Yeshiva Grad Leads Mac Attack
Aham-laden breakfast sandwich may not be the first thing one associates with a Yeshiva-trained mouth — particularly a mouth that rests Saturdays — but in a radio spot now in wide circulation, the link is as clear as day.
“How’s that Egg McMuffin?” asks Sharon Feingold, a graduate of the Yeshiva High School of Atlanta.
It’s been a long strange trip for Feingold, 28, whose road from Atlanta to the New York media market has been paved with voiceover work for corporate giants like Mickey D’s.
Reached by the Shmooze on her cell phone, Feingold, who calls herself “The GenX Voice,” is fresh from an audition for the Kohl’s supermarket chain. “It went well,” she said, “but you can never tell what’ll happen because there can be 50 to 100 other people auditioning.”
But regardless of what happens with Kohl’s, Feingold still has herself a thriving career. She starting taking voiceover classes while pursuing a master’s in business administration at Georgia State University, and now she works out of a home studio with advanced conferencing capabilities so that she can work with people located anywhere, anytime. She said she relishes the fact she can sit in her pajamas in her home studio and still “do work and get paid.”
Things got started for Feingold in 2000 when she did a television commercial for a breast cancer awareness group. It was a particularly moving experience for her, she said, since a friend with breast cancer was in the commercial.
Soon after, with the help of an agent, she was doing work for Ford, Cingular and the Georgia Lottery. She’s also racked up many lesser-known clients along the way, as she often will “do voicemail messages for small companies who just want to sound big.”
But how does a good Jewish girl feel about being the voice of an enterprise synonymous with trayf? “There’s nothing halachically or philosophically wrong with marketing McDonald’s,” she said. “Besides, the anonymity of doing voiceovers is part of the appeal.”
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