When I was two years old, my father got a job with the Panama Canal Company and we moved there from Atlanta, Georgia, where I was born. I ended up living in the former Canal Zone, and then in Panama for a total of 26 years, where both of my children were born. Panama is called the Crossroads of the World, and growing up there, I met people from around the word, and heard not only Spanish, but also Chinese, Hindi, Hebrew, and many varieties of English! After being a classroom teacher for many years, teaching English, Spanish and Reading in secondary schools in Texas and Panama, I went to graduate school at UT-Austin and became a bilingual speech-language pathologist, working mostly in primary schools with Austin ISD. After retiring I started volunteering with ESL programs, and found that I especially love working with pronunciation. Ladies Let’s Talk is an amazing organization, and I am proud to be part of it.