Our Senior Staff

Kourtney R. Strade, M.A

Ms. Strade is a certified vocologist, as well as a
voice teacher and singer.  With a Bachelor of
Science in Vocal Music Education, a Master’s
degree in voice from the University of Missouri-
Kansas City, Conservatory of Music, and a
Certificate of Vocology jointly presented by the
National Center for Voice and Speech and the
University of Iowa; she has been developing her
skills as a voice specialist for nearly a decade.
Using training from such professionals as
renowned vocal scientist, Ingo Titze, and
pedagogue Oren Brown, Ms. Strade has served
as a singing voice consultant for the University of
Iowa Voice Clinic, and worked as a student
clinician in Voice Diagnostics.  In her private
studio, Ms. Strade has helped many persons
strengthen his/her singing voice following a voice
disorder, and several students have gone on to
become performance scholarship recipients and
NATS competition winners.

Kourtney studied transgender voice therapy at
the University of Iowa, the country's #1 school for
Speech Pathology.  She constantly uses her
academic training, and continues to research new
theories and techniques available for the
transgender client.


Karen M. Mills, M.A., CCC-SLP

Ms. Mills, licensed Speech-Language Pathologist,
holds a Master's degree in Speech Pathology
from the University of Iowa, and a Master's
degree in Linguistics from the University of
Indiana.  This dual educational background has
lead Ms. Mills to not only a lecture faculty position
at the University of Iowa, but she has also
become a leading Augmentative/Alternative
Communication technician in the SLP field.  Ms.
Mills worked as a student clinician in the
University of Iowa Voice Clinic, and has completed
extensive study in endoscopy technique and
analysis.  As a linguist, Ms. Mills has presented
for TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second
Language) national conventions and is published
in numerous linguistic journals.

Karen serves as the Speech Pathology
consultant for Heartland Healthy Voices, and
completes evaluations for clients referred by an
Otolaryngologist.  Additionally, Ms. Mills is
instrumental in helping to construct training goals
for singing students recovering from vocal
disorders.

Here, Alissa and Kourtney use speech analysis technology  to gain
baseline data, as well as provide valuable feedback and progress
monitoring.

Healthy Voices utilizes a very personal approach to each
transgender student, taking into consideration the progress (or
even existence) of transition, as well as catering lesson topics to
the immediate and long term communication goals of the client.