Lisa Biggs: The Unravelling of a Voice Over Reputation

 

On December 21st, 2023, the following post appeared on the VOcation Facebook Group.

Soon after that, demo producer and coach was identified by multiple people on the VOcation Facebook Group as Lisa Biggs, and the original poster has come forward and identified herself as Carin Gilfry.

Earlier in November of 2023, a group of anonymous voice actors penned a letter to the National Association of Voice Actors detailing their allegations, which in some cases date back possibly as far as a decade.

As many as 100 people now allege that Lisa Biggs violated agreements she made with them.

The allegations include the following;

  • Multiple alleged victims say they purchased a two demo package and have never received the second demo.

  • Several report instances of their children doing paid work and not getting paid.

  • Carin Gilfry herself says she taught a class for Lisa Biggs in March of 2019 and had yet to be paid as of December 2023.

  • Several people alleged the reuse of scripts when original scripts were promised in demos across multiple voice actors without their consent or knowledge.

  • One voice actor claims that not only did Lisa Biggs reuse a script from her demo on another voice actor's demo, but Biggs reused the precise audio from the voice actor’s own daughter on another voice actor's demo without her or her daughter's knowledge or consent.

Meanwhile, that group of anonymous voice actors, who reached out to NAVA in December of 2023 has organized. They now call themselves Vocal Victims. They have obtained legal representation and are initiating litigation. Three of the alleged victims have stepped forward to tell their stories.

Alessandra Levy:

Hi, my name is Alessandra Levy. I'm based in Los Angeles, California, and I am a voice actor and musician.

Michelle Sellers:

Michelle Sellers from Charlotte, North Carolina, and I'm a relatively new voice actor.

Percy Blythe:

I'm Percy Blithe. I am from Los Angeles, California, and I'm a voice actor.

Paul Schmidt:

How did you meet Lisa Biggs? How were you first exposed to her?

Michelle Sellers:

I had been doing a lot of research before I started ever jumping into actually being in classes or coaching or anything like that. I did a lot of online free classes that were out there and YouTube and Facebook forums. I joined as many of them as I could, and I was looking for recommendations of coaches that are either taking new students or close by where I might even be able to meet up with them. Well, at the time she was in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I had seen so many people recommend her and I was really interested in animation and even talking toys when she was highly recommended for that.

So I started off just taking her online classes that she had prerecorded so I could watch and get to know her. And then she had some free classes and I joined in on those. They seemed to go really well. I liked the way she interacted with people. So I did do two coaching sessions with her. And that went well too. I had no problem with scheduling. She came in on time and she made me comfortable. I felt like we clicked. I mean, it's so much so that we were talking about meeting up to go to our favorite restaurant that we both enjoyed

Percy Blythe:

One of my coaches recommended that I work with her because she knew that I was very much looking to do more work related to kids products, toys, games, et cetera, and she said, "Well, have you ever heard of Lisa Biggs? That's pretty much her specialty." And I said, "No." And I looked her up. She had some pretty decently priced coaching groups every week. And I joined and things were great. There were a few other people who were already in there who came regularly it seemed. It all went as a coaching session would for a group.

Alessandra Levy:

I believe it was in 2019 in New York City. That's where I'm originally from. And I believe that Voice Actors of NYC had a class with her, an in-person class put on, and I think it was all about animation and toys. Yeah, it was a class on that, so that's how I first was introduced to her. So, 2019.

Paul Schmidt:

Okay. Was that class recommended to you or do you remember how you found that class?

Alessandra Levy:

I think I just was really plugged into the Voice Actors of NYC group on Facebook, and I think there would just be events every couple of months. Yeah, so it was in there and I was like, "Oh, this is cool. This is an area that I'm not really familiar with in voiceover. I'd love to check it out, see what it's all about." And I took the class.

Paul Schmidt:

And what was your impression of that class, and more importantly, of Lisa herself?

Alessandra Levy:

Yeah, well, in 2019 I would say that was my first year, my first year of voiceover and my first full-time year all in one. So I was still very, very in the beginning stages of my career. And so I didn't really know anything about her. I just saw that she was teaching about voiceover for toys and games and animation. And I was very interested, so I was like, "Okay, I'm going to take this class." My impression of her was she seemed knowledgeable and obviously it was put on by Voice Actors of NYC, who I trust. And so-

Paul Schmidt:

And so you take that class, what happens next?

