Education and background

In addition to an undergraduate degree in Spanish, with a minor in Italian, Aaron has a Master's degree in Bilingual/Bi-cultural education from Columbia University. He is also certified in teaching English as a foreign language and Spanish as a foreign language.

During his certification process, Aaron studied linguistics and phonetics in both English and Spanish and he now implements his extensive knowledge in both areas while coaching actors on accent reduction, diction, dialects and languages. By 2018, Aaron had coached thousands of learners, aged 5-81, from over 75 different countries for over 25 years.

How it all started…

At age 13, while unpacking during a move from rural Massachusetts to a more sophisticated Boston school district filled with students from all over the world, I found an audio recording of my five-year-old self, celebrating my brother’s birthday. Shocked that my rural accent sounded so different from most of my new classmates’ ‘standard sound’, I became my own first client for accent reduction.

Successfully losing my Boston accent by age 14 inspired me to pursue other languages. By age 25, I had gained fluency in Spanish and Italian and had lived in Seville, Spain and Rome, Italy. Once I got a taste of bilingualism, I was inspired to learn more. By age 33, I had become conversant in French, Portuguese, and Japanese.

Whether recognizing and mimicking different dialects of my native English or working at producing a “Standard Italian sound,” dialect coaching speaks to me on multiple levels. Exploring the musicality of languages, each dialect becomes another instrument which brings me back to my childhood passion for music—a passion I can now share as I jam together with the actors I’m coaching. When they achieve their desired sound, (General American, Northern Irish, Nicaraguan Spanish, Italian dialect in English, fluent Thai, etc.), I become the conductor, helping actors to master and play the music of the dialect.