Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck.

When Anada Lakra (MBA 2021) left her native Albania to attend Yale, she had studied English for a decade and felt pretty confident in her ability to communicate with her new classmates. But she quickly noticed a disconnect between the English language of an Albanian classroom and the one spoken in a New Haven dorm room, with classmates constantly asking her to repeat herself.

Inspired by her experiences both in personal and professional settings, Lakra founded BoldVoice, an app that offers accent coaching for non-English speakers. And in this episode of Skydeck, Lakra and I talk about the light bulb moment behind her startup, the economic value of being understood, and the unique powers of immigrants.

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Dan Morrell: Anada, how did that experience that you had as an undergrad, going through what you call the rite of passage, end up becoming a business that you built at HBS? How did that insight lead into you founding BoldVoice?

Anada Lakra: There were two kinds of paths which led me to it. The first one was my personal experience all the way from college and the effort that I took, at the time, to really improve my speaking skills. And at the time, I didn't really have any resources. So I remember it was very much trial and error, observing other people, asking friends for help. And then my personal path afterwards led me to HBS, where I graduated in May 2021. And I was, at HBS, in a very international environment, surrounded by international students who, a lot of them, had only recently moved to the US, and I saw them going through the exact same experience that I had gone through at that point almost a decade prior. It struck me on the personal level that so much time had passed, but that fact of life, that rite of passage, had not changed. And people were really still struggling with it.

And you could really tell in a classroom setting. I remember, unfortunately for internationals, it was just a little bit harder to raise their hands and to speak up. And I also remember when it came to the recruiting season, interviews, it was something they were also struggling with. And at the same time, a friend of mine who was really struggling with this, hired an accent coach to help her build enough confidence to feel more prepared for her job interviews. So that's when on the personal level that inspiration struck me.

And then I feel like on a professional level, my career up until this point had prepared me for this opportunity. I had developed a career in tech, in product management, in start ups. So when that light bulb moment happened, I feel like I was prepared from an entrepreneurial perspective to, you know, grasp it and try to build a company out of it.

DM: Talk about that lightbulb moment. Was it actually an aha revelation? One night you're at the coffee shop and it comes together? You're talking to a friend? What did that look like?

AL: It actually kind of was. I feel like when I came up with the idea, it was like this idea had lived in the back of my head for, again, the 10-plus years that I've been in the US. I was definitely inspired by, as I said, my international friends by this particular friend who had taken accent coaching classes—which I didn't even know existed before I had spoken with her; [and] by the fact that a solution to this really big problem existed but it was so expensive and inaccessible. All of those ideas came to me kind of all together at the time that I was taking, actually, an entrepreneur class at HBS and was using that as you know, a starting point to explore various startup ideas. And once this idea came into my head, it was very clearly‚ both from, as I said, personal and professional perspective, felt like the right thing for me to do.

DM: I want you to talk about your own experience going through that rite of passage and how you would experience some of those things that you talked about. You mentioned, for instance, that you could see some of your classmates not wanting to raise their hand or participate as much. How did it manifest itself for you?

AL: It was everywhere. In the dining hall, going and asking for a particular food or item and just saying that word and having to be asked again what I wanted. So such a simple scenario with such simple words, even that initially was more difficult than I had anticipated.

In a social setting initially, you don't really care that much. But then when you see that people might react to you differently, it absolutely starts affecting you on a subconscious level. And I honestly think that language barriers are a huge reason why people from similar linguistic backgrounds tend to stick together, which is a huge shame and missed opportunity in these really international environments, that there isn't more cross-pollination, because there is a little bit of that almost shame and stigma when you cannot feel like you can be your full self. So that was definitely my experience as well in social settings.

And then on an interview setting, You could definitely feel a sort of disconnect. And it's not just a feeling, by the way. There is, unfortunately, lots of studies that back all of this up. Having a non-native accent has been proven to make you at least 16% less likely to get recommended for a job. If you're an entrepreneur, it makes you 23% less likely to get funded. People form opinions on who you are based on how you speak within three seconds of opening your mouth, right? So it's not about substance. It's a lot about that first impression.

DM: What were some of the things that you struggled with, specifically? Words, phrases, communication points. And how did you get over them?

AL: So many. I had so many struggles. So, I mean, there's lots of sounds that are present in English that] just do not exist in Albanian. So I had to learn them from scratch. For example, for the word water, there's this like flat T, like the “wad”—like this weird D sound that English has that a lot of languages do not have. So I used to say water. And then I had to learn to say water. I remember even ... Oh my gosh. I remember even Connecticut was such a hard thing for me to say as someone who's went to school there. I feel like [laughs] that was a little bit of a tricky, especially tricky word for me to say. Because if you were to break the word down and, and say it phonetically, it doesn't sound anything like it's actually said.

