Chair: Martin Spencer

Martin Spencer is a speech pathologist sub-specializing in voice pathology and is an active singer . Martin has worked as a voice pathologist for fifteen years in Columbus, the last ten of which have been at Ohio ENT.

He was on the charter Board forming the Pan American Vocology Association and was a member of the ‘15 Symposium Steering Committee for PAVA’s inaugural meeting at UNC at Greensboro. Subsequently, Martin was elected to PAVA’s first Board of Directors as Regional Governor for the Central Region and with Ingo Titze is co-chair of PAVA’s October ‘16 meeting in Scottsdale, AZ, (please come!). In the ‘00s, Martin was President of the Ohio Voice Association (OVA) for which he organized four regional conventions.

Martin has published widely in journals and textbooks across the voice pathology and singing literature and particularly likes to write about the amalgamation of singing/theater pedagogy with voice pathology. His latest article, “Muscle Tension Dysphonia: A Rationale for Symptomatic Subtypes, Expedited Treatment and Increased Therapy Compliance” is one of the most-read articles published in SIG3’s Perspective on Voice and Voice Disorders.

Martin received his vocology track M.A. from the University of Iowa, rated for many years the number one Speech-Language Pathology program in the country by US News and World Report. He researched singing phenomena with Ingo Titze under the auspice of the National Center of Voice and Speech.

Martin was a professional operatic tenor for eighteen years prior to his voice career shift. He performed to critical acclaim with the Canadian Opera Company (COC), National Arts Center, Toronto Symphony, Aldeburgh Festival, Sadler’s Wells Opera, Tafelmusik, and the Stratford Festival where he also performed Shakespearean roles.

In his hometown, Toronto, Martin was a professor in Humber College’s Jazz Studies program in which he taught jazz singing, acting, theory and ear training.. Martin devised and directed “create-an-opera” programs for the Canadian Opera Company, and conducted children’s programs at the Institute for Child Study at the University of Toronto. He published a children’s performing edition of the Pirates of Penzance.

In a post-professional singing career, Martin has been an active barbershopper in the Barbershop Harmony Society, sang lead in the quartets Rhymetime and Ebb Tide and is a member of the Singing Buckeyes. Currently, he is a member of the St. Mark’s Chancel Choir.

Other educational venues attended include the University of Toronto (B.A. in Musicology, with later courses in the sciences), and the Banff School of Fine Arts where he spent two years in the Music Theater Studio Ensemble working with top directors and pedagogues from England, Canada and the USA (including Oren Brown). He studied and performed the repertoire of Benjamin Britten with Sir Peter Pears at the Britten-Pears School of Advanced Musical Study in Aldeburgh, England, and studied in many opera programs in London, England. His recording of C.V. Stanford’s “Much Ado about Nothing” won British recording of the year.

Mara Behlau

Mara Behlau, SLP, PhD, ASHA FELLOW, is the director of the Centro de Estudos da Voz - CEV, São Paulo, Brazil, where she coordinates a specialization program in voice for more than 30 years. She is also permanent professor at the Graduate Program in Human Communication Disorders at UNIFESP-EPM, São Paulo, Brazil and Affilliate Professor of “Communication of Business” at the INSPER, São Paulo. She was president of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics – IALP, president of the Brazilian Association of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology – SBFa and also president of the Brazilian Association of Laryngology and Voice - SBLV.

Leslie Childs

Lesley French Childs, M.D., has sung all her life. Once, as a high school choir singer in Austin, she grew hoarse and went to an otolaryngologist. The doctor used a scope to look at her vocal cords, then described what he saw (mild inflammation, it turned out). Photos on his wall showed performers he’d taken care of.

“I thought, ‘That is what I want to do,’” Dr. Childs recalls, adding that she had wanted to be a doctor since early childhood. “It was the perfect marriage of my two passions.”

Dr. Childs attended Yale University and then Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where her classmates voted her the person they would most want as their own physician. During her residency in head and neck surgery at Vanderbilt, she won more awards for excellence. Dr. Childs then completed a specialty fellowship at the New York Center for Voice and Swallowing Disorders, where she often took call for the opera.

In 2012, Dr. Childs returned to Texas, joining the faculty of UT Southwestern. She is Associate Professor of Laryngology, Neurolaryngology, and Professional Voice. Dr. Childs was recently appointed the Medical Director of the Clinical Center for Voice Care. Along with her colleague, Dr. Ted Mau, and four speech therapists, Dr. Childs cares for patients with vocal-fold disorders at the Clinical Center for Voice Care.

Seth Dailey

Dr. Dailey is certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology and is the Laryngology Fellowship program director. He specializes in voice, airway and swallowing disorders. He also has expertise in professional and performing voice disorders, laryngeal cancer, laryngeal premalignancy, spasmodic dysphonia, laryngeal tremor, vocal cord paralysis, recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, airway stenosis, and dysphagia.

Kate DeVore

With a theatre and singing background, and as the first graduate of the Vocology program, Kate has forged a hybrid path for the last 25 years working as a voice and speech therapist as well as a theatre voice, speech, and dialect coach.  She serves as voice and dialect coach for theatrical productions, teaches at The School at Steppenwolf , Columbia College Chicago, and Acting Studio Chicago, and operates a private coaching practice (Total Voice, Inc.) in which she provides voice and speech therapy, dialect coaching, accent modification, and voice and speech coaching to clients ranging from actors to teachers to executives.  

Kate is co-author of The Voice Book: Caring For, Protecting, and Improving Your Voice (Chicago Review Press) and the Laryngeal Teaching Series DVDs showing endoscopic footage of the inside of the throat during speaking, singing, screaming, and other sound production.  She is also co-creator of downloadable dialect training materials (www.AccentHelp.com), and author of the iBook Accent Modification: Neutral American Dialect