OUR WORK
Building Vox Vera
When I was searching for a domain name for my burgeoning coaching business, I wanted something short, memorable, trademarkable (once a lawyer, always a lawyer!), and values-aligned. To my delight, one of my very first searches was available, so I snapped it up immediately: www.voxvera.com.
Vox Vera means “true voice.” It’s more than a name—it’s a philosophy. Our work doesn't offer superficial presentation skills, voice gimmicks, or canned gestures. It’s about helping people access their full, real voice, and teaching them to deliver a message that lands—physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
As a leader, it's important to me that Vox Vera retains its integrity and efficacy as we grow. And for me personally, I'm at my happiest and most successful when I embrace my performing arts roots and lead with my openness, artistry, sense of adventure, and curiosity. I will continue to teach, perform, and train, and encourage all Vox Vera trainers to do the same. I completed a Juilliard summer drama intensive in 2024, continue to study voice, Alexander Technique, and various other performance methods, and joined the amazing Ensemble Shakespeare Company as a company member in New York City this year. These experiences keep us fresh and effective as trainers, and our clients deserve teachers who can practice what they preach.
Our launch has been received with tremendous excitement. Savvy leaders and professional development executives know that a higher standard of oral communication skills training is long overdue, and that there aren't enough experts who know what works, know how to teach it, and have actually put their money where their mouth is by honing and practicing their skills in high pressure environments. Leaders, artists, and advocates are longing for a fresh approach to performance skills that doesn't make them smaller and more robotic, but empowers them to be all they can be. So far, our message and approach have resonated with hundreds of lawyers, business leaders, law students, politicians, educators, and non-profit leaders, and we can't wait to train everyone who shares our vision and needs our help.
We believe in what we do, and we believe in our clients. We'll always keep learning and growing, testing our methods in the real world and in top universities. We'll grow as fast as we can, but never so fast that our quality suffers.
We can't wait to see what the future brings, and know that with our collective curiosity, adventure, and wisdom, we will reach great heights and give thousands of people skills that will improve their lives and the lives of others.
If this story resonates with you—or if you’re ready to unlock your own true voice—reach out. We’d be honored to work with you.
Thanks for being part of the journey.
—Paul Marchegiani
Founder/CEO, Vox Vera
A Hollywood Adventure
As a litigator, I liked oral arguments, depositions, persuasive writing, and guiding nervous clients through the process. But I longed for a more creative, flexible work environment than Biglaw litigation could offer at the time.After a year of interviewing, I landed a coveted in-house position at NBCUniversal, leaving litigation entirely to draft and negotiate talent and rights contracts in the Television Contracts Group, and moving to LA with my partner to pursue this new career.
NBC was the perfect place to learn the fundamentals of Hollywood dealmaking. I received excellent training from great mentors (also former Biglaw attorneys), and cut my teeth negotiating contracts for hit shows like The Office, America's Got Talent, The Biggest Loser, Last Comic Standing, Royal Pains, and Suits. The Hollywood life was exciting as well, taking friends and family on the golf cart around the Universal backlot, becoming an Emmys voter, and going to screenings, parties in the hills, and glamorous awards ceremonies. I quickly became good at my job, and was promoted through the ranks to Senior Counsel, and then Director, Business Affairs during the heyday of Bravo, Oxygen, Style, E!, and Esquire networks. Now I wasn't just drafting contracts, but negotiating deals and helping manage budgets for unscripted shows like Southern Charm and The Style Awards, and even working backstage at New York Fashion Week.
I was also learning how to communicate at a higher level. I understood the importance of listening in a negotiation, conveying information tactfully, and speaking with knowledge, authenticity, and confidence. Seeing how a slight hesitation or vocal quiver might blow a deal, and how to give and receive frustrating news without losing one's cool.
After six years at NBCU, I accepted an offer to start a new, standalone business affairs department at the post-Disney, post-Weinstein Miramax. As VP, Business Affairs, I built the company's first post-Disney BA team, establishing dealmaking parameters, financial terms, and internal processes, overseeing rights analysis for properties like Chicago, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Paris Is Burning, and the Halloween franchise, managing outside counsel, and negotiating deals for TV and film—eventually serving as a creative point for Miramax's live stage development efforts before moving to Warner Bros. in 2016.
