Finding Joy While Finding Your Voice

An outstanding interview with an outstanding free resource!

Good morning, and Happy New Year, lovely people!

Thank you so much to everyone who filled out my year’s review survey. Rest assured that Oliver has now received 85 pets!! If you’d like to send Oliver a virtual “pet” (and spend 4 minutes helping me plan out the future of Good Queer News, the link is still live!

This week I sat down with Nicole Gress (she/they), a speech pathologist and the Founder of Undead Voice, an amazing organization working to rebuild the whole practice of trans-affirming voice therapy into something accessible, joyful, and community-based. Even (and especially) in the face of mounting attacks on gender affirming healthcare, Nicole and her team have built something beautiful. This article fits right in with my piece from last week:

Gender Affirming Healthcare isn't the whole story

I’ll also highlight upfront the “why now” of this article: TODAY registration is opening for their latest cohort of a free voice training program called Jumpstart! This awesome program is designed to help folks of any age or identity take the first steps towards their voice goals (which can be so varied beyond just a femme/masc binary). If you’re already sold, here’s the link!

Without further adieu, let’s get into it!

Ben: Give me the story, who’s Nicole? How did Undead Voice Become a thing?

Nicole: Well, my name is Nicole Gress, I use she and they pronouns, I am a speech pathologist, and I’ve specialized in trans voice for about 12 years now. I started doing that work in more traditional medical settings. I worked in a hospital, in a private practice in the Bay Area, and not a single one of my patients ended up graduating from our services loving the way that they sounded. You know? That’s really frustrating.

I realized the methods we’re taught as speech pathologists were built to help people with voice disorders, not to shift how a voice is gendered. The intervention style of a weekly thirty minute technique lesson under horrible fluorescent lighting, followed by being expected to practice by yourself, alone, either in your car or quietly in your room so nobody hears you if you’re struggling is not really conducive to having a positive, happy, euphoric experience transitioning your voice.

So I redesigned the entire system.

I started Undead Voice six years ago, and we changed everything end to end. So how people train, how people access the virtual platform, and we made it a community based program. That way, you have a lot of peers that you’re going through the program with that you can lean on in motivation and support. Really, the main point was to make it inclusive and accessible. Keeping in mind the strong prevalence of neurodiversity within our community, how can we make this sensory friendly? Being able to do your work virtually, on your own timeline, means you can control your whole sensory environment and not feel pressure or self judgment if you’re not progressing in the way that you’re expected to.

It’s also inclusive of age—our youngest person right now is nine, but we’ve had six year olds hang out with us before! We have a whole youth program as well.

We also wanted it to be inclusive of all gender identities because most traditional voice training just targets people who want a higher brighter voice or in air quotes “feminized voice”. And so our program and the whole methodology and the framework is for people across the entire gender spectrum, all the goal voices!

All that’s keeping community at the very center of the experience because it’s such a lonely, scary thing to try to change the way that you sound. It’s such a huge part of our identity. A lot of times people get roadblocked or get frustrated or stop practicing not because they don’t understand the techniques or what to do, but they can’t see anybody who has gone through and been successful, so there’s a lot of self doubt that creeps in.

Ben: Wow. That’s so cool. A big thing for Good Queer News is obviously talking about joy, and I love all the different ways you’ve decided to really make this a joyful process. Tell me a little bit more about what it looks like to lean into joy with voice training.

Nicole: Yeah! I mean, fun is really at the center of it. So a lot of times, voice training can feel like: hit this note or repeat this technical exercise, and we try to use much more character or improv techniques. Most of what you can do with your voice already exists within your vocal range. It’s just figuring out what prompts will help get you there.

So that’s where we’re the most playful as we embody different scenarios or characters, like a kindergarten teacher or a high school teacher, a parent reprimanding their kid or yelling at your pet dog or cuddling your sweet cat whatever it is. It’s giving people access to different vocal characteristics through embodying characters.

It’s a very playful and disarming and effective way to approach voice. So, of course, we have the science and then we have the joy of sharing your wins no matter how big or small. Having people witness and recognize the work that you’re doing and how it’s paying off is just a magical experience. It’s magical, and it’s euphoric.

