McKinley Paltzik will graduate from Phoenix Country Day School in 2023, where she competed in Extemporaneous Speaking, Congressional Debate, Impromptu Speaking, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate. She is the 2022 National Champion and President’s Bowl Winner in International Extemporaneous Speaking, the 2022 MBA Champion, and the 2022 TOC Champion in Extemporaneous Speaking. She is the first competitor to ever win the Yale Invitational 3 consecutive times, and has championed the NYC Invitational twice. She’s reached final rounds at both Harvard and Glenbrooks too. McKinley is also the Director of the Extemper’s Bible, an organization dedicated to making Extemp resources ubiquitously accessible. She is excited to be joining the ISD family and can’t wait to meet everyone this summer!
Location: Carolina
Parker De Deker
Parker is a senior at Neenah High School in Wisconsin and is currently the President of his Speech & Debate Team. Parker offers a diverse, six-year Speech & Debate experience to ISD, ranging from Original Oratory, Impromptu, Extemp, and Program Oral Interp to Public Forum, Lincoln Douglas, and Congressional Debate. In his career, Parker has championed the Wisconsin State Tournament in Impromptu and Finaled in Extemp. Additionally, he has broken to out rounds at Florida Blue Key, Harvard, and Barkley Forum, Finaled at Glenbrooks, Princeton, Blake, and Cabot, Championed the Plano Classic, Was the National Runner-Up at NCFL Grand Nationals in D.C. and Championed the National Speech & Debate Tournament in Congressional Debate: House, was the Final Round Presiding Officer, and House Leadership Bowl Winner in June of 2022. Through accumulating 16+ Lifetime Bids to the UKTOC, 4 to NIETOC, and 3 Qualifications to both National Tournaments and work experience with political and governmental organizations, Parker is excited to emphasize the importance of external application of Speech & Debate skills in the real world.
Parker looks to work with students on gaining confidence, growing their self-esteem, developing nuanced argumentation and powerful rhetoric, and employing academic diction in their speeches to win a debate by proving their comprehensive understanding of a topic or policy and convince their chamber and judges, that they are standing on the right side of history.
Tess Segal
Tess has been doing speech & debate for 5 years, with national titles including two-time Original Oratory champion at Glenbrooks, making the NSDA stage in Informative Speaking, and appearing in final rounds of Oratory, Info, and POI and both the state and national levels. She’s a climate communication nerd whose best experience in high school was coaching novices as team captain, and she’s thrilled to extend that experience at ISD.
Ryan Gumlia
Ryan is a senior at Fairmont Preparatory Academy and Captain of the Fairmont Debate Team. Across his four years in Public Forum debate, he accrued 14 gold bids and qualified to the Tournament of Champions four times. Ryan also championed ASU, Berkeley, and Alta, made finals at Glenbrooks, and made semifinals at Kentucky where he earned first place speaker. Outside of tournaments, he coaches a parliamentary debate program at a local middle school. And in his free time, Ryan likes to play basketball and read books at any parks he finds.
Colton Gilbert
Colton Gilbert is a Debate Coach and Teacher at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. He has been involved in competitive speech and debate since 2004. In college, he competed at the University of Kentucky before transferring to Arkansas State University. In undergrad, Colton focused on Communication Studies with a minor in mathematics. In grad school, Colton received a Master’s in Communication Studies from Arkansas State University and a Master’s in Secondary Education from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Since 2014, Colton has been Arkansas’s delegate at NFHS Policy Debate Topic Selection; this summer (2022) he will serve as the chair of the wording committee. As a coach, Colton has coached debaters (both policy and LD) to out rounds at national tournaments and regularly qualifies students to the Tournament of Champions and NSDA. Colton prides himself on argument development and research practices. In his spare time, he enjoys video games on his Xbox and spending time with his beloved niece.
Mukta Dharmapurikar
Mukta is a 2022 graduate of Durham Academy, where she competed primarily in Extemporaneous Speaking, Informative Speaking, and Original Oratory, and was Speech Captain her junior and senior year. She won 1st at the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions, 2nd place and the President’s Bowl in International Extemp at the NSDA National Championship, and 2nd at the NCFL Grand National Tournament. She is a double finalist in Extemp and Info at the Tournament of Champions, an MBA Round Robin Invitee, and has finaled at many tournaments including Harvard, Yale, Glenbrooks, Emory, GMU, Sunvite, and UK. Her favorite parts of Speech and Debate have been cheesy extemp jokes, mentoring novices, and her teammates’ speech memes. She is excited to be a part of ISD this year!
Tara McLellan
Tara L. McLellan, a NSDA Diamond Coach, is the co-head coach of Speech & Debate at Charlotte Latin School in North Carolina. In addition to coaching Lincoln-Douglas debate, she specializes in public speaking and individual events. Tara has previously coached at Decatur High School and Saint James School, her alma mater in Alabama. She served on the Lincoln-Douglas wording committee and the 2008 Birmingham Nationals committee. In 2006, she was awarded Alabama Forensics League Coach of the Year. Tara has instructed for LD and IE summer camps at Stanford, University of Iowa, and Samford University. Tara’s eight-year-old daughter, Neva, is a forensics “kid in training,” already demanding impromptu topics and cheering on the Latin team at competitions.
Rachel Mauchline
Rachel Mauchline is the Director of Debate for Cabot Public Schools. She coaches students in all debate events from 7th to 12th grade. Rachel serves on a number of different Arkansas Debate Committees. Rachel received an NSDA District Commendation in 2020 for her work with Tabroom in her state and serves the NSDA as a Tabroom Superuser. Rachel founded her own nonprofit debateARkansas which is aimed at providing more equitable debate experience to students. Rachel cannot wait to work at ISD 2022!
Christopher Vincent
Christopher Vincent is the Director of Speech & Debate at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, LA. He has been involved in competitive speech & debate since 2004. Formerly, he was a competitor for the University of Louisville where he reached elimination rounds at several tournaments including both CEDA and the National Debate Tournament. He has also served as the Director of Forensics for Louisiana State University. As a high school coach, he has directed several programs and has coached students to elimination rounds at many regional and national tournament including Greenhill, Emory, Harvard, Berkeley, TFA, the Tournament of Champions, NSDA, and others. Chris is currently a Doctoral Candidate in the Communication Studies Department at Louisiana State University, as well as a graduate minor in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, with a primary concentration in rhetoric and culture where he studies rhetorics of space from a queer and feminist perspective. As both a classroom teacher and communication professional, he emphasizes the importance of being adaptable, critically engaging with scholarship, being innovative in argument development, and learning the fundamentals.
Jared Shapiro
Jared is currently studying at The Ohio State University and is an alumnus of Hawken School in Cleveland, OH. At Hawken, Jared served as the Interpretation Captain as well as the Vice President of Speech his senior year. Jared was ranked as high as 1st in the country in both HI and POI, and competed since 7th grade. Jared has reached late elimination rounds at many national tournaments including 2nd at Yale, 6th at Glenbrooks, 5th at GMU Patriot Games, 2nd at the Barkley Forum, Semifinals at the UK TOC, Top-60 at NSDA Nationals, and was a four time NSDA national qualifier. In addition, he championed the Sunvitational, the Stanford Invitational, the New York City Invitational, and was the 2019 OSDA State Champion in POI. Outside of speech, Jared can be caught dancing in public, talking in different voices at all the wrong times, and trying to put a smile on people’s faces. Jared is excited to continue giving back to the activity that gave him so much, and he can’t wait to welcome more Interpers into the ISD family in 2020!