Meet Your Instructor: 30 Years of Public Speaking Excellence

I am a university professor of communication specializing in rhetoric and public speaking. For many years I have taught students how to organize ideas clearly, construct persuasive arguments, and present them with confidence.

Through my Empowering Speech program, I bring the same structured instruction successfully used in university classrooms and corporate boardrooms to homeschool students preparing for college and adult life.

For more than three decades I have taught at every level across every industry: my work as an educator and coach has taken me from graduate programs, executive training, and corporate boards to college classrooms, national speech competitions, and academically motivated homeschool students.

What unites all of this work is a simple conviction: confidence, clarity, and leadership are not personality traits— they are skills that can be taught, practiced, and mastered.

Academic & Competitive Foundation

My path into communication was not conventional.
I struggled academically early in life and failed my first public speaking course. It was only after returning to college and enrolling again in public speaking that I discovered both a passion for speech and a discipline that demanded excellence. Competitive speech required structure, preparation, and accountability; and in the process, it transformed not only my speaking ability, but my approach to learning.

That commitment led to success at the state, national, and international levels of collegiate speech competition, and ultimately to a scholarship to a university.

I was later awarded a graduate teaching and coaching position at California State University, Los Angeles, where I taught public speaking and coached speech while earning a Master of Arts in Communication Studies.

This foundation (rooted in competition, discipline, and academic rigor) continues to shape every aspect of the Empowering Speech curriculum.

Teaching & Coaching Experience

I am a full-time professor of Communication Studies and speech coach at Los Angeles Valley College, where I have taught public speaking and communication since 2000.

From 2000 to 2016, I served as Director of the Los Angeles Valley College Speech Team, during which time our program earned national championship titles in 2008, 2009, and 2012.

During my tenure, I taught public speaking, coached individual national champions, and built a program grounded in accountability, structure, and leadership development.

In 2008, I founded Speech Coach Los Angeles and began working independently with executives, professionals, and organizational leaders seeking advanced communication and leadership training.

Since that time, my private coaching practice has expanded to include an ever-widening range of clients across industries, including executives, attorneys, physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, performers, and public figures.

This work extends the same principles taught in Empowering Speech into professional and high-stakes environments, where clarity, credibility, and leadership presence directly affect outcomes.

From 2021 to 2024, I served as Chair of the Communication Studies Department, overseeing curriculum, faculty, and program development.

Across my career, I have taught:


• Public speaking and interpersonal communication
• Competitive speech and debate
• Leadership communication
• Online and asynchronous courses using Canvas LMS

Program Philosophy & Educational Rationale

Speech is empowering academically, professionally, socially, and politically.
The Empowering Speech program formalizes this reality through structured instruction, guided practice, and measurable outcomes.

Recognized by Students

In addition to institutional roles, my work has been consistently recognized by students themselves:

2003 — Above and Beyond Award, Los Angeles Valley College (one of two faculty honored campus-wide)

2017 — Crystal Apple Award: Most Inspiring Professor

2018 — Crystal Apple Award: Best Online Instructor

2019 — Crystal Apple Award: Best Communicator

Online & Asynchronous Excellence

Empowering Speech is delivered entirely through Canvas LMS, the same learning management system used in accredited colleges and universities.

I have taught online and asynchronous public speaking for years, refining methods that preserve rigor, accountability, and meaningful feedback; even outside a traditional classroom.

Beginning in 2016, I became the first professor within the Los Angeles Community College District to teach fully online public speaking courses, including asynchronous and hybrid formats.

This work required developing methods that preserved rigor, accountability, and performance standards in nontraditional learning environments… approaches that continue to inform the structure of Empowering Speech today.

Students are not left to figure things out on their own. The course is intentionally designed with:

• Clear modules
• Structured assignments
• Required peer interaction
• Real-audience speaking requirements

The result is an online experience that remains deeply human, conversational, and performance-based.

Teaching Philosophy

There is a reason that whether I am working with motivated homeschool students, community college students, graduate students, CEOs, lawyers, engineers, physicians, performers, or retired professional athletes, everyone receives the same training.

What is required to properly prepare, stand up, and deliver a strong presentation is not mysterious or complex. It is not rocket science. The principles are straightforward, learnable, and instantly employable — forever moving forward.

I believe, and know from personal experience, that anybody can be an A student if they choose. Anybody can be an excellent speaker if they choose.
The distinction is never intelligence, background, or talent. It is always commitment.

Because speech truly is empowering. It is humanity’s greatest attribute.

Structure as Strength

I am dyslexic, and my early academic experiences required me to develop systems, structure, and disciplined thinking in order to succeed.

That experience shaped my teaching philosophy. I teach clear frameworks for organizing thought, language, and ideas because structure creates confidence.

Why This Matters for Students

I am also a homeschool father.

Together with my wife, we have educated all seven of our children in a homeschool environment. Three children graduated high school early with straight A’s, and we currently have four more following that same path of academic excellence.

Our second oldest graduated from Arizona State University at age eighteen with presidential honors, before moving to Wales to complete a Master of Arts in English Literature at Aberystwyth University at nineteen. Our third oldest, now nineteen, will be entering chiropractic school in the fall.

These outcomes did not happen by accident.

Homeschooling requires clarity, structure, consistency, and personal responsibility. The same principles that govern effective communication.

Living this reality daily has reinforced what I teach professionally: students rise when standards are clear, effort is required, and responsibility is owned.