Kala began singing as a toddler, and took up the piano at age four and the bassoon at age ten (her grandpa played first bassoon in the Met orchestra for 40 years!) Kala attended schools in Germany and England as a child, spent a year in Barcelona during high school, and went on to attend Barnard College of Columbia University fiercely determined not to study music. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with Highest Honors in Political Science … and with a minor in Music. Recruited for her language abilities, she spent two years working for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC. During this time, however, she realized she could not turn her back on her lifelong love of classical singing, and entered The Boston Conservatory, receiving a Master of Music Degree in Opera Performance. Since then she has performed in venues throughout the United States and Europe and still actively pursues singing opportunities. She has just completed a Graduate Certificate in Spanish-English translation through New York University. Kala currently also works full-time at Smartling, Inc. a technology start-up that builds custom-made translation platforms for online businesses. She lives in New York City with her two orange kittens, Caspar and Ollie.

Carol’s love of opera began half a century ago hearing recordings by Risë Stevens as Carmen and Leontyne Price as Butterfly, and she remembers hearing Pavarotti sing Rodolfo when he was just becoming famous. Both as an audience member and as the mother of an opera singer, she has attended more than 500 opera performances in her lifetime (really!). Herself not even vaguely musical, she learned to develop her ear and eye to discern quality and hence increased joy in opera performance. Most importantly, Carol discovered the wonders of opera by getting to spend so much time behind the curtain. It is these experiences that created the germ of the opera community idea in her mind long before there was an Internet to give it a home. With a Ph.D. in psychology (her master’s thesis was a psychological interpretation of Berg’s Lulu!) and the President of her own successful consulting firm working with families of troubled teens, Carol brings unique interests, qualities, and skills to her work at The Opera Insider. Carol lives in Honolulu, Hawai’i.