Dr Helen and Marianne are joined by speech-language pathologist Jordan Ross Jakomin. Jordan talks about his passion for helping trans people and the importance of developing a voice that is authentic to the individual rather than trying to recreate a voice that merely conforms to gender stereotypes.

If you have been affected by any of the topics discussed in our podcast, and would like to get in touch, please contact us via the Help Centre. You can also contact us on social media where you will find us at @GenderGP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We are always happy to accept ideas for future shows, so if there is something in particular you would like us to discuss, or a specific guest you would love to hear from, let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. If you could take a minute or two to leave us a review and rating for the podcast on your favourite podcast app, it will help others to discover us.

Jordan will be running two workshops with GenderGP in January, on the 27th for voice feminization and one on the 28 for voice masculinization. To book your place visit https://www.gendergp.com/gendergp-network/jordan-jakomin/

 
Links:
Jordan’s website: https://jordanrosscommunication.com

Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender client by Richard Adler: Amazon

Liz Jackson Hearns, voice therapy
 
Blog posts:
Voice Therapy for Trans People

The role of non-verbal communication in how we are perceived
 
The GenderGP Podcast
Voice therapy for trans people
 
Hello, this is Dr Helen Webberley. Welcome to our GenderGP Podcast, where we will be discussing some of the issues affecting the trans and non-binary community in the world today, together with my co-host Marianne Oakes, a trans woman herself, and our head of therapy.
 

Jordan Jakomin:

My name is Jordan Jakomin and my pronouns are he, him, his. And I'm a speech language pathologist from Chicago, Illinois. And I specialize in working with the transgender and non-binary community on voice and communication. And I recently opened up my private practice, Jordan Ross Communication, primarily serving clients across the gender spectrum working on voice and communication skills.


Dr Helen Webberley:

Okay, brilliant. So that's a lovely, lovely introduction. So, why this field? Why this group of people?


Jordan Jakomin:

Yeah, so I think it goes back—I mean, I knew I wanted to be a speech and language pathologist when I was 15 or 16 years old, but I didn't even know that this was in the field at the time. And I remember being 19 years old and I went to a conference. There was a huge convention in Chicago where I was going to school at the time and it was for speech and language pathologists. And you have, you have all these different speech therapists from all over the country that come in and present. And I remember I passed a poster board that said transgender voice and communication. And I was like, wait, what is this? This falls under our scope of practice. I never heard of it. I was never taught it in a school. So, I remember being inspired by it. And I went back to my school and I said, you know, I'm really interested in this. I'm curious to learn about it. When are we taking the class on it? And they told me, well, there is no class on it.


Dr Helen Webberley:

Of course.


Jordan Jakomin:

And I was like, I mean—although this is changing, which is good, they're starting to incorporate it more into the curriculum. But so, I did some Googling and I found the one textbook at the time that was on it.