And then when it came to word linking and the way that even, honestly, saying my own phone number on the phone to someone who'd be asking. Figuring out you would say an “O” instead of a zero. And you would say it in a specific cadence. All of these things are, you know, very basic in a sense once you know them. But if you don't know them, which most people don't unless they have lived here, they can be really tricky and can really affect how someone treats you on the phone, right? Because they might just then assume that you don't know what you're talking about just because you're not saying your own phone number in the cadence that they're expecting.

DM: So let's go back to the founding of the business. Talk about the original vision for BoldVoice and how that vision has evolved and changed.

AL: The original vision for BoldVoice was that we wanted to give you an experience and a service that was as good as having your own, dedicated voice and accent coach but at a fraction of the price. We saw accent coaching as this really amazing, very specific service that helped people speak more confidently and get the career outcomes that they wanted if they were non-native speakers. But we also acknowledge that these sessions cost 100 or $200 an hour. And the vast majority of people can't afford them. So the vision was how can we use technology to create a service that is as good but is also scalable?

And that's where we took inspiration from my personal background—having worked at Peloton, that was definitely a source of inspiration. Other companies, like Master Class. Duolingo had popularized this idea of high-quality learning but through the use of technology, really lowering the price point and adding a layer of fun and gamification.

So what we did was we started working with these master accent coaches who are actually Hollywood accent coaches and teach celebrities, actors, to prepare for a role, to sound perfect for it. So we got these people who charge $300 an hour to record these video lessons that would exactly mirror how they would work with their clients one-on-one. And then once we had these video lessons, the other part of the product vision was that you need a feedback mechanism. And for that, we started building our own speech AI so that users can actually speak into the app and get real time feedback, which is really core to figuring out what you need to change, what you need to improve—and then right away get some results. So this is how the product started, is this interplay between the video lessons and the real time feedback you get from the app.

DM: You’ve said that you're not trying to make people sound American, rather that you want them to sound confident. You’re not trying to strip people of their cultural heritage and you do not want people to hide their immigrant background. How do you balance those things?

AL: Great question. So I truly believe that being an immigrant myself, that immigrants have special power, and that having an accent is, indeed, a sign of bravery and courage. It means that you, at the most basic level, you speak more than one language, which is something that not a lot of people can say. It also means that you immigrated to a different country and you have lots of experiences that some people will never have. So I definitely think that it's important for someone to be proud of their heritage and not try to cover that because it is a strength.

At the same time, unfortunately, the world that we live in is not perfect. And the accent piece of that heritage sometimes can come with certain prejudice that has unfortunately been proven to exist through lots and lots of studies. What we focus on at BoldVoice, however, is, again, not to make everyone sound the same or to make everyone sound American, but to make people feel like they can always be understood and always feel like they are portraying their clearest and most confident selves to their audiences.

I don't think of accents as necessarily being your true self. I think of them sometimes, and this kind of depends also on how each person feels about it, how each person feels about it, but sometimes it can be almost walls that keep you from communicating your true self to people. If people don't understand you because of your accent, then you're not able to convey who you are. You're not able to make jokes. You're not able to really participate and speak your mind, right? Because you feel like there's this thing holding you back.

What we're trying to do is reduce or remove that barrier and allow you to be your most confident self. And how that manifests itself in our teaching philosophy, in the content that we've been building with our accent coaches, the method that they use is one of accent acquisition rather than accent elimination, which means that you are acquiring a new way of speaking and a set of tools that can enable you to speak in a certain manner depending on the audience, without eliminating the parts of your accent or your speech that make you you. So it's really about developing the skill set, developing the tool kit that you can use, and choose to use, where you feel like it will best serve you.

DM: I wonder if you could share a little bit about what you've heard from past users of BoldVoice. And I also wonder if you see some of your own story in those user stories.

AL: The stories that we hear from our users are my favorite part of doing what we're doing right now, by far. Because it's incredible how much this means to them and how life-changing something as simple sounding as an accent can be. So we hear from people who are doing this because they are teachers and they are non-native English speakers and they teach in the US. And they really feel that working with BoldVoice has helped them really command a classroom better. And they feel better in their day to day job.

We've talked to people who are going through the job hunting process and were really struggling in that process because they felt like people couldn't really look past their accents. And now they're feeling like they are doing better and better in those interview processes. And some of them are writing to us telling them that they got a job. I mean, again, correlation there, we'll never fully know but part of it is, again, the confidence that we're giving them.

I'm hearing stories from people who just moved to the US, people who also have been here for, like, 30 years and who are still going through the process of not feeling as comfortable as they could be in their accent and therefore wanting to improve it. People who are now feeling a little bit more confident when they pick up their kids from school because of the social interactions that they have there. People who are running up for a promotion and are really putting in effort and work to feel like they can be ready to lead teams.

It spans both professional settings which is still our main focus. But at the end of the day it's about confidence. And that can affect all aspects of your life.

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

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