Pat Festa: Stuttering Activist

There is a lot of silence around stuttering. Many of us who stutter spent years running from it and doing everything possible to hide it…  to “not be found out”.  It was the stigma, how people think about people who stutter, that forced us into hiding.  So, we don’t talk, we switch words and avoidance becomes our operating system.  With some of us, like Pat Festa, our guest today, the light bulb goes off; the realization that we have to become activists for people who stutter, to educate the world about what it means to be a person who stutters in a fluent world.  Pat is our neighbor, from Collegeville, just a few towns over. The beauty of this experience is that Pat, a young adult who stutters, found us, because we at the Nolan Stuttering Foundation have decided to stop hiding and to start educating the world.  Pat is doing some exciting things.  He is a teacher, an actor and about to launch a new program called “Stutter4You”. I’m joined by Pat and my associate John McDermott.  John is on the Board of NSF as well as a Master Sergeant in the US Air force.  Enjoy the podcast!