I wasn’t always a full-time speech coach.
But the seeds were planted long ago, starting in …
High school
When I participated in a national debate league—an experience that sparked my enthusiasm for both presenting and teaching. In my senior year, my debate partner and I were the top-ranked team at the end of tournament season.
While still in high school, my siblings and I organized & taught camps for novice debaters, as evidenced here by these very professional promo videos. 😛
I returned to my old debate club several times as a guest lecturer, primarily teaching rhetoric & refutation.
At UC Berkeley
I joined the sports radio broadcast team, announcing baseball, basketball and football games on Cal’s flagship station, KALX.
After graduating, I picked up stand-up comedy …
It was fun, in a very stressful sort of way. Great nerves training!
… and started a podcast about language.
Specifically, about fun & interesting words that I think deserve more use in ordinary conversation or writing.
You can listen to the show on this youtube playlist! Many episodes (like this one and this one) feature guests—friends of mine with no prior voiceover experience who I coached on how to read a script in a natural, authentic manner.
Meanwhile, at work ...
During my 4+ years at Fisher Investments as a financial writer, I taught two internal public speaking classes and won a company-wide presentation competition with this speech.
The beard is for extra credibility.
Then in fall 2020, I decided to turn my passion into a career and teach public speaking full-time!
It’s going very well so far if I may say so. 😀
If you ‘d like to hear about what I offer, or just listen to tales of public speaking adventures from days gone by, I’m always down for a phone call!