Local television and radio personality Carol Ofori made history as the first South African female to win an esteemed SOVAS Voice Arts® Award in the Outstanding Commercial – Radio or Streaming – Best African Voiceover category. Carol won the award for her performance in the Ratings For Schools radio advert which flighted on East Coast Radio. Now, the voice over artist has finally received her award from the United States, and holding the award in her hand was a full circle moment for the star.
“Thank you so much! I am just so touched. Thank you to the SOVAS and thank you to the Almighty because without the wonderful voice that he has given me to make a living, I wouldn’t be picking up this amazing international accolade,” Carol shares. “Of course, I would also like to thank my parents for being so supportive of me and my crazy career choices. I want to thank my incredible husband who has just supported me through everything and my wonderful kids who have also now become little voice over artists, my incredible agents and the industry itself in South Africa.”
While unboxing the award, an emotional Carol took some time to reflect on her two decades in the local entertainment industry. “This has been 20 years in the making to get an international accolade like this,” a tearful Carol shares in the heart-warming video clip.
The Voice Arts® Awards is uniquely designed to honour the community of performers and craft professionals who perform, direct, produce, cast, engineer, and publish media productions where voice acting is a central creative element of the work. The purpose of the Voice Arts® Awards is to provide a stage for international acknowledgment of the extraordinary skill and artistry that goes into voiceover acting and to hold up an evolving best-in-class standard of achievement to which the voiceover industry can continually aspire.
The awards are similar to the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys, where the work is entered in various categories, judged and scored by a panel of industry experts, and where the top 5 scores in each category become nominees. A final round of judging determines the winner in each category.
Previous winners at the SOVAS Voice Arts® Awards include Sigourney Weaver, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Kit Harrington and Kristin Wiig.