Alessandra Levy:

I take that class and I stay in touch with her. I found her to be very sweet and welcoming and a very kind person who was willing to share a lot of information and advice. And so I kept into contact with her and then saw that she also cast things on her own. And so I would send in auditions for things. booked some good things through her. I booked a Lego Princess, Disney kind of thing commercial with her and booked some other jobs over I'd say from 2019 until 2022.

Paul Schmidt:

And so for three years you build a really solid professional relationship together, right?

Michelle Sellers:

Yeah, I felt very comfortable with her, so I decided that I would go on and do more and do my demo with her. The first demo session went well. We were on time. No problem getting logged on to her. We went over the kind of characters that I was wanting to see on the demo. And since she'd already done a character assessment previously, she kind of knew what I was doing. So we picked, what I thought, we picked some characters that I wanted to do. And then we decided to meet later on once she got the scripts, all set, because she was going to write them for me, which on her website she did say that they would be writing the scripts specifically for me and they'd be current, that type of thing.

Paul Schmidt:

But cracks in these relationships eventually began to form.

Michelle Sellers:

There was a couple times we were supposed to meet and it got delayed from different excuses. And I knew she was in the point... She was getting married and moving out of state. And then there's all those problems that come up. So every time she told me an excuse, I didn't doubt that she was either busy or something like that happened. It did happen a lot and it was starting to get frustrating. And that's-

Paul Schmidt:

How many times would you say she postponed or rescheduled?

Michelle Sellers:

I would say regarding the demo, it was probably at least close to 10 times.

Paul Schmidt:

Were there any sort of scheduling issues with those group workouts?

Percy Blythe:

At first, no. They happened pretty consistently. Similarly, she did these free laughter yoga classes every Monday morning. And that, I went to about once or twice, and then it started skipping. Basically, I wasn't very suspicious in the beginning because a lot of people, teachers might have instances where, "Oh, I'm sorry, this thing happened last minute. I had to cancel." But then it started happening more and more and more as time went on.

Paul Schmidt:

And was this a subscription model or were you paying for each class individually or how did that work?

Percy Blythe:

It was each class individually. The morning yoga was free, but the group calls cost about 27.50. So basically, half the prices of most of the group workouts that I've done.

Paul Schmidt:

Right. And when they were rescheduled, did they happen? When they didn't happen, did you get a refund?

Percy Blythe:

There were about one or two times that it didn't happen. I actually don't recall if I got a refund. I think I assumed I would and then didn't check back on it because it was money, but it wasn't a substantial amount enough where I had to be like, "Where is it now?"

Paul Schmidt:

So you took the workouts for quite a while. And then tell me about how that progressed to the point that you now need to talk about your experience with Lisa Biggs.

Percy Blythe:

Back in September, I started doing workouts with her in about July. And then in September, I decided that I wanted to do a kid's K-12 media/e-learning toy demo thing. She would send out a lot of 2 for 1 demo, emails, a lot of promos, and I took one that was, I think maybe 200 or $300 off a regular demo, and it was a single demo.

So we had plans, we had started working on it. There were a lot of delays due to family issues. My favorite one was once she said that she had left her phone at home because she was selling candied apples outside of her sister-in-law's store, and I was like, "Oh, so you missed our session that I cleared my schedule for because of that.' And that happened very frequently. We would schedule times to do it later, it never happened. She wouldn't ghost me, but she would reply within a day or two. And then after the family stuff happened, it was weeks and weeks and weeks. So scripts were written. They sounded kind of like they could have been written by AI. They weren't very good for my demo. It was December and we still had not scheduled a reporting session. Just weeks of no answering. T

Alessandra Levy:

There was one job I did with her in 2020 around October. When it was getting time to talk about invoicing and everything, she had mentioned making a few demos for me. And so, one of them I think was like K-12 sort of e-learning for kids content, which as we know, non-broadcast can be a really nice foundation of a voiceover career, so I thought, "Oh, that could be great. Informational e-learning for kids." And then another one that would be toys and games. So she was willing to do those two demos and I asked her how much it would be, and she was like, "Oh, well, for the job that you just did, we can call it even." So in my mind, I was like, "Okay, that sounds fine, because then I'm not paying out of pocket." It's like I did this job, it equals out to the two demos she was going to make for me. So I mean, still at this time I'm thinking, "Okay, that makes sense. Why not?" Almost like not a barter system, but like, you know.