At Warners, I worked closely with some of the top producers and executives in Hollywood, negotiating a high volume of talent, development, production, rights, and first-run license deals for TV shows and documentaries, including: You (Netflix); The Flight Attendant, PLL: Original Sin, Equal (HBOMax); Night Court (NBC); The Right Stuff (Disney+); Pivoting, A Christmas Story: Live! (Fox); Pretty Little Liars, The Perfectionists, Famous in Love (Freeform); Krypton (SyFy); Helter Skelter (EPIX); and The Waltons’ Homecoming (CW). I was in weekly meetings reporting on projects to the head of the studio, learning how tough decisions were made, seeing how to spot and manage high pressure negotiation tactics from a mile away, and understanding the practical impact of communication skills in a high-stakes, team environment with executives, talent, and talent reps at the top of their game.
Then, after nearly six years, I took a senior BA executive role at Amazon Studios and Prime Video, excited to join a global tech leader with a reputation for big swings and innovation. I was quickly promoted to lead a cross-functional deal team, closing high-stakes agreements for video game rights, overall deals with A-list actors and production companies, and securing book rights for internationally acclaimed authors. The role sharpened my leadership skills, deepened my understanding of strategic communications in Big Tech, and gave me a front-row seat to the evolving intersection of technology, media, and how human connection, if we're smart, might play a part in it.
Paul's Story
Three fundamental values fueled me on the journey to Vox Vera: adventure, curiosity, and wisdom.
A sense of adventure and desire to learn about the world around us, and what it means to be human.
A love of different perspectives and an eagerness to gain wisdom through various lenses: science, art, culture, philosophy, music, law, the humanities, and business.
Curiosity about what it takes to truly be present with one another. Why certain points land while others don't. How we can stay purposeful, courageous, humane, and authentic—even when it's difficult.
Continue below for the full story, or click here to jump to the story of our logo.
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A Curious Spirit
As the Founder and CEO of Vox Vera, I’ve been asking "why" since I was a kid growing up in Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Launching Vox Vera decades later felt like the natural outcome of a lifelong quest.
Shakespeare, music, and nature were the first things to light me up. The first show my parents took me to see was a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Berkeley, California when I was 3. I remember loving the costumes, sets, and voices, but what stuck with me the most was the energy and playfulness: that electric interaction between the actors and the audience.
Just a few years later, I was starring in my first play and singing, eventually getting leads in school shows, and performing as a core member of our high school's award-winning jazz choir (singing at various festivals, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, and even touring Australia). At 17, I was belting jazz standards in clubs at night, acing physics and social studies classes by day, and quietly memorizing Shakespeare monologues on weekends. I wanted to continue studying music and eventually go to law school, but in retrospect, I wasn’t trying to become a performer or a lawyer—I was just trying to figure out how the world worked, and how people connect in a space. How the right words can shift a room. How false notes can fall flat. How a phrase can become a force.
That curiosity followed me to Northwestern, where I earned dual bachelor degrees in history and voice & opera. I split my time between lecture halls and rehearsal rooms—studying the humanities, delving into world music traditions, learning the physiology of the voice, singing French, German, and Italian arias and art songs, and taking top-level acting classes through the musical theatre certificate program.
My senior year, I had my first professional AGMA union job as a singer, performing with the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Over the next three years at Berkeley Law, I became a leading voice in other ways, serving on Moot Court Board, working as a Written and Oral Advocacy TA, volunteering as a law school representative on the U.C. Berkeley graduate assembly, and winning the ATLA Western Regional championships as a member of the law school's mock trial team. I was on a path to use my voice as a litigator, and excited to put it to use in the world.
Our Logo
Vox Vera's logo draws inspiration from the aegis that adorned Athena's breastplate and shield in Greek mythology. More than symbolizing the power to turn others to stone (not a best practice for audience engagement!), the open-mouthed gorgoneion of Medusa was thought to serve as a protective force: a concentrated emblem of power, freedom, truth, and courage—so powerful that neither Apollo’s spear nor Zeus’s thunderbolt could penetrate it.
For us at Vox Vera, the aegis—confidently exhaling at the center of Athena’s chest above the heart and lungs—reminds us of the power of the breath and the courage to release one's authentic, powerful, true voice out into the world.
