SCITUATE – When Connie Wallace was around 20 years old, a chance phone call she answered for her father turned out to be pivotal in sparking a lifelong passion.
The caller was Rhode Island TV and radio personality Howie Holland, a family friend, who remarked that Wallace sounded like she had a natural talent for voice-overs.
Wallace wasn’t familiar with the profession at the time, but Holland, then the host of local performance television show “Wing Ding,” offered Wallace her first voice-over role based on the phone call.
Though Wallace immediately took an interest in voice-over arts, she said, other responsibilities prevented her from pursuing the profession full time, and she went on to spend her career primarily in the travel and tourism industry.
“The travel industry was the way I paid my bills,” Wallace said. “I always wanted to do radio or voice-overs, and I really didn’t have that luxury because life, but it was always in the back of my mind.”
Now, almost 50 years later, Wallace is past her second year as a full-time voice-over artist, and recently won national recognition in the One Voice Awards.
Wallace retired from the travel and tourism industry in 2019 after serving in various marketing roles and as New England manager for Princess and Cunard Cruise Lines. During her time in travel and tourism, she would take whatever opportunities arose to do voice-overs, often for friends or businesses she frequented, and took a brief detour into radio at one point.
Wallace launched her own travel-themed podcast in January 2020. Everything went smoothly for two months – then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, placing travel and tourism at an indefinite standstill.
“I thought, what else can I do with all this equipment now, all the plans?” Wallace recalled. “So I thought maybe I could do voice-overs instead because I always loved doing that. So at 66 years old, I went into a whole new career.”
Wallace works out of her home studio, a converted walk-in closet in the village of North Scituate. Her voice-over work has been heard around the country, narrating a range of programs from e-learning programs to advertisements for Democratic political action committees and coffee shop chains.
Wallace also voices characters across a wide variety of ages, ranging from children to seniors.
Her work has landed her a total of eight award nominations from One Voice and the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, also a national organization, with one earning a win in the “Best Outtake” category at the 2022 One Voice Awards.
While most of her work has been at the national level, Wallace, who grew up and has spent most of her life in Rhode Island, said that she hopes to soon take on more local work.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
