When they start hearing their voice shift to something different for the first time, whether they're achieving a brighter or a darker sound that they've been aiming for, the reaction is typically very visceral.
So it's either like a hell no or a hell yes.And that moment of recognition or sometimes rejection of that sound is deeply emotional because it is more than just your voice.
It's about finally hearing yourself in a way that aligns with how you've always wanted to be perceived or discovering part of yourself that was buried.
Welcome to The Whole Damn Pie.I'm Amalia Martino.My guest today is Nicole Gress.
Nicole is the founder of Undead Voice, an online voice transition training program where she works with trans and non-binary folks to change their physical voice, literally, to align identity.
I started The Whole Damn Pie because I felt like I was really in a space where it was a really binary moment, right?Like you had to be either or or something.
And I wanted a place to talk to people about what their whole damn pie is and how they design their lives if that's actually a thing.You know, some of us have that privilege, some of us don't.
And like what makes up a full life where you don't have to really make tradeoffs and you can be really intentional. So for me, that's what the whole damn pie means.I want to have a full life of relationships and success.
And I also want to enjoy monetary success, but also still have impact in community and not have to choose one over the other.So I'll start by asking, what does the whole damn pie mean to you?
the two words that come to mind are like balance, of course, to have that balance, I kind of need intention.So designing my life similarly in a way that serves both my personal and my professional goals.
And early on, as I'm sure we'll dive into, my company also started right around the beginning of COVID.And so I was pulling those like 17 hour days for months on end.And as I grew as a founder, and also as the
company grew, I kind of learned that having it all doesn't mean constantly grinding.Yeah, agreed.Big lesson.Yeah.
So I had to become a lot more deliberate about my life and how I spent my day to day and prioritizing my physical and my mental health alongside the health of my business growth. which manifested in a multitude of different ways.
I started trying to reimagine what a traditional work schedule could look like and packed in like the heavy work into specific days, like meeting with external networking and conversations.
So yeah, being able to find the balance and I think the number one North Star for me is never feeling the Sunday scaries. Ooh, what's a Sunday scary?
It's like that feeling of dread when you're about to go to work the next day or when you have something coming up.And if I feel the Sunday scaries, then I'm too busy or I'm too stressed.
And I need to kind of reevaluate how I'm fitting things into my day or into my weeks.And it doesn't just happen on Sundays.It can happen on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.
I like that it has a name and I like that it doesn't just have to be on Sundays because I'm thinking I feel the scariest maybe a couple times a week sometimes.Yes.So you founded Undead Voice.
I want to know all about your company and I also want to know where did you get the name?
So the name was crowdsourced.In the trans community, there's pretty common terminology and language about the concept of a dead name, which is the name somebody's given at birth that maybe doesn't align with their identity.
Similarly, undead voice is a play on the same concept of you have a voice that's been societally shaped as you grow up.
And oftentimes for people in the trans community, that means that some of the societal influences that have shaped your voice maybe don't actually affirm your identity.
So the idea of an undead voice is that you get to kill your old voice and resurrect one that actually is empowering and affirming for you.
You know, you talk about it, society kind of shaping your voice.And I relate to this when I rewind back to a younger version of myself watching Oprah.
And there was this whole episode about women's voices and how, I mean, I think my voice is just naturally in a lower register, but there was this whole episode of,
how women had to like not talk so high or out of their nasal passage or, you know, to bring it down to be taken seriously in the workplace.I mean, that totally sticks with me.
Sometimes when I hear women, no matter how powerful they are, how successful they are, talk, and if it sounds baby voice-ish, ooh, it's hard for me to hear.But
I don't know if that's really just me, my perception of where like a voice register lands with my brain, or if it's like this old Oprah episode that just creeps in about telling me how a successful professional woman should sound.
I think it's a little of both.I think naturally we all have certain voices and registers and sounds that we're drawn to.And that is a very uniquely personal thing.
So one of the exercises we do in my program, which for context real quick, Undead Voice is an online voice transition training program.
So we work with trans and gender diverse people to change their physical voice, literally, to align with their identity. One of the exercises we do in that program is to have people identify what we call vocal influencers.
