Steps:
- Assess your team’s bandwidth: Determine when you, as a founder, need to step out of doing and focus on managing. This shift is critical for sustainable growth and avoiding burnout.
- Build a trusted freelancer network: Invest time in vetting, training, and nurturing independent contractors to ensure quality and reliability. Strong relationships reduce operational headaches.
- Embrace crisis adaptability: Whether it’s a pandemic or a market shift, stay nimble and willing to step back into frontline work when needed. Resilience can keep your business afloat.
- Leverage entrepreneurial programs: Take advantage of resources like EO, SBDC, or the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program to gain mentorship, education, and peer support. These tools can accelerate your learning curve.
- Explore, but don’t fear new tech: Stay informed about innovations like AI, but recognize where human expertise is still essential. This balance helps you prepare without overreacting.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to build a business that depends on a large team of independent contractors, while you have a large team of kids at home. My guest today is Alexandra Kaplan. She built a business with a lot of contractors and four kids at home. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:20
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:38
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here I am, the host of this show. And you know, if you’ve listened before that every week we talk with smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And we’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, lots of more. If you check out the archives, you’ll be able to check those out. And before we get into this interview, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships.
How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast and content marketing. We are the easy button for any company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the strategy, accountability and full execution. In fact, we invented what people are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot.
And you know, Alex, I know that for you, you know, relationships are incredibly important as they are for me. And that’s what I love about doing this every day is talking to people like you, hearing your stories, sharing your stories with the world. And it gives me a lot of joy to do that. So I’m really excited to hop into it. And if anyone wants to know about how you can do that as well, you can go to our website at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right. Let’s talk about our guests. So our guest is Alexandra Gabriele Kaplan. She’s the Founder and CEO of Kaplan Interpreting Services.
So the certified medical interpreter and court interpreter got extensive experience in the healthcare and legal sectors. She founded Kaplan Interpreting Services in 2017, in California, with the mission of offering professional interpreting and translating services at competitive prices. And she has a varied background. Actually grew up in Venezuela. So we’re going to hear a bit about that and end up in Saint Louis for her master’s degree.
And Alexander, I’m so excited about having you here today, and I want to hear first, I always like to know what people were like as a kid. You grew up in Venezuela. Both your parents were doctors and weren’t like doing lemonade stands or anything like that. But apparently your dad would pay you to organize and shine shoes. How did that come about?
Alexandra Kaplan: 02:39
Hello, John, and thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited. Thank you for this space. So yes, going back to Venezuela, going back to when I was young, my parents, my mom is a dentist and my dad is a doctor. My dad, very organized, still needed more help to be more organized and to get out of the house very early, like at five in the morning.
So he had his shoes and needed to be polished. So I found an opportunity. I said, hey, what? How can I just get money? We were okay doing okay financially, but at the same time, I don’t think that back then we were doing any allowance, but I still needed my money to buy different candies and chocolates and stuff.
We’re going to the movies, so I would just, you know, ask my dad, would it be okay if instead of going to polish your shoes at the mall, if I can do it? So that’s how it started.
John Corcoran: 03:26
Yeah. That’s great. And now Venezuela has we don’t need to get the whole background, the whole story behind the country. But you know it had a, has a, has a long history with we’ll we’ll say strongman leaders. Do you remember a bit about what that was like from an entrepreneurial perspective.
Where were there businesses in Venezuela or was it very difficult for people to start businesses? Do you have a recollection of that when you were growing up there?
Alexandra Kaplan: 03:56
No recollection, because I was honest. Truthfully, I lived in a hospital. Like basically instead of going to the movies, sometimes with my parents, he would be on call. So we would be, you know, remember those beepers? Yeah.
So we’ll beep. Hey, go to the hospital. Somebody giving birth, you need to be there. Or an emergency with a he was the chief of the NICU. So we ended up, you know, being by the hospital.
So I don’t remember so many businesses per se. I just grew up with doctors, nurses, dentists. But Venezuela, Jewish, I’m part of the Jewish community. So the Jewish community, they were building big enterprises and corporations from plastic to, you know, computer science and all of that, like way ahead because they always had the, the, the means to go to the States and just have connections there. So that’s how I grew up.
John Corcoran: 04:52
So I think of South and South America and Latin America as having more Catholic and Christian. What was it like being Jewish growing up in Venezuela? Was it a smaller minority? Were they persecuted?
Alexandra Kaplan: 05:05
They’re always yeah, we’re always a minority. And before when I grew up, there were about 30,000 Jews there. And yes, there. It got to a point that it was pretty bad before. It was beautiful and amazing.
And the community was very close, like knit tight. But then once I was starting to think about going to the States, because I grew up in the United States, so I always knew that I had that passport and it meant something. It meant leaving. It was even before Chavez. At that point, kidnaps started happening. So it was pretty scary. Or people coming to the hospital and sending a whole bomb and stuff. So yeah, it was pretty scary.
John Corcoran: 05:47
So you would actually be born in the United States during your dad’s residency in Texas. So you kind of had this idea that you would move back to the States at some point. As you mentioned, you had a passport. And you also wanted to be a doctor because you’d seen that growing up. But your dad said you were too social to be a doctor.
Alexandra Kaplan: 06:08
Yes. So basically, I love, like, pretending to be a doctor. And then I had, like, all the kids from the neighborhood, and I’d be like, I’m going to check you, but nothing like, you know what you think it would be like.
John Corcoran: 06:19
Okay, let’s go. No, not anything inappropriate. Okay, exactly.
