Meet Mitch Guerra from Survivor

Photos in this article are used with permission from CBS/Paramount+.

Following is excerpted from an interview with Mitch Guerra from a Stuttering Foundation podcast hosted by Sara MacIntyre, M.A., CCC-SLP.

I'm originally from Waco, Texas. My first memories as a person who stutters were probably in the first or second grade. I remember once or twice a week I would get pulled out of my home room class and I would go and work on speech therapy at my elementary school, but I didn't ever view it as something that was negative until I switched schools in the third grade. 

I was going to a brand-new school with people I didn't know at all and I think that was the first time that my speech impediment was viewed in a negative way. I started to get made fun of and had a harder time making friends. Because I was at a new school and because of how I spoke, I was different than everyone else. So as a kid, if you have something that makes you different, sometimes children just don't really know how to respond to it. 

I remember being in the fourth grade and our music teacher, she made every single student in the 4th grade stand on stage in front of all of the students and try out for the school Christmas program. I remember this moment pretty vividly. I got on stage, and I don't even think I said anything for a couple of minutes. From that moment on, for the next few years, I got made fun of, pretty significantly. I remember a few days afterwards, somebody was riding me and making fun of me. One of the teachers found out and it was just this moment of me being like, well, dang. That was horrible. I literally have only been at this school for one year, and now everybody who's my peer has just seen me up here horribly struggling. 

I think over the next few years in 5th and 6th grade, I felt like I really tried to be as joyful as possible, but I think internally I was hating it. 

I tried to still speak up at school, but there were obviously some moments that were incredibly hard. The first few days of school are always really tough to introduce yourself to a bunch of new people. Once I got to middle school, I felt like I was becoming more confident in who I was and just trying to be as true to who I am. At that point, most people that I went to school with understood that I stuttered for the most part, so it became easier because I was pretty open about it. 

I stopped going to speech therapy probably in the 5th or 6th grade. I was always really comfortable practicing speech strategies with our speech pathologist, but I really struggled using those skills every day.

So that was something super hard to work through. I’d have these great moments of speech fluency, and I'm doing all these things to help and work on it, but in some moments, it was just a train wreck.

In high school, my world geography teacher encouraged me to reach out to the speech program at Baylor University. So, over the next few years, I went to speech therapy there and just really had an incredible experience of being able to work on strategies and stuff but was able to practice using them outside of the normal speech setting. I think those SLPs just created an environment where I became really comfortable with who I was as a person who stutters. Once I got to high school, I was just a lot more comfortable and confident sharing my story as a person who stutters. 

I had a pivotal experience that I remember that has stuck with me. I remember being 16 years old, and I went to ask this grocery store if they were hiring, because I heard they were. I walked up to one of the managers at the store, and I began asking if they were hiring. And as I was asking him those questions, I began to stutter. He looked me in the face and said they weren't hiring, which was super confusing because one of my good friends was an employee there. Then I walked back outside to head home and one of my buddies was with me and he was like ‘there's no way they aren't hiring. They're hiring!’ So, he went back inside and spoke with the same manager, and he hired him on the spot. It was just really frustrating because how I viewed it was ‘man, like this person doesn’t want to interview me because I'm a person who stutters’ and I'm not exactly sure if that is it, but as a 16-year-old who is incredibly insecure, that is how I handled it.

I was really upset about it for a couple of months, and it just finally got to a point where I was like, ‘man, I cannot control how other people view me. But I'm going to continue to put myself out there because I know what I have to offer as a person and as an employee.’ So that was a pivotal moment of a really crappy experience that really motivated me to try and control how I viewed myself and wasn't so focused on what others thought of me.

After I graduated high school, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do afterwards. So, I was at a community college for a year, and I ended up going and playing college tennis for a year which really pushed me out of my comfort zone in so many ways.

I ended up transferring to Texas A&M University and just the culture of being so friendly and welcoming really impacted me.

The people I met at A&M really encouraged me to be actively involved on campus. So I was in some organizations that really challenged me and pushed me because of the people that I surrounded myself with. I felt like I became who I am today because of the experiences I had during my time at Texas A&M. I became confident in sharing my story and interacting with other people and I started applying to go on Survivor.

WHY SURVIVOR?

I remember growing up and falling in love with this wild TV show that took everyday Americans and put them in uncomfortable situations where they had to build social relationships and do these insane challenges. I remember watching Survivor Amazon and there was a contestant named Christy Smith, who was deaf, and just seeing someone similar to me who had their own personal struggle and watching them work through this thing that many people view as an incredibly challenging disability.

Watching her work through this incredibly hard social game and make it really far was so encouraging and inspiring. From that moment on, I thought, ‘well, here's someone with their own struggle getting to live out this crazy cool experience. Maybe one day I could too.’

THE JOURNEY TO REALITY TV

Starting in 2012, (I was 22 at that point,) I filled out an application and I didn't get a call back until maybe two years later. I got a call from one of the casting agents. I think during that time, they were casting for season 29 and 30. That was the second season of “Blood vs. Water” so I interviewed for that season with my dad and had some interviews, but ultimately it didn't end up going anywhere.

Over the next few years, I just kept sending in applications and I thought, ‘man, I truly feel like one day I'm going to get to play this game.’

