STEVEN LEAL is the Director of Speech at BASIS Independent Silicon valley HS in San Jose, CA and The Golden State Academy in Fremont. As a student, Steven competed as a member of James Logan High School’s nationally renowned program. He competed heavily in multiple interpretation events, twice reaching final round stages at the California Invitational at UC Berkeley, and twice qualifying for the National Tournament. Upon becoming a Speech Coach at Logan, Mr. Leal helped over twenty students qualify to the CA State Tournament, and coached three 1st Place CA State Champions in Oratorical & two in Thematic Interp. Following his success at Logan, Mr. Leal helped co-found and coach one of the largest and most competitive middle school speech and debate programs in the country with his colleague. When he isn't managing the speech program, Steven Leal is helping students all over the country at nationally recognized camps such as The Perfect Performance.

Alysson Farris is from Northwest Indiana and has six years of debate experience, primarily in LD and policy. She and her partner were the first policy debaters from their school to qualify for the NSDA nationals in 2018--traveling to Florida for the tournament was actually her first time on a plane! Alysson is still involved in coaching younger classmates from home and has enjoyed seeing them place at the regional level, and she is very excited to be back for a second year with RMS Debate.

Alysson is a sophomore and first-generation college student at Stanford University studying Public Policy, Education, and Sociology. She enjoys spending her time working for various psychology and sociology professors on projects related to educational inequality.