I’M CHANTAL (she/her), THE HUMAN BEHIND THE VOICE.
I read and record scripts and help creative agencies create brand video content that makes a human connection.
GET TO KNOW ME
How I got my start in voiceover
A Seattle native, Chantal Emmanuelle Robert is both an American and French citizen. Listening for meaning all her life, she understood early that sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it that creates the most meaning.
Chantal’s early background in vocal performance and her career in organizational communications informs her work in voiceover, speaking with a musicality and a clarity that conveys emotion and enlivens copy. Chantal completed her degree at the University of Washington, doubling-majoring in Communications and Humanities while working full-time in corporate mortgage banking.
After leaving the mortgage business for the family business, she’s worked in sales leadership, and as Director of Marketing, leaning on her communications skill to motivate, engage, and inspire internal and customer audiences. Through the Pacific Northwest chapter of the French-American Chamber of Commerce, she has presented to French MBA students and sung in both French and English for cultural events.
A singer, choir nerd, and natural orator all her life, Chantal is the great-granddaughter of an opera singer, and the granddaughter of a former Seattle broadcaster who recorded books-on-tape for his grandkids in perfect single takes, inspiring her to read aloud whenever given the chance. She studied classical voice as a teen learning proper vocal technique and honing her appetite for auditions, adjudication, solo and ensemble performance, and taking direction through participation in the WIAA/WMEA State Solo and Ensemble Contest and All-State Choir, consistently earning the highest ratings. At age 17 she was chosen to sing the soprano role in a four-person soli in multi-choir performance of Schubert’s Mass in G at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, infecting her with the desire to connect with audiences through her voice. She competed and recorded with her high school vocal jazz ensemble. She’s sung live backup and tour-managed for Seattle psych pop band Black Whales, sung backup vocals at Les Studios de L'Hacienda in France with trans-Atlantic band Pistol Star for the album Netherworld Orange released in 2018 on M&O Music.
A creative visionary, a change agent, a manager, an older sister, and a lifelong student of self-acceptance, Chantal speaks (and sings) with empathy and engaging conversation that draws people in, motivating, inspiring, and empowering them to act with compassion for self and for others.
To read aloud is to tell a story. When you want people to listen, you have to speak like a human being. When you want to educate, you must speak in a way that engages the imagination. When you want to inspire, you must lead with the truth.
Chantal began her work in voiceover in 2017 when she took an introductory course at the Seattle Voice Academy at the suggestion of a friend in voiceover and realized she could use her voice not just to sing or sell, but to entertain, engage, educate, inform, and activate audiences from the comfort of her home studio, in her own voice. She landed her first voiceover audition and worked six months as a roster talent for French production company ID2SON, voicing English translations of telephone messages for French companies, using her language skill to authentically pronounce French names and places and speak in European-friendly British Received Pronunciation. The ongoing work allowed her the consistency to create a reliable production process and rapidly hone her editing skill, turning projects around in less than 24 hours. She has dabbled in several voiceover niches, including a radio broadcast commercial for Enchant Christmas, four minor roles in the Endless Mission video game, and completed an intensive audiobook course before settling into her zone of corporate narration voicing for Seattle companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Avalara, and SmartRecruiters, including the addition of on-camera work for the latter. She has taken several acting courses through Seattle’s Rekindle School and completed over 100 hours of therapy, getting to know herself and the human condition.
After years of being “a butt in a seat” she’s designed her life to work from anywhere and everywhere, including taking her voice studio on the road, working with agile creative studios to narrate messages for brand audiences for some of Seattle’s largest enterprise companies.
When not behind the mic, you can find her singing just about everywhere, strumming a guitar, musing about her life lessons online, out walking the trails of the great Pacific Northwest, or taking her remote studio to warmer tropical locales — particularly during the infamously grey Seattle winters.
Say hello. Or bonjour.
Professional inquiries only.
chantal@voiceofchantal.com
Seattle, WA