Laura Werner is a Senior Software Engineer and Project Leader for the Java Internationalization effort at the IBM Center for Java Technology in Cupertino, CA. After receiving Bachelor's degrees in Geological Sciences and Integrated Science (an honors, interdisciplinary program) from Northwestern University, she worked at SPSS, Inc. and UC Berkeley before joining Taligent in 1994. There, she helped port Taligent's C++ frameworks to Windows NT, wrote the OpenClass file system framework, and participated in the initial design of the Java international frameworks. Now at IBM, she is responsible for maintaining and enhancing the JDK collation classes, leading other Java international projects, and working on occasional side projects such as this talk. Laura can be reached at lwerner@us.ibm.com.