These aren't voices that they want to imitate or try to replicate in their own voice, but instead they are people or voices that they find just something feels good about them when they hear them.
And then out of maybe five to 10 vocal influencers, we look at any commonalities. And so we break down that voice into its own individual recipe and we look for anything that is a through line.
And that gives us some insight into maybe a direction they would like to explore with their own voice.And so I think intrinsically every individual has their own preferences and things that just feel great.
And that can be shaped, like you're mentioning, by just your own brain.But there's also pieces of the environmental and cultural aspects and environments of which you grow up around that influence the types of voices that you're attracted to.
Now, the other half is there are a lot of societal, outdated, cishet, binary, a lot of terms here, stereotypes of what is and isn't professional or acceptable.
And a lot of our work is breaking down those preconceived biases that we hold internally and allowing people to just be empowered to find a voice that really affirms their identity and isn't
pigeonholing them into any societally constructed expectations of what a voice quote-unquote should sound like.
I'm thinking of people who this isn't even like a blip on their radar in their day-to-day lives but it's such a transformative and important thing for a whole population of people.Oh yeah.
I would love to hear just a couple success stories, stories that have stayed with you that you would like to share.
Two of the stories that stand out most to me kind of exist at opposite ends of the age spectrum.
I always joke that we have people in our program from age 9 to 90-something, because the 90-something year old is a Scottish trans woman who has a very strong brogue, so often it's more difficult for me to understand. understand what she's saying.
But you know, seeing somebody in their 90s transition in the very late stage of their life, and then feel like they have finally been able to unlock this like identity inside of them.
Her experience specifically, she would talk about a lot how from a young age, she always knew that something was wrong, but she didn't know what it was. there wasn't language, there wasn't representation, she just felt off.
And going through your entire life feeling like that, this is what leads to the voice dysphoria, the gender dysphoria, all of these experiences have very strong mental health impacts.And the suicidality rate in our community is astronomical.
And hearing somebody at 90 years old transition and just find a whole new
awakening within themselves in the later stage, I don't want to say last year's, she's still with us obviously, but you know that late in life there's some sadness there because she didn't get to experience life as the woman she is.Yeah.
In her teenage years or her 20s or 30s or 40s, etc.But there's also some beauty in that she got to.Absolutely. Like what freedom that must be.Yeah, the other end of the spectrum.
One of the first people that reached out to me was a young woman who was 16 years old.And her mom actually reached out because it had been two years since she'd heard her daughter's voice.
because she had been selectively mute, meaning as soon as her voice started changing from puberty, she was assigned male at birth.
So she was undergoing a testosterone-based puberty, and that was shifting her voice into something darker and deeper, and it didn't feel affirming.She just went silent.
And so she was relying on writing things down or texting, not just with her family, but with her friends and in school.Her teachers hadn't heard her voice in two years either.
And she was at the point where she was starting to think about college and feeling really discouraged because it's hard to exist as a social human when you can't use your voice.Right.If that's something you have access to.
And at that point, the only person she was speaking to out loud was her therapist.
Her therapist recommended to her mother that they reach out to a speech-language pathologist, and that was the first time her mom had ever even thought about that as an option.
This individual is an extreme example, but often one of the early signs in teens that they're experiencing voice dysphoria is getting quiet. which is something like, duh, we think of teens getting quiet.They don't want to talk.
But I think whenever you have a full picture of the impacts that voice dysphoria can have, especially as you're young and impressionable and your identity is kind of shaping and forming, that quietness, you can look at it through a different lens.
I worked with her for about six months.And then I can say now this was about three years ago.She's enrolled at UCLA talking full time and using her voice confidently.And it really didn't take that much of a shift for her.
Young voices still have a lot of plasticity and range available to them.So it wasn't a hard road.It just required her finding the right outlet to practice.
That's amazing.So what led you to even create this organization?
I've been working in trans voice for about 10 years now.And so I started off working in San Francisco at a hospital in a private practice.I'm a licensed speech language pathologist.
And through my work in those two settings in a city where there's a large trans population and a strong need for voice care, it didn't take very long until you could start to notice some specific patterns emerging.