Paul Schmidt:

And give me an idea, how much were you to be paid from that job?

Alessandra Levy:

I want to say maybe 650 or 700.

Paul Schmidt:

Okay. And so she's offering in exchange for that money, she would instead give you two demos?

Alessandra Levy:

Yeah.

Paul Schmidt:

Okay.

Alessandra Levy:

I think from the time that we had made that agreement, which was October 2020, I don't think I got my finished demos until October 2022.

Paul Schmidt:

I'm sorry. Did you say it took two years to get those finished demos?

Alessandra Levy:

I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I'd have to go back, but it was either the following year or I think the following two. I do remember when sort of this story all came out and there were almost a hundred of us who had similar stories. I remember it's almost like I forgot that that happened. And then when I went back and looked and I looked at all the emails when I would follow up and say, "Hey, I know we had our prep session. When are we going to record?" I feel like there was a lot of one-sided emails where I would reach out and then there'd be radio silence. I'd maybe snooze the email to my inbox for another couple of weeks and then reach out again, and then kind of similar thing. Yeah, so didn't get those for I think two years.

Michelle Sellers:

She did meet with me several different times to go over progression, but those meetings were always postponed. So there was-

Alessandra Levy:

So when-

Michelle Sellers:

Oh, go ahead.

Paul Schmidt:

When does it start to dawn on you that maybe you are getting the runaround?

Michelle Sellers:

It was closer to probably about five excuses in. It was more like, "Okay, maybe she's flaky." She talked about how she has ADHD and sometimes it's hard for her to manage. So I was thinking, "Okay, so maybe she's just overbooked or scatterbrained and not staying on top of it." And that kind of hit me around halfway through those excuses.

Near the end, I was getting really frustrated and I just didn't really believe any of the excuses she was giving me. A lot of times she just wouldn't get back to me at all, a lot of the emails that I would send. But we did eventually get the scripts. And when I looked at the scripts, I was confused because they weren't the type of characters that we had talked about or what I even thought would've been great for me, but I was like, "Well, okay, she's a pro. She's been in this for over 20 years. Maybe she saw something in me that I didn't know I had. And maybe she didn't think the things that I wanted on there were something I could do."

So I told her that I really wanted the other characters and she said, "Okay, we're going to have enough time that I can write you those and then we can go back and record those later too. Let's just focus on these." So we did. The scripts were... They were not what I wanted, but they were okay I guess from my standpoint being newish. I mean, one of them had a British accent, and I can't do a British accent. I can do a very poor British accent if it was supposed to be a funny, comical version. But I gave it a try. That's out there that she recorded. We recorded everything, and then she's like, "Okay, I'll get back to you within a month and then we'll go over how it sounds."

She got back to me later than a month because we had to postpone a couple of times. And once we did, she hadn't finished editing or putting any of it together. She kind of just had the dry version. So we listened to those and she's like, "Okay, I'll get back to you. We're going to put these together. I'm going to finish the sound," all that kind of stuff. And that took a lot longer too.

Finally, she got back to me with what she said was done, but she hadn't put them together. She had all but three of them were produced, but they weren't organized and ready to go for the demo. So we went through it live and she told me where she's putting them and she was editing out the ends of them to make them line up better and sound better as we went. And then she's like, "Okay, the last three I don't have finished. So this is just a preliminary demo. Just let's take this so you can run with it and get started and I'll give you the final one next week."

So next week came and gone nothing. And from that point, that was when I was definitely not trusting her getting back to me. I would consistently give myself a reminder weekly so that I could contact her and remind her like, "Where are these? I would like to have a finished demo. And are we going to get back to the scripts so that I can have the variety in my demo that we talked about?"

And as soon as she gave them to me, I posted it because I was like, "Okay, I want to get this out there. I want to try to start working with it." And within an hour, I had two people that messaged me asking, "Did Lisa Biggs do your demo?" And I didn't think anything of it. I said, "Yeah." And then one of them got back to me and said, "You have the exact same identical demo as me." So she sent it over to me and I listened to it. Not only are they the same exact word for word scripts, but the direction she gave to both of us was identical, the way that we both took the scripts and recorded them. And they were all in the same exact order as well. The only difference was she had those last three scripts that I did not have finished and sent to me, but I did record those exact same scripts that were also on her demo.

