SYNOPSIS
When someone asks you to imagine the voice of an omniscient narrator—do you hear the voice as male or female? The voiceover industry has traditionally been male-dominated but there are a few trends that suggest the landscape for women is changing. With Sheryl Sander’s “Lean In”, the global He-She movement, there is a new consciousness for what woman do and what they can do in a variety of disciplines. How does this apply to women in voiceover? Come join us for an inspiring panel discussion about the barriers women voiceover performers have broken, mentorship within the community and the promotion and preservation of the female voice in the entertainment industry.
PANELIST BIOS
Jessica Cannon
Jessica Cannon is a New York City based actress and voiceover performer whose voice can be heard in national television commercials and radio spots for major brands such as Twizzlers, ALL, Citibank, AT&T, Hershey’s Kisses, Coffee Mate, Nexxus, Smirnoff Ice, Nesquik, and many others. Her work also includes voicing promos, cartoons and video games. She is an avid reader, a classically trained musician and a bit of a nerd. If you’re young enough, you may remember her from your potty training days as the host of Potty Power, the number two best-selling potty-training DVD on Amazon (no pun intended, Elmo beat us to the number one spot).
Lisa Fischoff
Lisa Fischoff began her commercial casting career at Liz Lewis Casting Partners in the late 90s. After seven years as a casting director at LLCP, she left in 2005 with another alum of LLCP, Stacy Seidel Tea, to co-found Broadcasters. Nine years later, Broadcasters has grown into one of the busiest commercial casting offices in NYC. They are housed out of Audio Engine, LLC and are their sole casting division.
In addition, Lisa heads the hosting department at Broadcasters. She has cast for such clients as People.com, QVC, Sports Illustrated.com, Disney, Giorgio Armani, and Newtons.
Lisa has tremendous knowledge with regard to commercial talent here in NYC. She casts a huge variety of projects for on-camera and voiceover commercials. She also casts for hosting, print and industrial projects.
Lisa Fischoff is asked to speak to and meet with new talent by several commercial acting schools in the city, in the areas of both on-camera and voiceover instruction/advice. She runs an intensive on voiceover instruction and works with talent looking to find out more about the voiceover process.
Nancy Giles
Nancy Giles has been an on-air contributor to the Peabody Award winning CBS News Sunday Morning since 2002. Her work on Sunday has been honored with an Emmy Award and two “Gracies" from the Alliance for Women in Media. She’s also voiced her opinions on shows like Melissa Harris Perry, Hardball with Chris Matthews, All In With Chris Hayes, and Up with Steve Kornacki. She won a Theatre World Award for her Off-Broadway debut in "Mayor;" was in the ensemble cast of China Beach and the sitcom Delta (both on ABC-TV) and was the announcer and sometimes co-host of Fox After Breakfast. On film: Big, Working Girl, New York Stories, True Crime, Joshua, Loverboy, and Woody Allen's summer 2014 project. On radio: The Jay Thomas Morning Show (Jay's sidekick) and the award-winning Giles & Moriarty (with CBS News' Erin Moriarty). Nancy's also lent her voice to hundreds of commercials including breatkthrough campaigns for The New York Times, Tide, True Value Hardware Stores, Pampers, Swiffer, Target, Burger King, and even subliminally in women's plus-size clothing stores. Her animated characters include a fiercely independent otter in Disney Channel's PB & J Otter and the hip but exasperated "Z" on VH-1's Hey Joel. And she's proud to be one of the few women (there should be many more) movie trailer voices: for Parker Posey's cult film Party Girl.
Joyce Gordon
Joyce Gordon has enjoyed a successful career as a working actress in all aspects of film, television and radio for over 50 years.
Joyce is a voiceover legend, heard on thousands of commercials and also seen on camera as a standup spokeswoman for P&G and Duncan Hines. She was also an on camera spokeswoman on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar, Steve Allen and Johnny Carson. She has dubbed many foreign films as the voice of Claudia Cardinale, Jeanne Moreau, and Annie Girardot, among others. She is still heard on many telephone systems nationwide as well as being the telephone voice of the SAG-AFTRA P&H Plans.
Joyce led the New York Branch of the Screen Actors Guild as the first female president of SAG and was one of the original architects of our residuals system. She has served on their National Board of Directors for 25 years and as a National Vice President, and as a Trustee of the SAG Pension and Health Plans for 35 years as Board Chairman and now as Emeritus Trustee. She also currently serves as a Trustee of the Screen Actors Guild Motion Picture Players Welfare Fund, the John L. Dales Scholarship Fund, and The Actors Fund of America.
Barbara Rosenblat
Barbara Rosenblat is a New York actress/singer with numerous performance credits both here and in the U.K. She can be seen currently in season 2 of the Netflix original series, Orange Is the New Black, playing cancer ridden inmate “Miss Rosa.”
She is also one of the most sought after and beloved narrators of Audiobooks in the country. Her extraordinary range of accents and characterizations in a distinguished body of work (more than 500 titles to date) has earned her 8 coveted Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association. The Audies are the industry's Oscar, and Barbara has won more of them than any female narrator. The industry watchdog publication, Audiofile Magazine, has named her one of their “Golden Voices” and a “Voice of the Twentieth Century.” Barbara has also won well over 40 Golden Earphone Awards for superior recordings.One critic remarked, “Barbara is to audiobooks what Meryl Streep is to film.”@rosenblat_actor
Sara Krieger - Moderator
Sara Krieger has worked steadily in voiceovers for the past twenty plus years. She successfully transitioned from a long career in music that included gigs at the Blue Note clubs in New York and Japan, Jazz festivals, and Carnegie Hall (most notably as one of the original members of New York Voices). What was originally intended to be a supplementary move to voiceovers evolved into a full time and well regarded career.
Sara has recorded accounts for Estee Lauder, Thermasilk, Orencia, HGTV, Fox TV, Bloomberg Radio and countless others. For the past seven years, she has worked steadily for Late Night with David Letterman, as one of his monologue “skit voices.”
Sara is also an accomplished voiceover coach. In addition to teaching privately, she has also taught many courses for SAG-AFTRA’s “Business of the Biz” series, of which she was a co-creator. In addition, she is a regular contributor to the EIF Voiceover Lab of the SAG Foundation.