And so my patients in both the hospital and the private practice weren't actually meeting their goals.And that was because the tools that we were taught as speech pathologists were not working very well.
So I saw that also reflected in the experiences, not just of my patients, but trans people online who, after being failed by more traditional medical practices, ended up turning to their peers for advice.
And so they found peer support to be more affirming, effective, or even accessible for voice transition than what they were receiving in traditional health care.
And so as a speech pathologist, I took a long, hard look at what I was taught, the work I was doing, and whether it was actually effective.
And I had to make a decision whether I wanted to continue to try to shape voices in a more traditional medical setting or create something brand new.So I think internally, I just love entrepreneurship.
I didn't know that I did until I did it, which is, I have to say, the most entrepreneurial thing to say, right? I have no idea what I'm doing, but I kind of like this.Yes.
Absolutely.I know that I didn't like somebody else telling me when to work or what to do.Same.Yes.And so I would say a healthy dose of motivation at the beginning was wanting to be able to have control over my own life.
And then the other half was not having to wait 10 to 20 years for all of the techniques in my field to kind of catch up with the need that was apparent immediately.
Because the tools that we use as speech pathologists or are taught to use weren't designed for voice transition, they were actually designed for voice disorders.
So then you left the medical field and struck it on your own to find your own company.What is the difference between the service that you provide and the service that you were previously providing under the medical system?
There are a lot of differences.I would say if we kind of start at the beginning, the main difference is the curriculum.So what it is that I'm teaching.
So whenever I recognized that the techniques that I was taught weren't working well for the community, I had to leave the medical field, quit both of my jobs, and I did my own deep dive into every different singing and voice pedagogy I could get my hands on.
Everything that community members were actually doing in different online spaces that was working well for them. and had to create a whole new curriculum for trans voice.
Then I grabbed a hundred trans people and threw them through a beta version of my curriculum over the course of a year.
And we would meet every week for coaching and for me to get feedback on whether what they were learning was working well or what kind of timing we should do.And that actually became the foundation of what would become Undead Voice Lab.
What are some of the misconceptions that people have about voice transition?
I think the misconceptions are that it's very similar to learning how to sing or to speak another language.I mean, on the surface, technically, yes, you're learning to use your vocal instrument in a new way.That's really exciting.
But I think a lot of those mindsets overlook this huge, huge, huge part of the work, which is voice dysphoria.Ooh, what's voice dysphoria?
And a quick definition of voice dysphoria is the emotional or psychological turmoil that comes from having a voice that doesn't align with your identity.
And the interplay of that with voice transition, you have to kind of think back to, you know, throughout a trans person's entire life, they already face disproportionate harm and discrimination, not only in traditional medical settings, but just in the world.
And that means that they're being taught that their voice should sound a certain way that maybe doesn't align with their identity.
So a big part of voice transition training is that you have to equally make space for and address the dysphoria and discomfort that comes up that can keep people from being successful in the more technical training.
And so it's not just teach somebody how to shift their resonance or their pitch or all of these fun
techniques and exercises that we can do, but it's also empowering people with confidence and support and community and peers that are going through a similar process so that they don't feel alone and so that they can gain some confidence that not only will they find a voice that they love, but they will be able to use it without nervousness or anxiety in the world in which they exist.
That's not a small undertaking.You're really like holding a whole person.I mean, you're talking about a voice, but it's a whole person experience.
Absolutely. Yeah, it is.And you know, that took a while to learn.It's been five years for us.
And though that was in my purview at the beginning, it kind of started with, I was working with one individual, just in a more traditional, like one-on-one setting, as opposed to our program now, which is more community-based.
And that one-on-one setting, that individual said to me, oh, I've never met another trans person. Really?I was like, oh, I know hundreds.I should introduce you to one another.
Now we've, at this point, helped over 6,000 people from 18 countries across all different gender identities and ages find their voice.And in the U.S.alone, over half of trans people live in the South.
They're not in like a metropolitan area where there's a lot of support or community or allyship. Right.And so it's not uncommon, especially if somebody is transitioning later in life.
