Hi, I'm Nikki!

Growing up around musicians in my family started my love for singing and the arts.

Rock and oldies from the 50s-70's were commonly played in my house, as my dad was a rock bassist.

I also found an early love of movie musicals through watching Sound Of Music and Disney movies, and then seeing Wicked on stage for the first time at 9 years old.

It changed something in my brain to hear all of these amazing singers.

Throughout my early life, I was drawn to any form of artistic expression – playing piano, joining choirs, doing plays & musicals, competing in talent shows, etc.

However, an obstacle held me back when it came to pursuing my singing.

I never actually received proper training for my voice and was told a lot of limiting beliefs about my voice from well-intentioned adults in my life.

"You're just an alto, you're good at singing low, not high"

And then I started developing stage fright after a bad experience during a choir solo where I had to sing higher than I was comfortable with and that continued with me through college.

But by the end of high school I found myself stuck, repeatedly encountering the same vocal mistakes, which had me seeking out free advice on YouTube or through blogs because I didn't know how to find a voice teacher.

A turning point came when I walked into my local community college and went to the choir director's office to see about their choirs.

After hearing me sing a little bit of The Sound Of Music and learning about my experience in the arts, he thought I'd be a good fit to be a music major.

This college's program advocated classical technique as the best option for training your voice.

I didn't know anything about voice lessons, so I trusted this information like it was The Bible.

I didn't want to be an opera singer, but I thought that I just needed to get through my vocal performance degree and I'd be able to sing whatever I wanted after I graduated because I'd be "classically trained"

After I graduated, an unfortunate reality set in – I still couldn't sing the styles that I really loved. I still also had a lot of performance anxiety.

And by then I had also started teaching other beginner singers, but I would tell them the same things told to me, that classical technique is the foundation of all singing.

I found myself in a familiar rut.

While my vocal progress in the classical style was quite impressive, it wasn't aligned with my authentic voice and what I wanted to be able to sing for myself.

I kept teaching for a year after I graduated, feeling like I was not helping my students as much as I could because I didn't know how to sing the styles they were coming in with.

Then I just happened to come across an ad for a teacher certification at Shenandoah University, and I was pretty much their target demographic -- voice teachers with classical training that couldn't sing or teach contemporary styles effectively.

I knew right in that moment I had to go there.

So I made it happen and long story short, the 10 days of intensive learning there changed my singing and teaching world.

After that, I did a complete 180 degrees on my teaching methods and my own vocal technique and started a massive quest for learning as much as possible about science and evidence based voice technique.

Teaching mix and belting became my major focus for a long time after because they were how I actually wanted to be able to sing.

And also my students wanted to learn these technique too, and once I really honed my teaching methods for mix and belting, my students were having insane results!

Without getting too stuck in the details on this story... along with the new vocal techniques that I became comfortable singing and teaching, I started becoming really curious about performance anxiety.

A lot of my students really struggled with it and had a lot of mental blocks and I was still struggling with all of that too.

That is when I started focusing my continuing education on nervous system education, somatics, and mind-body tools.

It was during that time of learning about those things that I found out that singing & performing is mostly mental and is rooted in nervous system dysregulation.

This was the key, the final piece of the puzzle.

That brings me to the last few years, where I also discovered Meisner in Music, which is where I started putting everything together.

Just simply learning how to play when singing and get out of my technique-filled head helped me to start reconnecting to my inner child again.

Along with learning how to shift my nervous system when anxious and how to care for myself on a daily basis to support my performing, I can never go back to how I was approaching singing before.

With all of the wide arrays of experiences I've had as a teacher and artist myself, The Inner Voice Collective is the voice studio that I wish I had access to growing up.

It is everything that I feel is necessary to grow not only your voice, but also re-discover your innately creative self.

I wish you luck on your ever evolving journey to singing, and I hope you give TIVC a look to see if it is the right fit for you!

xoxo, Nikki