Julia Booth

She says it’s thanks to her Sir Edmund Hillary Scholarship that she’s achieved what she has. Her scholarship was “quite vital and hugely impacting on a number of levels”.

“While I was studying, high performance manager Greg O’Carroll was an excellent mentor who took a meaningful and holistic approach to my development. The personal development workshops we had forced me to examine my own personal goals; then a video of Sir Edmund Hillary about setting big goals felt like a direct challenge to me to really push boundaries and understand what would be truly meaningful to me.”

Julia worked hard, graduated with honours and was awarded the Sir Edmund Hillary medal, presented each year to two exceptional students, one in sport and one in the arts. It remains one of Julia’s proudest moments. “I was deeply touched to be a part of that,” she says.

These days Julia’s life is full on while working and raising three daughters.

While she was still a student at Waikato she became increasingly interested in Estill Voice Training (EVT). It’s a model of voice function, as opposed to a singing method, which allows a skilled practitioner to work with all voices across a range of styles as well as the spoken voice. She went on to study it in depth and is a master trainer.

“So alongside teaching singing I work with ear, nose and throat surgeons and speech language pathologists and therapists to help people either recover their voice or to learn how to use their voice more effectively.”

Some of her clients are school teachers whose voices are often husky or voiceless by the end of a working week, and Julia says that’s becoming even more common now that open-plan classrooms are more commonplace.

“I can help them use their voices more effectively and teach them how to project well. Teaching and engaging with people like this, seeing them improve their wellbeing, that gives me even more of a buzz than being on stage under the spotlight.”

As well as teaching, she sings musical theatre, cabaret and records for New Zealand composers. “When you’re teaching singing I think it’s important to do live performance, to remember all that’s involved when you’re on stage.”