It's not uncommon to not have community, have a close relationship with somebody who also shares their similar identity experience.
This is so impressive.I'm guessing when you decided to become a speech pathologist and went down that road that you didn't imagine landing here and providing such pathways and impact for a whole community of people.
No, my interest was actually, and my specialty going through school was in something called acquired neurogenic disorders.
So I was trained in how to help traumatic brain injury and stroke victims learn how to talk again, which seems really far removed from the work that I do now, but actually ended up being the framework for my curriculum.
So in order to help adult brains learn to speak again, you have to do two things.One, be able to take really complex concepts and make them understandable and approachable.
And two, have really intimate knowledge of how an adult brain learns new habits for speech.
And so through that framework of taking really complex things like how to transition your voice and making it understandable to every human, and also being able to create a framework for our curriculum, which enables people to actually habitually, permanently shift the way in which they speak without thought, is how the Undead Voice Lab curriculum is developed.
proctored, if you will.For someone who has never taken a speech class, and I don't want you to give away the secret sauce, but can you share like one, like what actually happens or like one exercise?
Like if I, you know, wanted to do something about my voice, what are these magical exercises that you do?
It's a question I get asked often, like, okay, so how do you actually do that?Like, how do you actually change a voice?And our curriculum focuses on five main pillars of voice.
So some of these might sound familiar and some of them might sound like gibberish, but they are vocal weight, vocal tilt, resonance, pitch, and dynamics. So vocal weight is controlling the amount of bass in your voice.
Okay, so you can teach somebody to add more bass in their voice like this.Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.So here I'm speaking with a little bit more bass to my voice.Or you can teach them to take it out.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.So I've removed the bass for my voice.The second pillar is vocal tilt.And vocal tilt is all about expressing emotion.
So on the extremes, you can add tilt in, and that will sound more sweet or empathetic.Like, oh no, did you hurt yourself?Oh, you're a good boy, you're a good boy.This is the voice that we usually talk to children or kids in.
The other extreme is more assertive or direct, like, get off the chair and sit down now.Maybe you're talking to your kids again, or your dog again, bad dog, sit, no.Those are the extremes, and there's a lot of gradation in between.
But essentially, it's teaching people how to maintain access to all of the emotions in their voice, regardless of where in their range they move.
Because naturally when people maybe brighten their voice or move to something higher and lighter, it's really easy to keep that up whenever they're feeling happier or those brighter emotions.
But as soon as they get frustrated or angry or sad, the voice will fall down.And so tilt helps them kind of maintain access to both. and vice versa.
If somebody darkens their voice or lowers it, and then maybe they're in a customer service experience where they want to be friendly, they're going to automatically shoot up into that higher range that they don't like.
And so again, Tilt allows them to maintain that friendliness without getting out of the range they enjoy.The third one, resonance, is the most important part of voice transition training.
It is the number one way in which society codes gender into the voice. meaning when you hear someone talk, the number one thing unconsciously that your brain is tuning into is their resonance.
And resonance is described on a spectrum from bright to dark.So I can change the resonance of my voice darker. and it'll sound more like this.
Eee, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.So I've changed nothing else about my voice.The pitch, everything else is the same.I've just darkened the resonance.And I've done that by making the tube through which I'm speaking bigger.
I can make it even bigger.Eee, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.But then I start to sound more unnatural.
And then we can go the other direction as well.So you can make resonance brighter by going higher.E, Monday, Tuesday.So here I've made the tube smaller and then I can go even brighter.E, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Again, same pitch I was using before.All I've done is made the tube smaller.And so that's the resonance shift.And if you want an exercise, the easiest thing I can tell you to do now is to yawn. Yawn out loud.Let it get real deep.
Put your hand on your chest.Let it get real deep.Good.Now keep it down there at the bottom.We're going to yawn again.Keep it down there at the bottom.
And I want you to say, oh, dopey dog.I'm a dopey dog.Oh, dopey dog.I'm a dopey dog.
Yeah, you got a little tight there.So go again.Nice yawn. Dopey dog.Can you feel the difference?Yeah.I'm showing you really easy characters to get into.
