NCRID, June 26, 2026 – Keynote presented by Shonna Magee, MRC and Dr. Jordan Wright, PhD

Some keynotes fill a conference slot. Others change the conversation in the hallway afterward, for the rest of the weekend, and longer. At NCRID this year, Shonna Magee and Dr. Jordan Wright are giving the second kind.

They’re standing up in front of a room full of interpreters, mentors, board members, and credentialing professionals to ask a question most of us spend our careers avoiding: what kind of profession do we actually want to be, one led by evidence, or one led by whoever feels the most certain?

Not a Hunt for Villains

Here’s what makes this talk different from the usual conference callout: it isn’t looking for someone to blame. It’s looking for patterns, the quiet, human, completely understandable ways good people end up making decisions that don’t hold up to scrutiny. Testing. Governance. Mentorship. Conference policy. Board service. Nothing is off-limits, including the speakers’ own conclusions.

There’s a real difference between disagreement and harm, and our field has quietly lost the ability to tell them apart. This talk goes after that distinction directly, live, in front of the people who’ve lived it.

Interpreting has spent decades building credibility from nothing: certifications, codes of conduct, hard-won recognition. This isn’t a talk about tearing any of that down. It’s a talk about whether we’re still building on it, or just defending it, and what it costs us when we stop asking.

If You’re Going to Be There

This isn’t a preview, and it’s not meant to be one. Some of this only works the way it’s meant to work when you hear it delivered, in order, in the room, with the silence landing where it’s supposed to land. If you’ll be at NCRID this year, clear your Friday morning.