Here it is, coming to the end of April, and I realized that I haven’t posted anything this month yet. We must correct that.

This morning I had the opportunity to co-present to an audience of people who stutter and people who don’t. This was a project of 50 Million Voices, of which I am the leader for the USA. After a month or so of planning, we were ready to have our second round of “Practice Interviews” with people who stutter to get a chance to practice both being interviewed and being the interviewer.

Why is this so important? Well, interviews can be stressful and intimidating for anyone, as we fret about how we are doing, what the interviewer may be thinking of us and do we sound competent. Most people fear judgement and rejection.

For people who stutter, this is one of the most stressful situations, as we worry about disclosing, should we wing it and not mention that we stutter, and should we answer questions in short blurbs, to perhaps minimize the chance of stuttering.

This is such a unique opportunity. We had about 80 people at the overview about stuttering we delivered this morning. We reviewed what stuttering is and isn’t, and talked about interviews and offered tips for success.

Many of the fluent people participating have volunteered to take part, many from key companies in the UK and three other countries. It’s an amazing testament to how people who do not stutter really want to understand it more and learn how to be successful allies in the workplace.

Over the next two days, people will be paired up with one or two people to go through practice interviews. And on the second day of this initiative, we will hear from both interviewers and interviewees on how it went and what did they learn.

Stay tuned to another post sharing how it all went.