Obviously, we don't use these to shape people's speaking voices, but for a cisgender ally, it's a wonderful way to start feeling the overwhelming amount of work and mental bandwidth it takes.
So if I move you the other direction, give me, we're going to call it an evil witch. So do, I'll get you, my pretty.I'll get you, my pretty.Yes, perfect.So that's a brighter voice.
There's a lot of other stuff happening too, but those are some characters that are on the extremes of resonance.Wow, that's fascinating. I'll quickly go through the other two.Pitch is pretty straightforward.
It's what we are most used to changing and hearing in voices because it's what people change when they sing.Okay.So pitch is just, you know, it's more internal.You stretch or you compress these little vocal folds in your throat.
And the longer you stretch them, the higher your pitch goes, the more you compress them, the lower it goes.So it's just about moving up and down and kind of like a do-re-mi. order, right?Yeah.
And so pitch is really commonly an area that people will start focusing.But unfortunately, it's also the area where most people introduce tension into their voice.Because the pitch is controlled by a small, small, tiny little set of muscles.
And if you all of a sudden just start speaking in a drastically higher or a lower pitch than your body and your muscles are ready for, it's going to be similar to going to a gym and trying to bench press 200 pounds for the first time in years.
It's going to be it's going to be hard.You might be able to do it once or twice.It's going to hurt and you're going to be sore the next day.Got it.
And so pitch is important, but it's not really as important as resonance and it needs to be changed just a little at a time.Wow.The fifth pillar is called dynamics, and it's the one you're most used to.
So there's six different dynamic settings, but the one that you're probably most familiar with is intonation.Okay.So intonation is how you emphasize certain words to change the meeting.
For example, I could say, I love you versus I love you versus I love you.
Okay.Yes, this is the acting class part of the voice.Okay.Exactly.
Dynamics is where you get to take all of the control that you've gained over your voice in those first four pillars and really infuse your personality.Make you sound unique and different than anybody else in the world.
That is so great.I'm learning things.I love this.
The process of kind of creating the curriculum and being able to define those five pillars was Awesome and as exciting as I can tell you feel now, it's like all this new and juicy things.
But for me, it was also like a very deeply personal experience that I did not expect at all.
As I started to dive into all of those different types of like singing and voice training and experience my own voice in ways I hadn't before, I started hearing myself differently.
And it really made me realize that voice isn't just a technical tool, like we've kind of gone over here. For me, at least, it was a really powerful means of exploring and expressing identity.
Voice is extremely tied to our sense of self, so much so that when people hear their voice sound differently, whether it's through voice training or on their own answering machine, when they start hearing their voice shift to something different for the first time, whether they're achieving a brighter or a darker sound that they've been aiming for, the reaction is typically very visceral.
So it's either like a hell no or a hell yes. And that moment of recognition or sometimes rejection of that sound is deeply emotional because it is more than just your voice.
It's about finally hearing yourself in a way that aligns with how you've always wanted to be perceived or discovering part of yourself that was buried.
And through that intense process of working with my voice and other people's voices, I was finally able to answer a question that had always been kind of lingering in the background for me in my life, which was my own gender identity.
And so I came out as gender fluid and voice training allowed me to really fully understand how fluid and multifaceted my own identity was and how much my voice could be a tool of my gender exploration.
Congratulations, I mean that you just have made such a difference I'm sure in so many people's lives and it's touched your own life.
It's just an example of like as much as we think that we can design our experience in life and we're designed where we're going, you know, that one path will take you so far, right?
I was listening to a podcast the other day and the host was talking about how it's so wild, how all of our experiences and those formative years early in life happen in this small, small, small window of time, up until like, I don't know, your young 20s.
And then you spend the rest of your life trying to undo, analyze and cope with. everything that got set during that amount of time and voice is no different.
Your voice is so set starting at like birth all the way up through your 20s and then trying to undo all of that and change it is just this huge overwhelming experience.
But I like to use that comparison because it allows cisgender allies who maybe don't have voice dysphoria or don't have the experience of a trans person to really connect.
With what it's like to look back at maybe some trauma you endured as a child and then how is that impacting your life as an adult?How can you undo it and heal from it?
