About Everett Leiter

After 42 years as a speech-language pathologist, Everett Leiter has announced his retirement. His practice, Confident Speech, will not be accepting new clients starting in 2021.

Mr. Leiter is a speech-language pathologist licensed to practice in New York State and certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Mr. Leiter started Confident Speech in 1982. Originally Advanced Communication Services, the name was changed in 2001 to Confident Speech. Since 2001, the focus of the practice has been on accent modification and improving professional communication.

Mr. Leiter is a native of Washington, D.C.  He has lived for many years in New York City. He earned a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Brown University, a master's degree in speech and hearing from the City University of New York, and a master's in business administration from New York University (Stern Business School).

He started his professional career at Central Institute for the Deaf (St. Louis), where he was a research assistant in acoustic phonetics. After earning his master’s degree, he joined the staff at North Shore University Hospital as a speech-language pathologist from 1978 until 1986. There, he worked extensively with a broad range of communication problems experienced by people of all ages. For a number of years after, he specialized as a bilingual speech-language pathologist, working with school-age children.

With his background in linguistics, especially phonology, Mr. Leiter has always had an interest in dialects, second-language learning, accents, and accent training. This became his primary professional focus in 2000. He has trained hundreds of businesspeople and professionals, most of whom had acquired English as a second language. He helped them to optimize their communication skills by improving the clarity of their English pronunciation and voice. He also offered training in public speaking and other business communication skills. He is the author of a series of popular videos and software programs for mastering English pronunciation. A native speaker of English, he also speaks Spanish, French, and Italian. He was the 2003 President of the Corporate Speech Pathology Network, a professional association dedicated to improving communication skills in the workplace.