Alexandra Kaplan: 06:24
The stethoscope. And, like, checking the heart and saying cuff. Cuff more. You know, those situations are like, oh, come back. I need to see you again. Just, you know, pretend playing. And I applied to medical school, dental school and veterinarian school. Those were my three options. Not at all. Business.
And my dad is set down with me. He’s like, listen, do you see my life? We’re always, you know, rerouting ourselves to go to the hospital and phone calls all day long. You don’t see me pretty much here. Like, is that the life that you want?
And I was like, well, I mean, I still like being a doctor. Well, but it’s a lot of work and I think that you’re so social and I think that you’re good with math and accounting comes easy to you. Why don’t you just, you know, try being, like, applying for business school? I don’t know, I remember it not being so hard to convince me. I guess I didn’t want to work so hard as a doctor and memorize all those terms.
It was pretty scary to see, you know, honestly, not to see my dad so much at home. Yeah, and my mom likes answering all the phone calls. I would always answer phone calls because before it wasn’t like it used to be. Like it’s right now we always would get endless calls. It doesn’t matter if he was in the office, we would get them.
And it wasn’t. My dad didn’t have a boundary about that. So I was like, you know, this is that also I don’t want my life to be I want my own schedule. I don’t want people to steal it from me. So I guess that was easy for me to say.
John Corcoran: 07:50
So you make it to Saint Louis for your master’s degree. And what did you study?
Alexandra Kaplan: 07:57
Healthcare administration.
John Corcoran: 07:58
Okay. And you were at the same time interested in business. So you were interested in, like, being an administrator in a hospital.
Alexandra Kaplan: 08:06
So there was an international conference in Venezuela. And they came to my house for dinner, and I met this gentleman who was part of the, you know, the he was, I think he was a he wasn’t the CEO. He was a VP. And he invited me. He’s like, why don’t you come if you think you like hospitals and you also like business, why don’t you come and spend some of the summer with us? So I decided to go. It was in Texas. Nothing to do with Washington University. But he graduated from Washington University. So I spent a summer there and I loved it.
Texas Children’s Hospital. I love both like the blend of healthcare and business. And obviously I was just shadowing the CEO, the CFO, going to meetings, just taking notes, you know, like an intern. And I just felt that it was so perfect for me.
John Corcoran: 08:59
So you go and you study that, and you actually at some point started a betting business with a friend. Tell me about that.
Alexandra Kaplan: 09:05
Yes. So I, my friend, lived in China. She’s originally from Puerto Rico, and her husband speaks perfect Chinese. So she was over there. She’s like, would you like to open a business?
I was like, oh, what? What about what? She’s like, oh, just think of something. But we’re in China. Like, basically I can get anything you want. So I was like, you know, I was always thinking about Pottery Barn. I love their bedding. And I would like to do something Jewish. What does that mean? Oh, the Hebrew letters.
And just make it very classy, appealing for, you know, the, you know, for moms who like style and modern. So we started, you know, that business kind of like designing it and thinking about it. And because she was in China. The problem was that our times wouldn’t coincide too much. And also she had a diver and she would go back and forth, but it wasn’t so easy to get her, which is interesting, her husband as an interpreter.
So that was the problem. She’s like, I cannot communicate with everyone because my husband is helping me negotiate with this all, all Chinese. How can I do it? So that was the reason why we were like, hey, I think this is going sideways.
John Corcoran: 10:15
I think it’s.
Alexandra Kaplan: 10:16
Not what we’re thinking, that it’s going to be so easy. It’s going to be we need somebody. Which is funny because at that moment we weren’t thinking about, let’s just hire an interpreter, like, what’s the problem?
John Corcoran: 10:26
Right? At all ironic. Later you started interpreting business, but you experienced that pain point.
Alexandra Kaplan: 10:30
Isn’t that funny? Like, I totally remember just wanting for her husband. No, her husband was dealing with diamonds, so he’s always busy and always on a business trip. We’re like, when are we going to get your husband to do this? So we’re like, forget about it. This is not happening.
John Corcoran: 10:45
Yeah, well, that’s a good lesson because then years later. So you’ve been comfortable around hospitals. So how did you get into you had young kids and you just kind of wanted to make money. How did you get into interpreting?
Alexandra Kaplan: 10:58
So from Texas Children’s Hospital I they brought up to me the idea of applying to Washington University, a lot of the CEOs and from that hospital had graduated from Washington University. So I applied, got accepted, worked there in different hospitals, finished that, and then I got a job at Mount Sinai Hospital, the one that is on 99th Street and Fifth Avenue. Amazing. Also with VPs and CEOs, and it was just fascinating to do big projects like the cancer department and all of that. Anyways, it was amazing.
I loved it, but I met my husband and he’s a lawyer and he’s from California. We didn’t think about immigration law because if we had thought about it, then it’s federal and we could have stayed there, but we were just like, like way now. Like, what do we do? Like an attorney makes more than a hospital administrator. Maybe not.
You know, maybe at the beginning, not maybe. I had a very good future. And I was, you know, I was promoted, but I said I cannot be the breadwinner. I’m sorry. I’m the.
I’m like, it could be, but I’m like, I just want to raise my kids. So we came to California and I was just trying jobs. I was like, why don’t I just teach Spanish? And then I taught Spanish to high school, a private high school. And it was also phenomenal.
And I also tutored. So I opened a tutoring company and it was also going well. But at the same time, what is tutoring? Tutoring is between 4 to 8.