Meet the Founders

Steven Krubiner and Kate Liburdi co-founded Conversifi after meeting as classmates at MIT, but the business was really Steve’s brainchild.

After 15 years in conflict resolution, Steve saw firsthand the power of language to connect people and bridge differences. He often tells the story of the day in 2006 when his boss came into his office in Jerusalem and told him to pack his bags for 6 months in Madrid. They were coordinating an Arab-Israeli peace conference that was being hosted by the King of Spain and sponsored by the Spanish Foreign Ministry. His boss looked at him and said, “You’re my only guy who speaks Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and English. You’re on.”

So Steve embraced the impact of speaking a language early and it had a huge impact. Kate’s inspiration was a lot less glamorous, but maybe more familiar. After studying French for four years, she went to Paris confident that she was pretty much fluent. Then she arrived and had the humbling experience of total incompetence — she couldn’t understand or be understood at all. She’d successfully learned to read French and to write French … but she’d never learned to speak French! It’s a completely different, and equally important, skill.

The bottom line: we took different paths to get here, but we’re both passionate about connecting people in conversation.