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Featured Presenters
Tom Burke
Presenting: Twang Farm: Phonemic Prompts for Vocal Versatility and Problem Solving
Tom Burke is a speech-language pathologist, pianist, vocal teacher, and executive speaker coach who over the past 20 years has helped TED speakers, Google execs, authors, Hollywood actors, and Broadway singers become more powerful storytellers. His work has been featured on HBO, MTV, the Oprah Winfrey Network, Good Morning America, and as co-host and voice coach for Bravo TV’s “In a Man's World,” a social experiment produced by Viola Davis designed to reveal gender inequities in the workplace and at home. Recently he was the vocal supervisor for Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen in “Book Club 2.”
Ian Howell
Presenting: Hearing Singing: A Guide to Functional Listening
Ian Howell, DMA is the founder and chief educator at the Embodied Music Lab. He has held research, voice pedagogy, and applied voice positions at the New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin College. He is a Grammy Award winning performer and recording artist, was awarded special recognition from AATS for his work to facilitate online teaching during the Pandemic, won the 2022 Van L. Lawrence award for his research into vocal fold oscillation patterns in high-pitched singing, and was inducted into the American Academy of Teachers of Singing in 2023. He now teaches voice and offers professional development to the voice teaching community. His first book, Advice for Young Musicians, was published in 2023.
Joan Lader
Presenting: Performance Class with Joan Lader
Joan Lader has spent more than 40 years providing vocal training and rehabilitation for professional voice users. This was commemorated in June 2016 when she was awarded the Tony Award Honors for Excellence in Theater, the American theater’s highest honor.
She received further recognition in August 2025 when she was presented with the Estill Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2023 and named an “Unsung Hero” by the American Theatre Wing.
Lader received a BFA from Penn State University in theatre arts with a minor in music. Trained as a master’s level speech pathologist, she specializes in working with singers and actors, and in collaboration with New York’s top otolaryngologists, rehabilitation of injured voices. Her extensive practice includes leading actors and singers from Broadway, film, opera, R&B, rap, rock and pop.
Lader is a certified Master Teacher of the Estill Voice Training System, a member of NATS, NYSTA, VASTA, and has extensive training in the Alexander Technique, as well as Fitzmaurice Voice Work and the work of Arthur Lessac.
She has given master classes at universities and summer programs throughout the country including the Peabody Institute, Anne Reinking’s Broadway Theater Project, the Musical Theatre Lab at Vineyard Arts Project, Empower Voices Now in New York City, NYU’s The New Studio, Westminster Choir College, the Polish Voice Symposium and is on the advisory board of the Voice Foundation and the Manhattan School of Music. She gave the keynote address at the Northwest Voice Conference on the Art and Science of the Performing Voice.
She has contributed numerous articles to many educational and professional books on various aspects of vocal production and care of the professional voice, as well as exercises for voice therapy. Lader has been a featured guest on a NATS Chat. She is particularly proud to be a master teacher with the National Young Arts Foundation, whose participants so often become the stars of tomorrow.
Melissa Malde
Presenting: Mapping the Movements of Singing
Mezzo-soprano Melissa Malde has performed throughout the United States as well as in Russia, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Germany. She holds degrees from Oberlin, Northwestern, Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, and the Munich Hochschule für Musik, where she studied under the auspices of a German Academic Exchange grant. She is a sponsoring teacher and the past president of the Association for Body Mapping Education (ABME). The book she co-authored, “What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body,” is now in its fourth edition. Malde is currently the associate dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts (PVA) at the University of Northern Colorado. While on the faculty at UNCO, she was selected the “Most Inspiring Woman Faculty Member” at UNCO and “Scholar of the Year” for the PVA. When she is not teaching, singing, or herding cats (faculty and feline), she enjoys reading, cycling, and gardening.
