Parkinson Voice Advocates
Educating the Community Through the Parkinson Voice Project
Parkinson Voice Advocates is a group of people with Parkinson’s whose voices have been restored through our SPEAK OUT!® & LOUD Crowd® therapy program. These advocates are committed to being role models for other “LOUD Crowd Members” around the world. They take advantage of all the resources available to them to manage Parkinson’s, and they use their new, intentional voices to educate the community about Parkinson’s and the services provided through Parkinson Voice Project.
Parkinson Voice Project Mission: To preserve the voices of individuals with Parkinson’s and related neurological disorders through intensive speech therapy, follow-up support, research, education, and community awareness.
Vision: To collaborate with other compassionate speech-language pathologists to replicate our SPEAK OUT!® and LOUD Crowd® therapy programs throughout the world.
Samantha Elandary is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Parkinson Voice Project. She holds a BA in communication disorders and English and holds an MA in speech-language pathology from the University of North Texas.
Since 1999, Samantha has worked exclusively with individuals with Parkinson’s and has devoted her career to making quality speech therapy services accessible to this patient population.
Early in her career, Elandary recognized the need for people with Parkinson’s to engage in daily speech practice and receive continuous support and encouragement. With these tools, people with Parkinson’s would have the opportunity to maintain their speaking abilities and minimize future swallowing complications.
She created “The LOUD Crowd®,” a maintenance program consisting of speech and singing groups that also served as a support system for her patients and their families. The LOUD Crowd initially met at Elandary’s home. In 2005, she founded “Parkinson Voice Project,” a nonprofit speech therapy clinic solely dedicated to helping people with Parkinson’s preserve their speech and communication.
In 2010, Parkinson Voice Project developed a highly effective individual speech treatment for Parkinson’s called “SPEAK OUT!®” which was combined with The LOUD Crowd to provide people with Parkinson’s the very best speech treatment. In 2012, Parkinson Voice Project began training speech-language pathologists across the globe in its two-part therapy program. The vision of Parkinson Voice Project is to make SPEAK OUT! & The LOUD Crowd accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide.
Many ask what motivated Samantha to start Parkinson Voice Project. While she does not have a family history of Parkinson’s, she was born with a cleft palate and struggled with her speech from childhood until she was a young professional. She understands how vulnerable someone who has a communication disorder feels and how other people judge a person’s intelligence and competence based on the ability to communicate. She considers it an honor and a privilege to help people with Parkinson’s regain one of God’s most precious gifts.