Ben: So is it a live community gathering? Is it a feed or a group chat? What does the community look like?

Nicole: All of the above! So we have two main programs. We have our full voice training platform called Undead Voice Lab, and then we have an intro program called Jumpstart.

So the full voice program is a combination of prerecorded courses that you go through based on what your voice goals are, where you learn the exercises, and then we have a private community platform. In there, there are daily practice groups where peers get together to practice whatever voice training they’re working on and just socialize and have a fun, safe space to use your affirming voice as you’re practicing.

And then we have social events, we have holiday parties to do letter writing with Point of Pride and Tarot reading for halloween, and there’s chat threads that are going all day every day. There’s about 4,000 people on the platform each day, so it’s a big community.

On top of all that, we have group coaching calls that happen every week plus asynchronous coaching so you can send a video or audio clip for feedback or ask a question when you actually are practicing so that you get help at that moment.

Ben: That’s so amazing and so important, especially in the context of such an anti-trans climate right now. How have you all seen your work impacted by the world we’re living in? Is this where Jumpstart fits in?

This year, in response to what’s currently happening with disappearing or rapidly threatened access to gender affirming care, we were like, “hey, we have this wonderful program that we wish everybody could get into, but the truth is that people need access to resources right now so they can feel safe and confident and secure, especially in those states where care is banned or really difficult to access for youth and adults because we work with people of all ages.

I wanted to take the curriculum of Undead VoiceLab and pull out the most impactful pieces and create a stand alone intro resource, and that is called Jumpstart. We created and beta tested it last year, then launched it this year completely free. It’s three 90-minute group sessions where you learn how to have a healthy voice, how to warm up your voice, and how to decide what your goals are for your voice. We go through exercises in all five “pillars of voice” and then in the third week we’ll teach you how to build out a plan for your voice training, whether we’re included in that or not.

(and if you’d like to learn more about what goes down in Jumpstart, you can check it out here: https://www.undeadvoice.com/joinjumpstart)

Ben: What an amazing program! How did the first year go?

This year alone, we ran the program 20 times with almost 200 partner organizations. In 2026, we’re hoping to triple that. We partnered with nonprofits, healthcare institutions, community groups, and really anyone who is excited about helping people access affirming voice training.

We’ve reached about 40,000 people through the program so far, including partnering with Edovo to get a pre-recorded version of the program onto the tablets of incarcerated transgender people.

Ben: Wow. That’s ridiculously cool, and I love how committed you are to really trying to get this program, for free, to the people who need it most. This seems like a really beautiful experience.

Nicole: Thank you. I know. I get excited to talk about these things because it’s, you know, running a business is a wild experience, but being able to experience even moments of that visceral joy that happens is amazing. When somebody finds a sound of their voice that they love, you can see it wash over their body. Their breathing steadies, their eyes kind of clear, and you can see that fear disappear as their voice and their speaking shifts from feeling effortful or uncomfortable to just a sense of ease and comfort.

After the body shifts, it’s like there’s an awareness that kind of lands, and it’s all these thoughts. I can answer the phone without bracing, and I’m reading to my kid without flinching at my sound, I can speak up in a meeting at work without that fear. It’s just been amazing to see real life goals be met because of being able to shift the way that we’re prioritizing what success looks like or joy looks like in voice.

Ben: I love that so much. Thanks so much for joining us, and for all the good you put into the world, Nicole!

With access to gender-affirming care disappearing across the country, we refuse to let trans people be left without options to find a more affirming voice. That’s why I’m proud to partner with Undead Voice as they offer Jumpstart Your Voice Transition completely free this year.

Jumpstart is a three-week, expert-led virtual masterclass led by the team at Undead Voice, designed to give trans and gender-diverse people real, actionable tools to shape their voice—no gatekeeping, no insurance battles, no barriers. Registration for this round is open from the 2nd through the 18th, and sessions begin shortly. If you’ve been thinking about joining, now is the time!

P.S. Can’t make it this round? Jumpstart runs multiple times a year. Join the WAITLIST to be notified when doors open again!

That’s all for now! If this seems like a resource someone you love could benefit from, don’t forget to send it their way!