Editors’ note: We invite you to enjoy the first in what we hope will be an interesting and inspiring series highlighting the “second act” careers of women who have completely changed their professional lives. To participate in this series or nominate someone, please email [email protected].
Judi Srebro has worked with the biggest celebrities in Israel and some of the most influential government officials as well. She has helped hundreds of Israeli clients nail auditions and performances for English-speaking parts, close business deals with Netflix, and deliver speeches to foreign delegates.
So how did an American who made aliyah in 2003 end up becoming Israel’s most sought-after speech and dialect coach?
While she did major in speech and hearing disorders, she did not go the clinical route. She did not work exclusively with people who suffered from speech impediments or hearing issues.
Nor did she land a job with a top corporate communications firm right out of college, as some graduates do, and then spend years climbing the ranks and building up a reputation and client roster..
Instead, Srebro took a job with Bnei Akiva of the United States and Canada as its executive director when she graduated from Stern College for Women at age 22. She learned a tremendous amount about finance, accounting and managing the ins and outs of a nonprofit organization. But it was a far cry from her major, and after four-and-a-half years there she was ready for a change.
That change, however, still didn’t have much to do with her present occupation. Arriving in Israel at the age of 26, she took a job with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint), where her primary role involved fundraising and development. “I started out arranging visits of donors and donor groups from federations, mainly from North America and the U.K., to come and see the programs we were involved with here in Israel and in the former Soviet Union,” she said.
But there was also an Outbound division, where the organization sent speakers all over the world to share their stories on donors’ home turf. That sparked Srebro’s interest and she told her department head, “That’s what I want to do one day.”
He agreed and before long she became the director of Outbound, arranging speaking tours and helping presenters relay their messages to donors in a clear, compelling and articulate manner. She poured her heart into it because, she said, “The thing that I loved most was helping prepare the speakers to tell their stories and connect with audiences.”
It was during this time that she came home one day to find her roommate sitting on the couch watching an Israeli program that could best be described as a musical drama. Srebro sat down beside her roommate and immediately became hooked.
During one particular scene, two of the actors were singing a duet to Elton John’s “Your Song.” Although the scene was meant to be serious, it instead came off as cringeworthy and practically comical as one of the actors sang the verses in English with a thick Israeli accent.
Srebro jumped up from her seat. “I said to my roommate, ‘Ohmigod! I’m going to help him! If he wants to sing in English he can’t do it with that Israeli accent.’ I was getting excited to have a meaningful interaction with this actor and thinking how I’m going to help him. I got this!” Her roommate simply rolled her eyes and said, “OK Judi, calm down.”
But that only set Srebro into motion as she began writing letters to agents in Israel offering her services. None of them responded. “I’m telling friends and colleagues about my plan and they just kind of said, ‘Yeah, whatever’.”
Four years later, the actor who sang the Elton John song in his thick accent came out with an album and a concert tour to promote it. Upon learning about this, Srebro did two very important things: She bought tickets for the concert and she made business cards even though she didn’t technically have a business. Her plan—or hope—was to find a way to give her business cards to the most influential entertainment professionals in Israel, in particular, the one who represented the heavily accented actor/singer.
What Srebro didn’t realize was that she had inadvertently bought tickets to the first show, which included a whole host of VIPs. The guest list included a roster of Israel’s A-list entertainment professionals ranging from agents and producers to television and film stars.
“So I walk out of the concert into the lobby and all these people are milling about,” Srebro said. “I’ve been reading the Israeli entertainment magazines for several years at this point and recognized many of the faces.” She spotted the singer’s agent, who also happened to represent many of Israel’s top talent. Srebro agonized over whether to approach the woman, who was clearly immersed in conversation with a prominent network studio executive.
Srebro quickly convinced herself this was her big shot. “So I go over and they are talking and I very rudely interrupt them.” Naturally, the agent rolled her eyes, but that didn’t stop the budding speech coach. “Your client was great,” she told her, “but if he wants to sing in English he’s going to have to lose the accent.” She then proceeded to do a spot-on impersonation of him singing the Elton John tune and said she could help him.
Whether it was the impersonation of that over-the-top performance or Srebro’s tenacity, her daring moves apparently drove the point home because upon receiving her business card, the agent asked for a second, much to Srebro’s shocked delight.
However, weeks passed and she heard nothing. So Srebro contacted the agency, sent an email, spoke with the assistant and managed to set up a meeting in Tel Aviv. At the meeting, the agency agreed that Srebo’s services would be of great benefit to many of its clients and they even asked her to work with another actor. Before she knew it, the agency began sending more and more clients her way, and she was officially in business as a speech and dialect coach.
Months later, while visiting family in Los Angeles, she received a call that the actor who originally inspired her new career had just wrapped his first film and was headed to the Berlin Film Festival. He desperately needed her help.
It was about four years later that Srebro’s same roommate returned home from work one day, only to find that very same actor sitting on the couch in the exact spot where she once sat watching him sing “Your Song” on her television.
Srebro’s career as Israel’s premier speech and dialect coach was growing, and with it her reputation as the go-to resource for Israel’s A-listers. Her client roster kept expanding solely by word-of-mouth.
“A good friend shared this quote,” Srebro said. “‘It takes 10 years to become an overnight success.’ It’s been quite a long time, but I have become quite a resource in the industry. And it’s not only actors now.” Among her clients are producers, directors, writers, government ministers, Knesset members, business people and academics. “I absolutely love it.”
There are times, she admits, when she’s feeling tired and exhausted, but when she walks into a session “the switch just flips, the energy just comes and it just lights me up. … This is the thing that I’m meant to do.”
Srebro continued to work for the Joint after she established herself as a speech and dialect coach. Eventually she realized that she had to transition into part-time work at the Joint in order to give more attention to her speech and dialect business.
Although she calls herself a speech and dialect coach, she says that for some people, it’s not just about dialect. “It could be about public speaking, which is really difficult and challenging and scary for a lot of people. It could be about language. It could be about pronunciation.”
Sometimes she’ll get clients who are in business but find it challenging to allow their personalities to come across authentically in English. “They’ll say, ‘Judi, I’m a business person. In Hebrew I’m amazing at small talk … and my sense of humor comes through. But when I have to speak in English, I lose my personality’.” So she works with many business professionals to help bring their personalities out in English. Often it’s building confidence or enriching vocabulary. “It’s a basket of services tailored for each person.”
A few years ago, Srebro came across a notebook that she had started in her senior year in college. As she thumbed through it, she felt nostalgic at the things she had written, including lists of people she wanted to meet, books she wanted to read and companies where she wanted to work. At the top of the very first page was written, “Speech Coaching Business.”
“When you first graduate college, you kind of have to puff up your resume a little to make you seem more experienced because otherwise, how do you get started?” she explained. “But when I look at my resume now there’s something to be said for being in my 40s and not being fresh out of college.
“And this is a message for women our age: There’s something good about it, too. Because when I look at my CV now, there’s no fluff. It’s all there and it’s all real. You know who you are now. You might want to change a few things. But who the heck was I when I was a kid? I don’t even know. Now I know who I am. The question is, do you accept who you are?”
By Ronit Mershon
