It was under extraordinary circumstances when J. Nicole Martin Lawton suddenly became CEO of Phoenix Language Services in May 2020. Not only was the world grappling with a global pandemic, but she had just returned from maternity leave with her second child when her father, company founder Bill Martin, passed away. At that moment, Nicole stepped into leadership of the company he had built from the ground up since 1993 - a business born from his experience as an ad hoc Spanish interpreter for his own mother.