I’ve spent most of my adult life in rooms where people talked about “finding your voice,” and yet, for many years, I did everything I could to hide mine. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because the sound of my voice — the sound that carried traces of two continents, two cultures, and a childhood lived between languages — was the very thing I believed would keep me from ever being taken seriously.
I was born in Italy but grew up in Canada, a child who learned English in school hallways and Italian in the kitchen, where my mother cooked meals that made our tiny apartment feel like it had a front door that still opened to Europe. When I finally moved to the United States in my twenties to try to build a career in media, I thought my accent wouldn’t matter much. I was wrong.
People don’t usually say it outright. They tilt their heads, slow down their own speech, correct you gently as if you’re a child, or smile in a way that tells you they don’t expect you to get very far in this industry. Every time it happened, it took something from me — not aggressively, not visibly, but quietly, the way erosion works on stone.
I worked hard. I read scripts out loud every night, recording myself and deleting the files immediately afterward, embarrassed by how I sounded. I tried to stretch my vowels, flatten my consonants, Americanize every syllable until I no longer recognized the person in the mirror. When my colleagues joked that I had a “movie villain accent,” I laughed along because it felt easier than letting them see how much it hurt.
But the truth is, the more I tried to sound like everyone else, the more I lost the ability to sound like myself.
The Moment Everything Shifted — And I Didn’t Even Mean for It to Happen
It happened on a day that wasn’t especially memorable. I was working at a small local station, assisting with interviews and producing short segments, nothing glamorous but enough to keep me hopeful. I was filling in for someone last-minute, reading a brief introduction for a guest who had arrived early. No cameras were supposed to be rolling yet. No pressure. I thought I could relax for a moment.
So I did what I never allowed myself to do on air:
I spoke normally.
No adjustments.
No hiding.
No trying to flatten the sound of where I came from.
When I finished reading, the guest — an older woman, soft-spoken, gracious — looked at me and said, “Your voice makes me feel calm. You should talk like that on TV.”
I laughed it off, assuming she was being polite. But she wasn’t. Because later that week, the team decided to use the sound test in the actual broadcast, filling a gap where a promo had fallen through. I didn’t know until the segment aired.
I braced myself for humiliation. For jokes. For the dreaded “Where are you really from?” emails.
What happened was the opposite.
People wrote in saying they liked the warmth in my voice, how sincere it sounded. A viewer told me it reminded her of her grandfather, who immigrated from Sicily. Someone else said they felt “seen” hearing an accent that wasn’t polished to perfection. It wasn’t just feedback; it was recognition.
For the first time in my career, I felt something shift inside me. Not dramatically, not like fireworks — more like exhaling after holding your breath for far too long.
It Took Me Years to Understand Why That Moment Mattered
When you grow up between countries, you carry certain invisible weights. You learn to translate before you speak, to observe before you act, to adapt before anyone asks you to. Your accent becomes a reminder of every place you’ve been and every place you tried to fit into.
For a long time, I believed mine was a weakness.
But that day, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I realized something simple and liberating:
my accent wasn’t something I needed to fix. It was something I needed to stop apologizing for.
I stopped editing myself.
I stopped rehearsing every sentence.
I stopped pretending that my voice wasn’t shaped by the life I lived.
And slowly, opportunities came — not because I changed, but because I finally sounded like someone who believed in what he was saying.
Finding My Place Didn’t Mean Becoming Someone New
People often assume that “finding your place” means climbing high or being in the spotlight. For me, it meant understanding that my background wasn’t an obstacle but a contribution. Having a voice forged from different cultures didn’t make me less professional — it made me someone who could speak to a wider audience, someone who knew what it meant to be an outsider and still push through.
Today, I work in media full-time.
I interview people, tell stories, produce segments, and use the voice I once tried so desperately to erase. I still get comments sometimes — mostly from people who think everyone on TV should sound exactly the same — but they don’t bother me anymore. They can’t. I’ve lived through much harder things than a stranger’s opinion.
My accent is the one thing in this industry that no one else has.
It holds every place I’ve ever lived, every mistake, every risk, every beginning.
It holds me.
If You’re Struggling With Your Voice — Whatever That Means for You
Maybe your accent makes you feel small.
Maybe someone told you you’d never belong.
Maybe you’ve spent years trying to sound like everyone else so you don’t stand out.
I hope my story reaches you in the way that older woman’s words reached me.
Your voice — the real one — is the only thing about you that cannot be duplicated.
It’s not something to hide.
It’s not something to fix.
It’s something to finally let breathe.
One day, if you stop fighting it, you might hear what I heard:
“Your voice makes me feel calm.
You should talk like that on TV.”
And maybe that will be your turning point too.
