Ileana Quirch

In Spanish: Neutral Latin American Cuban Castillian (from Spain) Argentinian Mexican In English: Neutral North American Southern Accent British Accent

Over the past 20 years or so, I have been blessed to be able to earn my living, or a good part of it, by doing what I love to do: voice overs, announcing, DJ, radio and tv hostess and voice acting. It all started when I moved to Miami in 1986 and a cable Spanish station was looking for its next announcer. Since they wanted a female, I went to audition and got the job. It just so happened that a Cuban renowned radio announcer, Ms. Aleida Leal, had her own show at the station, and at the same time also worked at WQBA radio. So, when her boss asked if she knew of any young, fresh talent to do commercials at the radio station, she suggested me and so I started at WQBA as well. It wasn't long before the programming director of WQBA's FM counterpart, Super Q, asked me to start doing a radio shift there as well. And before I knew it,in 1988, Univision was calling me to be the female announcer of their next project: "TV Mujer". Not only was I the announcer, eventually I became their artistic coordinator and their artistic segment producer. The show lasted three years and so I went back to radio. I worked the drive-in or, morning shift at FM 92 and was the promotions and psa announcer for channel 23 (local affiliate of Univision). Later on, through a producer of channel 23's, I learned that there was a new cable channel reaching all of Latin America and they were looking for a fresh female voice for the network; that's how I became the announcer at Gems Television (it has now become part of Telemundo). In time, another prestigious network, MGM, wanted to expand to Latin America and thus MGM Latin America was born. A producer with whom I'd worked at channel 23 was their production manager and she called me to announce exclusively for their newest show: "Casa Club". The network also contracted my dubbing services for some of the North America programming that was going to be shown in Latin America. Throughout these years I was also doing commercial announcing (on and off camera) on my own with companies such as Revlon, Pantene, Wendy's, JC Penny, McDonalds, Toys "R" Us, Polaroid, Gerber, Pepsi, and Fruit of the Loom, among others. I also did some copywriting and all of the translations (English to Spanish)for Wendy's. In October of 1999, I had to move back to Houston because of my father's health and I worked with Hispanic Communications as a DJ at their radio station, K-LOVE (now affiliated with Univision). I graduated with honors in three years from Houston Baptist University with a double major: Communications and Spanish. Aside from this, I took voice lessons for eight years with Ms. Betty Gardner of the Houston Grand Opera. Since childhood, I have been involved in the performing arts because I'm a singer and actress as well. During my years in Miami, I also performed on the stage with prestigious companies such as Prolirica, Grateli and the Casanova company, belonging to Cuba's most renowned theater director, Maria Julia Casanova. I am happy to say that I now have my own home studio! I got it about two weeks ago. I have the Presonus Studio One 3 program through which I record. I can edit and add special effects. The program offers much more, but I'm just learning about all its features so I can do pre and post production in the near future. Aside from all that I've mentioned so far, I worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center for over three years as a medical interpreter/translator. Afterwards I worked for Texas Children's Hospital in the same capacity. I presently work for an orthodontic manufacturing company as assistant manager. This field is not entirely new to me since my father was a doctor and my grandmother was an OR nurse. In addition, I worked with my father in his practice for about seven years before moving to Miami to pursue my dream. For a brief time in Miami I worked as a radio news reporter at Cox Communications. This opened up journalistic writing and editing for me.