Yeah.And you know, it's one thing.Like you said, it's your voice, but it's not just your voice.No.It's so much more. So I'm wondering about you as a business owner, what are the biggest challenges maybe you face as a founder in this space?Sure.
So as we've discovered today, voice transition is already a really niche area and it's often overlooked as a part of the overarching umbrella of gender affirming care.
And so I would say pretty early on I realized it wasn't just about creating a program that worked for voice training.
There's also this gap in understanding, even among trans-specific organizations and providers, about just how crucial a role voice plays in the overall transition process.
So the way I responded to that, I decided to create an entirely separate branch of Undead Voice that is focused specifically on education.So we have done provider education training with major healthcare institutions.
Some here in Seattle are like University of Washington, Seattle Children's, Providence Swedish, and all of their gender affirming care teams. We also partnered with organizations like PFLAG to do parent and caregiver allyship training.
And then we developed a whole employee allyship workshop series.And so we work with organizations, both large and small, like Out and Equal or Capital One.
And all of that work is aimed at removing barriers for trans people to actually access care and then use their voices in safe and supportive environments.
So the biggest barrier that we found is that even if somebody found a voice that they loved and was affirming, they often weren't using it.
They didn't feel the confidence or the comfort in talking with people who had heard their voice before it transitioned without feeling like they might be harassed or discriminated.
And so we've taken on some of the responsibility of not just helping them shift their voice, but changing the environments that they exist in so they can feel empowered to use that voice.
That's amazing.I mean, it seems like a natural growth progression, but also like, you know, I don't think many founders would take that on because it's in the same realm of the work that you're doing, but it's such a larger lift.Yeah.
And it's a different business model completely.
Personally, it's also like there's imposter syndrome you have to overcome when you're entering like a fortune 500 company and saying there's something wrong with your I mean, this is dramatic.
I'm not saying there's something wrong with your organization's environment.
But what I'm more pointing out is there is a lot of opportunity here to make your employees feel more safe and seen and it's going to have a huge impact not only on the retention, recruitment, retainment of your trans and gender diverse talent, but also
on your organization as a whole, because there's more and more gender diversity in the youth of today.
And so if you want to be a forward thinking organization or enterprise or company, you have to kind of recognize that the majority of Americans get their health and their wellness benefits covered by their employer.
And more and more trans employees aren't just looking at their employer for what is my salary or what's my work life balance?They're also looking at what kind of gender affirming care do you cover?Right.
And if you're not including voice as part of gender affirming care, you are largely missing the mark.
Yeah. If you don't have health and wellness, no matter who you are, it's going to be really, really hard to achieve that whole damn pie.
So for this community, it makes so much sense that including voice should be part of the health care offerings and the care of the whole self. I've learned so much today, but I don't want to let you go without better understanding.
For those of us who want to support your work or get involved or get involved in advocacy for trans or non-binary communities, what is the best way for myself, for others to take action?
Yeah, there's a lot of ways that you, yourself, listeners, whoever's out there, can support our work specifically at Undead Voice.One of the biggest ways I always say is just helping to spread the word.
So whether you know someone who could benefit from trans voice training or you're part of a workplace or a school or a community that could use more of that education around how to be a true ally and support trans people, we offer not just voice training, but also those allyship trainings for parents, coworkers, healthcare providers,
Amplifying our work and sharing those resources really makes a huge difference in creating those more inclusive environments where our community can feel supported in every aspect of our lives.
We've also recently introduced the Permanent Tuition Assistance Program.Oh, awesome.So if someone you know could benefit, you can learn more and apply at undeadvoice.com slash scholarship.
And for those who feel maybe compelled to support our work financially, you can donate to that program at undeadvoice.com slash support.
Thank you.Congratulations on all your success.Thank you.
I really, really enjoy talking to Nicole.I mean, not only are they a brilliant business person, but they're doing such important work.
And for a community that honestly, I would never thought that this voice care was something that was so critical to their identity and their physical, mental and emotional health.
One of the best things about learning about the whole damn pie and what it means to other people is I get to learn so much about the world.
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