This I also approached her about, and I emailed her immediately when I found it out, as did the other actor. And we had never heard anything from her on that. No response at all, the fact that she was promised us original demos and we have somebody else's identical. And then when all of this started coming out, we found other people who had, not the entire demo, but bits and pieces of our demo identical on theirs. So there's several other people out there.

And more recently, I started wondering if she even wrote those original scripts. And so I started googling them, the text of it and everything. I found out not a single one was credited to her. Most of them were at least five years old and were either on Twitter, a joke website, a memes. And one was from a Disney movie from 2001 called Recess. They were identical word for word. So not only did she not make them unique or write them herself, but they weren't even current being back to 2001.

Paul Schmidt:

So the demo process for you from the day you said, "I'm in. I want to do this" to the day that you got what ultimately was an incomplete demo, how long was that process?

Michelle Sellers:

I started in May of 2022, and I got the incomplete demo in February of '23.

Percy Blythe:

The suspicions really started though in November where I asked if my friend had heard from Lisa. She said that she was texting her last night without getting replies, that maybe she's just flaky this and that. And then her suspicions were like, "I don't want to accuse her of being a liar or a scammer, but it seems that she hasn't replied for a while and she owed my friend a second demo." And then I was going to schedule or attempt to schedule a recording session in the week that everything came about, and I got multiple texts from my friend saying, "Oh my God, I knew it. Go to this group. They're talking about someone without using their name, but it sounds just like Lisa." And I saw it and I was like, "Oh my God. She was right all along. This was just everyone was being fed these same excuses for years. Somehow she was only just being revealed now. "It was the most unbelievable thing I'd ever experienced, like being caught in the middle of some weird conspiracy almost, but it was real.

Paul Schmidt:

So if I have this right, you spent four months with Lisa Biggs working on your demo. Was there ever a recording session scheduled?

Percy Blythe:

No, I was in the process of doing it that very week.

Paul Schmidt:

Does that mean you were just going on on your own scheduling that or were you working with Lisa to get that scheduled coordinating with her?

Percy Blythe:

Attempting to emailing her about potential times. Not getting responses, wondering when she'd follow up. But that was the next step. We had gotten the scripts together. I don't remember if I had rehearsed them with her specifically, but I'd rehearsed them myself, and it was time to record. I really, really wanted it done, at least recorded by the new year so I could have it going into 2024, start marketing with it, expanding my business, et cetera. It was extremely disappointing not to get it by then, but to then find out like, "Oh, well, at least it'll make sense now," felt a little more validating on my part.

Paul Schmidt:

So your demo experience was four months long. Ultimately, no recording session was ever scheduled. So I have to assume that you never received a demo since you never recorded one. How much did you pay for that demo?

Percy Blythe:

I paid a deposit of $375.

Paul Schmidt:

And the total demo price would have been?

Percy Blythe:

I believe 750.

Paul Schmidt:

And you have received any refunds so far?

Percy Blythe:

Thankfully, I have. I wrote her a very stern email, which is very out of character for me. But I knew that this was a serious situation and I was hoping because I hadn't recorded the demo that I would get it back, but I wasn't sure because a lot of times deposits aren't refundable. But without question following up, at the same time as many others, she sent me my refund in full. And it was legit. Went through all that. I'm very lucky that that was the case because although other people had their demos done, it depends on your standard, but they don't consider them usable because they are copied from other people's demos, whether written by Lisa or others who weren't even working with Lisa or tweets online or episodes of TV shows.

Alessandra Levy:

I think for me, the alarm bells started going off when I did a job in October 2022 and then November and December 2022, and then I just didn't receive payment for longer than usual. And that's when I think I started questioning things.

Paul Schmidt:

So the first job, she offered to pay you on demos?

Alessandra Levy:

Yeah.

Paul Schmidt:

That process took two years?

Alessandra Levy:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Schmidt:

You got those demos in October of '22, correct?

Alessandra Levy:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Schmidt:

And then in October and November of '22, you also did additional work for her?

