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!
Location: Carolina
Chase Williams
Chase Williams is the 6-12 Director of Speech and Debate at Taipei American School and founder of The Institute for Speech and Debate. In his 15 years of coaching, Chase has coached students across all events to national success. Chase has coached multiple NSDA National Champions and Top-6 finishers across multiple events. His students have advanced as far as Semifinals in PF at the TOC, and have championed or been in the final round at Yale, Minneapple, The Glenbrooks, Blake, The Sunvitational, Stanford, and Emory. As the Director of Speech and Debate at TAS, Chase has built a program that routinely makes history, including 3rd and 4th place finishes at NSDA Nationals in Public Forum and Policy Debate respectively, and 4 school awards in the last 4 years.
Before transitioning to education and coaching full-time, Chase was a political operative at the local, state, and federal campaign level. He has remained involved in the political arena as a volunteer and fundraiser.
To Chase, ISD is so much more than a summer camp, it is his extended family and he can’t wait to welcome more students into that family this summer!
Maggie Woodward
Maggie Woodward coaches Original Oratory and Informative Speaking at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, New York, and has been involved in forensics as a competitor & a coach for 15 years. As a student, she was the Tennessee State Champion in Original Oratory, and a national finalist in 2008. During college, she competed for Western Kentucky University Forensics. She has taught or directed Oratory at multiple summer institutes, including WKU’s Summer Forensics Institute and the Florida Forensics Institute. Students she has coached have been finalists or champions at Wake Forest, Yale, Harvard, Emory, Bronx Science, TOC, and NSDA. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Mississippi and is pursuing her PhD at the University of Southern California. She is very excited to work with the students in ISD’s new Original Oratory program this summer!
Brittany Stanchik
Brittany Stanchik is in her eighth year coaching Congressional Debate at Desert Vista High School in Phoenix, AZ and is the new Director of Forensics at DV. Over the course of her coaching career, she has coached numerous TOC qualifiers, including 7 finalists, 18 NSDA National Finalists, and 7 National Semifinalists. In 2014 alone, Brittany coached five students to the Final Round of Congressional Debate at NSDA Nationals.
Brittany understands the need to preserve the tradition and educational aspects of Congressional Debate but has learned the progression that naturally comes with the event; she teaches students how to adapt in a quickly changing environment by having them focus equally on three pillars: argumentation, presentation, and refutation.
During her personal career, Ms. Stanchik was in the 2009 NSDA National Congress Final and the 2010 NSDA National Quarter finals for Public Forum Debate. She graduated from Arizona State University where she majored in Communication and Justice Studies. She can’t wait to spend another summer with her ISD Family!
Rhonda Smith
Rhonda coached speech and debate for 21 years in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, spending the last ten years of her career at Plano West Senior High School. She coached students at the local, state and national levels in LD debate, Public Forum Debate, Congressional Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking. In Extemporaneous Speaking, she coached multiple champions at the Montgomery Bell Academy Extemp Round Robin, the Capital City Extemp Round Robin, The Harvard High School Tournament, The University of Kentucky TOC, and the ETOC at Northwestern University, as well as multiple finalists and champions at the NSDA National Tournament.
She is proud of the accomplishments of her team including multiple state awards and achieving the School of Outstanding Distinction Award for 5 straight years at the NSDA national tournament.
Rhonda retired from coaching but continues consulting with students who are competitive on the state and national extemp circuit. She is excited to join the ISD faculty in 2022 in both Florida and Carolina.
In her spare time, Rhonda enjoys spending time on her ranch in Texas with her husband of 30 years, where she raises goats and Red Angus cattle.
Yatesh Singh
Yatesh Singh is the Co-head coach for Speech at Lakeville North High School in Minnesota. With more than a decade of coaching experience in various debate and speech events, his students have won or reached late elimination rounds of a variety of national tournaments including Blake, Bronx Science, the Extemp TOC, Glenbrooks, Harvard, MBA, NIETOC, & NSDA Nationals. He was the recipient of the 2017 Community Service award at the Extemp Tournament of Champions, and he credits his better half and fellow coach, Liz Vieira Singh, with continuously inspiring him to provide his students the most rewarding forensics experience possible. Yatesh is very excited to share the #ISDDifference with students this summer!