Zipporah Peddle
Zipporah Peddle (she/her) performed nearly 3,000 performances as lead vocalist in Cirque du Soleil’s top selling production show, O. She has appeared in musicals, concerts, cabarets, new musical workshops, tours, and recitals, at venues throughout the United States and Canada. She currently serves as an assistant professor on the voice and vocal pedagogy faculties at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Previously, Peddle served on the theatre faculty at Missouri State University where she created a series of CCM style and pedagogy courses for the BFA musical theatre program. She has led private voice studios in Boston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Toronto, and provides master classes on musical theatre and CCM style and pedagogy. She is an associate editor with the NATS Journal of Singing, has presented her research at NATS, PAVA, and the Voice Foundation conferences and has appeared as an invited speaker for organizations including NATS, the Voice Foundation, Brown University, Williams College, and USC. Peddle holds an master’s degree in vocal performance from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a bachelor’s degree in music from Memorial University, located in her beautiful home province of Newfoundland, Canada. She is a PAVA-Recognized Vocologist.
Mike Ruckles
Presenting: Hysterical for Hysteresis: Harnessing Its Transformative Potential in the Training of Crossover and Commercial Music Singers
(M.M., SVS, PAVA-RV) is a vocal technician and singing voice specialist based in NYC. He maintains one of the city’s premier studios for musical theatre and pop/rock singing and has taught in BFA programs at NYU and the University of Northern Colorado. His students comprise Tony, Grammy, and Oscar winners, with clients appearing on and off-Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the West End, and national tours. His methodology incorporates the work of Alexander, Feldenkrais, Lessac, Estill, Laban, Stemple, Body-Mapping (Conable), and Fitzmaurice, among others. As a singing voice specialist, he collaborates with some of NYC’s most distinguished laryngologists in the rehabilitation of injured voices. He serves as production vocal coach on several Broadway shows and made his own debut in 2013 as the associate music director/conductor for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Ruckles is a proud member of NATS, the Voice Foundation, NYSTA, and PAVA. In the summer of 2024, he was honored to serve as a master teacher, mentoring in the NATS Intern Program. Learn more at mikeruckles.com or follow @rucklesvoice on social media.
Leda Scearce
Presenting: Tools for Navigating a Path for Success: Rehabilitation to Habilitation
Leda Scearce is a singer, singing teacher, and speech-language pathologist. She provides voice evaluation and rehabilitation therapy to singers, actors, and other vocal performers with voice injuries at Duke Voice Care Center, where she is director of performing voice programs. She is clinical associate faculty and director of community engagement in the department of head and neck surgery and communication sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, where she leads community engagement activities for the entire department including outreach and education, community engaged research, and community service.
She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice performance from Indiana University, and a master’s degree in speech pathology from Boston University. Scearce is a frequent speaker at national and international voice conferences. Her performance experience includes appearances as leading soprano and soloist with opera companies, orchestras, and music festivals across the U.S., and she has taught voice at numerous colleges and universities. She is the author of “Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation: A Practical Approach to Vocal Health and Wellness” (Plural) and co-editor of “The Oxford Handbook of Voice Pedagogy,” to be released in 2026. She is a founding member of the Pan American Vocology Association and served as president from 2017-2019.
Emily Siar
Presenting: Speaking the Same Language: Aligning Voice Pedagogy Terminology
Emily Siar is a Boston-based soprano and voice teacher, known for her work as both a performer and pedagogue. She currently serves as assistant professor of voice and vocal pedagogy at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she teaches applied voice for classical and musical theatre singers, graduate and undergraduate courses in voice pedagogy, and a cabaret repertoire elective she designed. In addition to her teaching, Siar is the associate director of the Vocal Pedagogy Professional Workshop, a summer intensive that draws voice teachers from around the world.
A versatile and active performer, Siar appears regularly singing opera, early music, art song, chamber music, and cabaret. She has recently performed with renowned ensembles including the Grammy Award-winning Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Baroque, the Henry Purcell Society of Boston, Calliope’s Call, and Boston Opera Collaborative. In 2024, Siar was awarded first place in the prestigious NATS Artist Awards.
Siar holds degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music (DMA), the Eastman School of Music (MM), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BM), where she was a Kenan Music Scholar.