Alessandra Levy:

Yeah, so October '22, November '22 and December '22, I had done three jobs.

Paul Schmidt:

Three jobs.

Alessandra Levy:

Two of which were for the same show. So what I did was I thought about some people that I also knew that had this kind of working relationship with her where they would be hired by her, and I just reached out to them as friends and was like, "Hey, remember we were on that thing together in November of 2022? Did you ever get paid for that?"

"No. You didn't either?"

"Oh, no." So that's when I started going, "Okay, this isn't just a "me" thing. And then we got the email that she was filing bankruptcy, and I was like, "Well, I'll kiss that money goodbye" because I was like, "I'm definitely not getting paid now." I mean, I had kind of written it off that I was going to get paid. I was like, "I guess this isn't happening." Because I would follow up and then I'd get nothing. And then in April, a bunch of us, which I found out later, a bunch of us got this email about a family member stealing a large amount of money from her. I followed up again and again.

Paul Schmidt:

And did you ultimately receive payment for those jobs?

Alessandra Levy:

I did, but it took over a year and it took the story breaking for it to happen.

Paul Schmidt:

So it took up until December of '23 for you to get paid?

Alessandra Levy:

I think I might've been paid in January 24.

Paul Schmidt:

Now, it would be very easy to assume that the alleged victims simply didn't do their homework, but that's not the case. As we've heard, Lisa Biggs had had a solid reputation as a voice actor, demo producer, and coach, and in fact has a large portion of her clientele who have very positive things to say about her. The sad part is, for these and many of the alleged victims, due diligence wasn't enough to get the job done.

Percy Blythe:

Everything seemed fine. But in general, going forward, the best thing to do would be to vet these coaches, ask if other people have worked with them. There are plenty of Facebook groups with other voice actors who'll be happy to tell you yes or no. And being able to do that directly is what would've helped the situation not get as far as it did, the lack of communication between others.

Again, there's no blame to be had in this situation. I don't think anyone should blame the victims. I think it's not only unproductive, but it makes it out to be like we didn't do our work. Which we did, but we didn't realize just how much more work we could have done. And now we'll be more careful next time, ask other people, take a look at... I mean, really honestly, it comes down to asking other people, looking at their credentials of course. But someone like Lisa had great credentials. She had a lot of work that she'd done in the past that was legitimate and had worked with people who also consider her legitimate.

The best thing to do is just keep in touch with others. And honestly, that's been one of the greatest things that have come out of this whole ordeal, is people being able to connect to others and help spread awareness not just of this, but even of other things that are suspicious. And hopefully going forward that'll be a behavior that we can continue.

Alessandra Levy:

I think part of the reason why I didn't look into it for so long is because I think Lisa is very skilled at making people feel like they're her friends. And I think it's easy when you feel... I mean now looking back, it feels like maybe some manipulation there. One would hope that now that in our small little group of voice actors, that we've realized, "Okay, this is not just a one person thing. This is affecting almost a hundred people and maybe even more that aren't on social media or didn't know it broke," that kind of thing.

I think the thing that makes me worried is that it took so many years for people to talk about it. Had I known... I mean, I heard stories of people saying, this has been happening since 2015, so that's before I was even in the industry. So in my mind, of course, my first thing is, "Okay, well how come..." I mean, I'm not blaming anyone, but I wonder why this never came out before or why no one was talking about it before? Because if that were the case, then people would've been warning people and she probably would've never taught that class in 2018 or 2019 whenever that was.

Paul Schmidt:

Having been through this experience, Alessandra, do you, in your heart of hearts, believe that there was any malice on the part of Lisa Biggs that she was intentionally stealing from people? Or do you think this was just someone who may not be very good at business, may be some might say a bit flaky? Which side of the fence do you come down on with Lisa?

Alessandra Levy:

Yeah, I would say I have a hard time believing it's coming from an evil place. I mean, I don't know. I could be wrong. I think it's a lack of organization. I think it's not really running a business very well. I think it's unprofessional. I think it's more of leaning towards those directions versus purposefully trying to scam people.

I mean, although obviously when the story broke and I started hearing more stories of people having the same demos, that's a really bad look. Hearing that other people, it took them so many times of hounding her to finally get things on the books, for me it just screams being unorganized and not really having a good business sense. She probably could have used a bunch of assistants or people that would help her with that kind of stuff. So I lean more towards that.

