I recently had the great pleasure of being on the podcast Gender Reveal and host Tuck Woodstock asked me a really important question: "What is the difference between a trans voice teacher and a speech language pathologist?" Here's what I had to say:

"There's not a big difference, to be honest. Speech language pathologists (SLPs) can work on trans voice alteration, and some of them do, but a lot of them don't. A lot of speech language pathology programs never cover trans voice alteration because it's a funny thing where it's not really a pathology, right? SLPs work to solve vocal dysfunctions and problems. You could have cancer of the throat and they would work alongside a doctor to help you with that. You might have a speech impediment, or difficulty using different vocal related structures that affect your ability to swallow. All of those things fall under the purview of SLPs.

I think all day long about trans voice alteration, so in a lot of ways I am more qualified to teach this particular subject than SLPs. In fact, I started a teacher training program where my intention was to teach singing teachers like me to pivot into this space - because I think we have a serious lack of teachers in this space - but a lot of SLPs come and study with me too because they didn't necessarily get this kind of training in their program. Or they did and they're searching for a little more information and support. I actually work with an SLP program in Montreal at one of the universities here to teach them about this subject.

So, there's a lot of crossover in what we do, but I am not a pathologist. I don't approach the work as if you have a problem to be solved. For me, it's more about "Here's a fun tool you can use to express your gender if you want to!" It's more about being an exploratory process."

If you're an SLP and interested in taking my trans voice teacher training course, you can find more details here!