The Language Policy & Innovation Institute (LPI) is an independent, nonpartisan organization that helps public institutions function better in a multilingual reality. We advance language access as a core part of effective governance and support institutions in building the systems, standards, and capacity needed so people can understand, be understood, and access services with dignity.
We believe language access is not a peripheral service or a narrow compliance task. It is part of public infrastructure. In multilingual societies, the ability of institutions to communicate clearly and effectively shapes whether people can access services, exercise rights, participate in civic life, and trust public systems.
LPI was created to help public institutions move from broad commitments to practical systems. We develop research, policy, standards, training, and implementation frameworks that help governments and other public-serving institutions design language access strategies that are effective, equitable, and sustainable. Our work is grounded in language access, while also engaging the broader conditions that shape communication in practice, including accessibility, multilingual governance, and responsible language technology.
Our approach is applied, interdisciplinary, and problem-solving by design. We are interested not only in what institutions are expected to do, but in how they can do it well — consistently, responsibly, and in ways that work in the real world.
Our work responds to a changing reality. Communities are becoming more linguistically diverse. Migration and mobility continue to reshape public life. Minority, Indigenous, regional, and signed language rights are gaining greater visibility. At the same time, institutions are adopting language and communication technologies faster than the safeguards needed to govern them responsibly. These shifts require stronger language access systems, better public frameworks, and more practical models for multilingual governance.
Although LPI’s origins are in the United States, our work is informed by global developments and designed with international relevance in mind. We aim to support collaboration, research exchange, and practice-sharing across jurisdictions facing shared challenges in language access, public communication, and responsible technology adoption.
Founder and Executive Director
LPI was founded by Andrea Salazar, a language access strategist and public-sector innovator whose work has helped shape statewide language access systems and broader efforts to strengthen equitable public communication in the United States. With more than a decade of experience across government and public-serving sectors, she has worked to translate policy goals into practical structures, guide institutional modernization, and advance approaches that make public systems more responsive in multilingual settings.
Her experience continues to inform LPI’s commitment to language access as public infrastructure — grounded in policy, focused on implementation, and designed to help institutions communicate more effectively, responsibly, and sustainably.