Telly Award Winning Project With Niche Academy
I’m often in my own little world in my home studio, connecting with clients & recording projects. I’m so thankful for all the wonderful, creative people I get to work with every day.
One of my long-time clients-turned-friends, Jeremy from Niche Academy, emailed me the other day.
“On a side note, one of our projects you narrated won a Telly award! Thank you for helping make it happen!”
Well that’s FUN to hear! I don’t get to see all the projects when they are completed, and this was a delight to hear that something I had a part in helped them win a Telly Award. That’s something to pause and celebrate!
Jeremy and I have been working together for years; our emails often mention project updates along with life updates - like how the garden is growing, how a tractor got stuck or isn’t working (hello rural Pennsylvania!) - or how beautiful Pennsylvania is in all it’s seasons.
When AI looked like it was going to take over the world, Jeremy assured me he would continue working with me, a human voice, because they valued the human experience. No one regrets this decision.
About The Telly Award:
A project I narrated for Niche Academy won a Bronze Telly Award in the 47th Annual Telly Awards, taking the win in the Series - Education & Training category for "Cybersecurity Basics – Preventing Human Error."
If you're not familiar with the Tellys, they're kind of a big thing. Established in 1979, the Telly Awards honor excellence in video and television across every screen, and this year they pulled in over 13,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents. The judging council is stacked with more than 250 industry experts, including people from Google, HBO, the WNBA, and Netflix. And the company we're sharing this year's winners list with? Paramount TV, Warner Bros Discovery, FOX Entertainment, Sony Music, TED, ABC News, and Dude Perfect, just to name a few. It's an honor to be in that room.
What makes this one especially sweet is who it's with. I've been working with Niche Academy for over five years now, and this project was a full team effort. Jeremy Tuttle directed the learning design, Julie Edwards handled instructional design, Adam Watson brought the storyboards to life, Xenos Mesa and Adam Flores illustrated it, and Vesta Nartey animated the whole thing. I got to narrate it. Watching a project you've been part of get recognized like this, especially with a team you trust and enjoy working with, hits different than a solo win ever could.
There's something about long-term client relationships that I think gets undervalued in this industry. It's easy to chase the next new logo, but there's real magic in sticking with people over the years, learning their voice, their audience, their standards, and getting so in sync with them that the work just gets better and better. Five-plus years in, Niche Academy, and I have that. This award is proof it's working.
For anyone wondering what "cybersecurity basics" has to do with voiceover: this is exactly the kind of project I love. Training and eLearning content lives or dies on whether people actually retain it, and tone matters more than people realize. You want to sound credible without being dry, warm without being fluffy, and clear enough that "preventing human error" doesn't feel like a lecture. That's the sweet spot I try to hit every time I step into the booth for corporate and training work.
Huge congrats to the whole Niche Academy team on this one. Here's to the next five years, and the next award.