Cultivating Knowledge
After earning my J.D., I worked for five years as a Biglaw litigator in San Francisco, first at Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe, working on securities, contract, civil rights pro bono, antitrust, and white collar cases (including a complete federal bench trial acquittal of a Fortune 50 CFO wrongly accused of securities fraud), then at Morrison & Foerster, working on a high-profile software IP case, multiple breach of contract cases, and writing an international law amicus brief for civil rights litigation before the California Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, I sang in the bass section of the world-renowned San Francisco Symphony Chorus, a blissful 2002-08 journey working with the world's greatest musicians and conductors, including Michael Tilson-Thomas, Kurt Masur, Wynton Marsalis, Jane Glover, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, and our brilliant chorus director, Vance George. Among the highlights were recording a Mahler 2, filming a "Keeping Score" for PBS on Charles Ives, singing more Handel Messiahs and Beethoven's 9ths than I can count, world premiering some wild new pieces, and performing a Verdi Requiem for the ages with top soloists from the opera world.
At the firm, I gained a tremendous work ethic that instilled attention to detail, rigorous analysis, client service, and clarity in communication. Then, once I changed into my tuxedo to go to Davies Hall to perform, I learned the artistry of performance from the best musicians in the world, fine-tuning my sense of musicality, rhythm, and dynamics, and gaining a visceral sense of how certain moments can move an audience to joy or tears.
By my mid 20s, I had achieved my dreams of working as a lawyer at a prestigious firm in San Francisco while singing with the SF Symphony Chorus on the side. But I knew there was more for me than lawyering at a big firm. And that's when Hollywood beckoned.
The Show Must Go On
But I was never satisfied with a strictly corporate career. While working as a Hollywood dealmaker, I also took advantage of the creative performance opportunities LA had to offer. I workshopped musicals, performed with celebrities in regional theatre, sang jazz solos at the Dresden Lounge with Marty & Elayne, and performed in two LA Opera seasons (singing in the chorus of both The Flying Dutchman and Billy Budd, with James Conlon conducting, and Placido Domingo wishing us well before taking the stage).
I also became deeply passionate about—and eventually skilled at—the art of improvisation, something I had briefly explored at Studio ACT in San Francisco. I studied with some of the country's best teachers at The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, Sills/Spolin, and Impro Theatre, performed regularly in LA, and took a musical improv class at The Second City in Chicago.
All of these experiences, along with the on-camera, voice, and musical theatre training I've explored, helped deepen my understanding of storytelling, breath, presence, and ensemble at a world-class level, teaching me that the best communication isn’t just shiny and polished on the surface—it’s also grounded, dynamic, and alive.
The Big Experiment
While working at Warner Bros., I began to get the itch for teaching again. I had previously taught a couple entertainment law classes at Berkeley Law, as well as a television law class I developed for Chapman, but this time I wanted to develop and teach a class that was more true to my values and passions.
I wanted to convey the lessons I had learned as a performer and a practicing attorney to law students that were looking to develop their confidence as speakers and hone their voice as advocates. So I drew up a syllabus on a "Presence: Performance Skills for Lawyers" course, and sent it out to top law schools. To my delight, the University of Chicago was interested in the class, inviting me to teach it for Fall 2020 me to teach it.
The course blended everything I’d learned from the courtroom to the rehearsal room, and the student response was overwhelmingly positive. Based on its success, I was invited back to teach again at U. Chicago for several years, and eventually developed new public speaking and communications skills courses for Stanford Law School and Berkeley Law, adapting each course's content to meet both the moment and each institution's unique needs. Across each program, the feedback has been consistently stellar, with long waitlists each time I teach, confirming that legal minds crave not just semantic knowledge but the ability to embody it with clarity, conviction, and humanity.
I knew I was on to something unique, and that my two seemingly disparate paths finally made sense. And most importantly, through my teaching, I saw that—for perhaps the first time in my career—what I loved doing most could also help other people.
Coaching Wisdom
By 2022, my mission was clear, and I knew I had to keep developing my knowledge and skills as a teacher and coach of public speaking, presence, and communication. I sought out and was invited to study directly with voice, Shakespeare, and presence legend Patsy Rodenburg in Europe, whom I had learned about during my improvisation work at Impro Theatre, and who had been gracious enough to speak with me as I prepared for and taught my first University of Chicago class in 2020.
Patsy's training—which I slotted in during breaks from Warners and Amazon—was rigorous, immersive, physical, intellectually stimulating, and deeply affirming. I then TA-ed two workshops for Patsy in London in 2024 and became a certified Patsy Rodenburg Associate, licensed by her to teach her method. I learned not just the craft of speaking and delivering heightened text from Patsy, but how to coach it, and the integrity, ethos, and insight behind it. Her influence on me remains huge, and I cherish her trust and belief in me as I chart my own path.
This period marked the true beginning of my coaching journey—working consistently with lawyers, leaders, and performers to access a deeper level of presence and power. I was ready to take the leap and start my next—and most important—chapter.