I mean, it is kind of hard when you hear there was some mothers that came forward too talking about their kids having similar experiences, and that was a little bit harder to swallow for me. I mean, I'm an adult. I'm in my 30s. I can handle someone not paying me. I mean, it sucks, but eventually she did pay me. But just sort of thinking like, "Okay, well maybe I'll have to write that off as a loss," that kind of thing. It wasn't really a big deal to me. I mean, it sucks, but it's not the end of the world and I'm thinking like, "What about the moms that came forward and their poor kids or trying to get into... Or they're maybe just doing voiceover for fun?" And I think for me that kind of maybe, I don't want to say tip the scale in the other direction, but definitely made me think like, "Oh, how could you do this to kids?", you know?

Paul Schmidt:

In December of last year, Biggs announced that she would be merging with another production company. Now, not only has that announcement disappeared from her site, dreambig.com, but as of January 2024, the entire site has been taken down. Since then, Biggs has told several of the affected actors that she has declared bankruptcy.

January 15th, 2024 update from Lisa. "After carefully considering and exploring various options, as of this date, Dream Big LLC is in the process of being dissolved, and I am filing for business bankruptcy. This email is to let you know that I'm aware of the money that you were owed and the amount has been factored into the bankruptcy proceedings. Once my business assets are liquidated, I will send you a timetable for repayment. I'll be sure to reach out to you on or before February 8th, 2024 with an update about the status. Sincerely, Lisa Biggs." And while, as you heard in this video we found several cases of refunds being issued in part and in whole, many of the alleged victims have not been made whole.

Biggs is also the owner and primary organizer of Voxy Summit, an annual conference for female voice actors. This year, 2024, Voxy Summit was scheduled for January 26th through the 28th at the Graduate hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. As of late December of 2023, the Graduate hotel in Nashville, Tennessee had no such record of any such event being booked at the hotel. Soon after, Biggs announced on her website that Voxy Summit has been canceled. Now, tickets for Voxy Summit were $650. And at the time again that we're filming this, it's not clear that women who bought tickets for Voxy Summit have been or will be issued refunds.

I reached out to Lisa Biggs in January for a response. I reached out a second time days ago and have yet to receive any response from Lisa Biggs. Her coaching, demo production, and her personal voice oversight have all been taken down. If any of these allegations are true, and let's be clear, at this point they are just allegations, but if they're true, then there is a clear pattern of bad business behavior stretching back the better part of a decade.

As for any response at all, remember Carin Gilfry who claimed that she taught a class for Lisa in March of 2019 and had never been paid? Lisa told her, "I suck at anything related to accounting and must have overlooked it." Whether there was any intent by Lisa Biggs to deceive or whether there was any illegal or fraudulent activity has yet to be determined. But at the very minimum, what we are seeing is the disintegration of a formerly sterling reputation as a voice actor, demo producer, and coach before our very eyes, either by circumstances beyond her control or otherwise. Either way, it's very concerning and deeply saddening.

Now, whether or not the allegations have any merit or not, Bigg's reputation and the reputation of all coaches in this business has been sullied. When one of us betrays trust, we all suffer. Our industry has to repair and maintain that trust. Coaches need to be completely transparent and deliver on their agreements. Voice actors, yes, do need to do their homework and due diligence. And yes, even when that happens, unethical people will still take advantage. We need to follow the lead of these alleged victims and speak up when it happens. It's the only way we truly have to keep each other and this industry accountable. Now, in the end, dishonest service providers, thank God, are few and far between. Let's make sure that stories like this help us all keep it that way.

If you feel you have a claim to make against Biggs, NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, has set up a Google form to register your claim, and that link is in the description below. Vocal Victims has legal representation, and those with valid claims can be added to the list for legal representation as well. You can also reach out to this email address, reporting@navavoices.org. That's reporting@navavoices.org. And that's a secure email address that goes only to NAVA President Tim Friedlander.

And finally, I'd love to hear your comments. Please feel free to post them below. The more we talk openly, rationally, and sometimes courageously, the stronger and better industry we will have for all of us. If you found value in this video, please like, subscribe, ring the notification bell. And as always, thanks for your support.