Our Team

Our Lark Languages team offers over 30 years of combined experience empowering businesses, organizations and individuals to improve their intercultural effectiveness through enhanced language and communication skills.

Program designers and instructors perform at a level of mastery, holding one or more degrees in their field and drawing from a wide range of expertise including instructional technology, curriculum design, speech, linguistics, business, intercultural collaboration and more.

Contact us if you would like to join our team!

Julia Weidmann, FOUNDER / Trainer (English & Spanish)

Julia Weidmann is founder and owner of Lark Languages and over the past decade has led the company to become one of the most effective language training providers in the industry. Since 1999, Julia has helped over 2,000 individuals, as well as businesses, organizations and schools improve their intercultural effectiveness through enhanced language and communication skills. Lark Languages is the preferred language training provider of The Center for Disease Control and Prevention and has provided language trainings to employees of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s Corporation, Coca Cola Company and many others.

Alongside her work as a workplace language trainer, Julia is a passionate supporter of early childhood language immersion programs, exercising her belief that investing in multicultural education for children is an investment in a more peaceful future. As cofounder of the first nature-based Spanish immersion school for children in the Atlanta area, Julia is a forerunner in the movement for multilingual education. In addition to supporting local language programs, Julia has a strong interest in promoting early childhood language immersion schools that preserve ancient languages around the world including Q'eq'ch'i Mayan, Irish/Gaelic and Cherokee. In recent years, she has forged relationships with schools in Ireland, Guatemala and the Appalachian region of the United States to support the work of preserving and celebrating these ancient languages.

Prior to creating Lark Languages, Julia was a faculty member of the Language Institute of Georgia Tech University where she conducted English courses for international students and spearheaded the development of an accent enhancement training program for medical professionals. Previously, she worked for LEN Business and Language Institute in San Francisco, California as well as for non-profit organizations providing vocational ESOL trainings for immigrants and refugees. Over the years, she has collaborated on multiple language and education outreach projects including a Spanish and Q’eqchi’ literacy program for women in rural Guatemala, service-learning excursions for U.S. delegates to Mexico and a health literacy initiative for families in Nicaragua.

Julia holds a Masters degree in Adult Education from San Francisco State University where she focused her studies on Foreign Language Acquisition.

Caroline Henry, TRAINER (english)

Caroline Henry, a Chattanooga native, is a trained linguist and experienced teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). After majoring in French and Spanish in college, Caroline earned her MAT-ESOL from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with a concentration in Bilingual Education. Caroline has taught ESOL to adults and children across four continents and has helped establish new ESOL programs in several schools across the US and abroad. In 2020, she joined the Lark Languages team to provide language support to epidemiologists and lab workers of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Caroline loves nothing more than traveling and learning from people who have experienced the world in different ways. In her free time, Caroline loves backpacking and visiting National Parks with her husband and daughters. She loves to bake, take long runs, and volunteer as a reading and writing coach for immigrant children and adolescents. She is a resident of Decatur, Georgia where she has lived since returning to the US in 2013.

mijin kang, TRAINER (english)

Mijin Kang has been teaching ESOL since the age of 16 when she moved from southern California to her parents’ homeland of South Korea. Since then, she has dedicated her career to helping working professionals, university students and children of all ages achieve their English goals. After several years working as a professional English instructor in Korea, Mijin moved to San Francisco where she received her Masters in TESOL and refocused her career on providing education services to the immigrant and refugee community in the area where she spent her childhood.  Combining her passions for creative writing, visual arts and English, Mijin has served students of Mills College, Skyline College, Jefferson High School, L.E.N. Language and Business Institute and Contra Costa College. You can often find Mijin studying at cafes, drawing with her daughter, or playing board games with her son.  In between making PowerPoint presentations for her classes and grading assignments, she is still able to find pockets of time to write creative nonfiction essays and prose, as well as paint in gouache.  

MAria Pearsall, TRAINER (Spanish)

Maria Pearsall is Lark Languages’ expert Spanish trainer. In addition to workplace language training, her career path has covered a wide terrain in the field of education including ESOL, curriculum design, program development, instructional technology and translation/interpretation service. A native of Venezuela, Maria taught foreign languages while acquiring her first degree at the Universidad De Carabobo; it is there that she first fell in love with the profession of language instruction, which she describes as not just her job but also her hobby, her passion and her life’s purpose. Maria believes in the power of languages, communication and relationships to achieve individual and organizational goals. She leads her students with a spirit of positivity, equality and connection so that the language acquisition process is one of empowerment that accelerates learners toward their goals. Maria’s mission is to provide the tools and support necessary for learners to develop communication skills as well as agency in their new language. In addition to her dedication to teaching, Maria is very devoted to her family. True to her nature as someone who is always striving to grow, she is also working toward a Ph.D. in education. Whenever she has spare time, she loves to explore the wilderness of Colorado where she currently resides.

Rosa Sotelo Guzmán, TRAINER (Spanish)

Rosa Sotelo is Lark Languages’ Spanish coach whose role is to provide guided-practice opportunities to learners of all levels.  Originally from Peru, Rosa is a native Spanish speaker who describes herself as a life-long language enthusiast. She is fluent in English as well as Italian and is an emerging speaker of French. 

Rosa brings a unique constellation of traits to her role as Lark Languages’ Spanish coach. With a degree in business administration, a certificate in Health Coaching from Emory University, and a certificate from the renowned Chronic Disease Management Program of Stanford University, Rosa’s career is centered on helping individuals cultivate healthy lifestyles through a holistic approach to wellness. Rosa joined the Lark Languages team in order to expand her repertoire of coaching services which now includes “brain fitness” through foreign language training. Rosa's Spanish coaching services are especially sought after at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she combines her passions for health and language to support epidemiologists in promoting public health in Latin America.

Rosa lives what she teaches; in her free-time she enjoys maintaining an active yoga and meditation practice, facilitating cooking classes with nutritious international cuisine, participating in mindfulness retreats, singing in a church choir and attending Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics seminars. She also enjoys painting, traveling and most especially spending time with her close-knit family. 

Catherine Thille, Trainer (French)

Raised by an Italian father and French mother who introduced Catherine to world travel at an early age, Catherine cultivated a strong passion for language learning throughout her youth. By the time she was an adolescent, she was fluent in three languages (French, German and English) and had pursued advanced study in Spanish, Latin and Greek.

After spending the first chapter of her career in the corporate world, Catherine returned to her first love, languages, and has dedicated her life to teaching French ever since. Drawing from 12 years of teaching experience plus a background in International Business, Catherine brings a special skill set and unique perspective to language training in the workplace. By integrating her knowledge of the global marketplace with a talent for orchestrating language learning, Catherine creates a rich training environment that advances learners towards their personal and professional goals.

Among the notable achievements in Catherine’s language training career is her directorship of the renowned French institute Alliance Francaise. Additionally, she is founder of Le French Studio, a full-immersion language service Catherine created to answer the need for a custom approach to adult language learning and to create a space where learners could blossom in the context of community and friendship. Through Le French Studio, Catherine facilitates language instruction through the exploration of cooking, art, culture, literature, role play and music.

Catherine’s personal mission is to inspire and equip individuals to become passionate ambassadors of the French language and culture by orchestrating effective language learning and teaching communication skills that foster intercultural competence. She is an advocate for multilingual education in the Atlanta area and actively supports schools and organizations that offer multi-cultural opportunities to individuals of all ages.