Jay Rye
Jay Rye first became involved with Speech & Debate as a high school competitor in 1985, and has served as the Director of Speech & Debate at The Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, Alabama, since 1991. As a competitor for and graduate of the University of Alabama, Jay was the recipient of the 2006 Distinguished Alumni Award from Delta Sigma RhoTau Kappa Alpha, the collegiate honor society for speech education. As a five-diamond coach, he served as the District Chair of the Deep South District from 1999 – 2017 having received the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards for District Chair Service as well as being named District Chair of the Year in 2009. In 2007 he was elected a Key Coach of the Barkley Forum at Emory University in Georgia and in 2009 was the recipient of the Bronx Achievement Award by the Bronx High School of Science in New York. In 2013, Jay was the recipient of the Brother Polowy Coaching Award by Holy Cross in Louisiana and in 2014 was named the Jenny Cook Mentorship Award by the University School in Florida.
Jay has coached 142 individual state champions along with 134 National Speech & Debate Association qualifiers in all events, including the 2006 National Champion in Dramatic Interpretation. Jay served as the Chair of the Host Committee for the National Tournament of the National Speech & Debate Association in 2009, 2013, and 2017. He is an inducted member in the Alabama Speech & Debate Coaches Hall of Fame and the National Speech & Debate Coaches Hall of Fame. In 2014, Jay was elected to the Board of Directors for the NSDA and served in that capacity until his term concluded in June, 2018.
Gabe Rusk
Gabe Rusk is currently the Director of Debate at the Fairmont Preparatory Academy in Anaheim, California. In his first year as director Fairmont Prep became the national TOC gold bid leader in PF. Fairmont qualified eight teams to the TOC in 2018 alone. Gabe has been a coach in Public Forum Debate for close to a decade and has taught over a thousand students in that time. Gabe has been the director or senior instructor at over a dozen camps and institutes. During high school Gabe was a PF competitor himself winning the 2010 Tournament of Champions in Public Forum Debate. After taking a debate scholarship to attend college he was awarded 4th place at the 2014 national university parli competition. Gabe then attended the University of Oxford as a graduate student with a focus on religion and the law. He graduated in 2016 where his dissertation focused on the history of the First Amendment and pluralism in the United States. At Oxford he was offered a place on the competitive traveling team, won best floor speech at the Oxford Debate Union, and was appointed the LGBTQIA+ Officer for the world’s oldest debating society. Gabe was also elected as the international students officer representing over 7,000 students during his time at Oxford. He cannot wait to join the ISD Faculty and spend another summer working with students!
Angelique Ronald
After 15 years of coaching, Angelique Ronald has refocused her attention to advocating for matters of equity and inclusion in the world of speech and debate. Through publications (including Rostrum winter 2017 article “Women In Competitive Forensics”), national conference presentations (2018: “Fostering Inclusivity and Safe Spaces at Tournaments: Best Practices” and 2019: “Gender Inequity in Speech and Debate: A Solutions-Focused Discussion”), and advocacy in California and beyond, Angelique promotes solutions-based, culture-wide changes to make forensics a more accessible, open, and safe space for all.
Angelique currently serves as the State Tournament Director / Vice President of Activities of the California High School Speech Association, the co-President of the Southern Valley Forensic League, and a member of the Sierra District Committee for the National Speech and Debate Association.
Crawford Leavoy
Crawford Leavoy is the Director of Speech & Debate at Durham Academy in Durham, NC. Throughout his years coaching throughout the Southeast, Crawford has coached multiple TOC Qualifiers, NCFL Qualifiers and NSDA Qualifiers. His students have gone on to be the Runner-Ups & 3rd Place in Public Forum in NSDA, 9th Place in Lincoln Douglas, 9th Place in International Extemporaneous Speaking and multiple Semifinalists in Congressional Debate. At the 2020 NSDA National Tournament, Durham Academy was recognized as a School of Outstanding Distinction (Top-10 school).
Crawford focuses into creating a diverse team with well-rounded students. He works closely with students in Lincoln-Douglas, Congressional Debate and Interpretation.
Crawford serves on the NSDA’s Lincoln-Douglas Wording Committee, NSDA Tarheel East District Chair and the Director of Debate for the Dogwood Speech and Debate League.