Over the next 10 years or so, I applied and every other year or so I would get a phone call from someone on the casting team and thought, ‘if I could just make it and talk with one of the executive producers from the show, I know I'm going to get on.'

In 2022, I got this random text message, and it was from one of the casting agents. I was confused because I hadn't really sent in an application recently. So, then we go through the whole application process and ultimately it just didn't end up working out and I'm thinking, ‘here we go again!’

I was over this dream but in October of 2023, I was out in Austin with some friends and ended up running into a couple of former Survivor players and thought, ‘oh, my gosh. I'm a huge fan of the show.’ Then maybe a week or two later, I made a random comment on one of the casting director's Instagram stories because he posted about one of the Survivor contestants who just got voted out. I wrote, ‘oh, my God, he was incredible.’ The next thing you know, I'm in the middle of a CrossFit workout class and the casting director contacted me saying ‘oh, my gosh, Mitch, how are you? Are you still interested?’ And I'm like, of course I'm still interested in Survivor.

We hopped on a call on Wednesday. He said, ‘Mitch, you need to make another application.’ And I was like, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah. I've already done this so many times, it's not going to happen,’ but I submitted the video. The next Monday, he wrote, ‘hey, I just showed it to the head casting director. I feel really good about it. I think we're going to show you to the executives,’ which was the first time that had ever happened.

A couple weeks later I had an interview with Jeff Probst, and I had an interview with the casting director who interviewed me before, and then the executive casting director, and then a couple of the executives. Those interviews just went incredibly well. I thought, ‘well I always said if I could at least meet the executives, then at least these are the people who were ultimately picking who gets on.’ Every interview from that point forward just went incredible.

The next thing you know, I'm in L.A. interviewing in a hotel room full of 30 to 40 of the Survivor producers and less than two feet away from me was Jeff Probst, and I thought, ‘this interview went as well as it could, and if it's supposed to happen, it'll happen!’

I remember flying home from L.A. thinking I literally crushed that interview. ‘If it's meant to be it's meant to be.’ And I literally, for about three hours, cried the whole way home thinking, ‘I literally have done everything I could to put myself on this show and live out my dreams.’

It truly was so special because I felt from the very first interview I had with Jeff, I just felt really, really confident and comfortable having a conversation with him. He truly just made me feel like he cared about what I was saying and not how I was saying it. From that first phone call all the way to the end of the show, he just created a space for me that made me feel like I could just openly stutter.

GETTING CHOSEN FOR THE SHOW

I was at school, and the casting director was like, ‘hey, we have to hop on a call, I have a couple of other questions.’ I'm thinking, ‘what other questions do you have? I have literally told you everything.’ I was taking a shower thinking maybe he's going to tell me I'm on it. And I thought, ‘there's just no way.’

As soon as I hop on the call, he says, ‘Mitch, how do you feel about being on Survivor season 48?’

I truly was speechless. I think I said a couple of cuss words, and then I was in absolute shock. It was this weird moment of being in absolute shock, while at the same time thinking, ‘yeah I always knew it would happen.’

Over the next few weeks, I was mentally trying to get ready to head out there. I was in the process of gaining 15 extra pounds, in the gym twice a day and was doing all of these things to be as prepared as I could be. Ultimately, I did not let it really sink in until we were in Fiji the morning of day one, and we were riding in on those boats. And right when we were about to head in to start the show, that was the moment where I said to myself, ‘holy cow, I'm covered in chills. All right, here we go. Let's get locked in. This is really happening now.’

The day before I flew out to L.A., I like had an “ugly cry” at one of my favorite restaurants in town thinking, ‘this is the moment I've dreamt of, and it's here now. There is no turning back.’ I'm about to be on national TV stuttering. I knew it was going to be really heavy, and that I was going to be the first person who stutters who got to play Survivor like that.

That means so much to me personally. I wanted to ultimately represent myself and my family as well as I could. But I also knew that a big community of people were going to be looking at me and I wanted to represent everyone in the stuttering community as well as I could.

I ultimately wanted to prove to myself that I am just as capable as anyone else, that I can go out there and play the hardest social game as a person who stutters. I just wanted to show that I am capable of building deep, meaningful connections with complete strangers. I'm able to do all of these incredibly hard things that you have to do as a person who's playing Survivor who happens to stutter.

So, yeah, I definitely knew and understood that there were going to be a bunch of eyes on me.

I just kept reminding myself that every day I make it on this beach, every tribal council I survived, that means there are that many more people who get to watch me and hear more of my story.

Growing up as a person who stutters I never saw someone who spoke like me, who was ever portrayed in a positive way or just a neutral one. I just wanted to show other people that I am a person who stutters, but there is so much more to me than the fact that I sometimes have a hard time communicating. I am incredibly competitive, and I love competing, and I love building relationships with people, and I love telling stories, and I am so much more than just a person who stutters.

THE VIRAL MOMENT

When I was out there and I began talking about what had been happening the last few days, I really didn't think I was stuttering that much in that moment. So, when Jeff brought it up, I was super thankful because it created a moment for me to just naturally talk about the most helpful practices for me as a person who stutters.

I really didn't want to openly talk about stuttering too much in front of everyone because I didn't want it to be a reason for people to want to vote me out because it was this huge thing that, ‘oh, my gosh, he stutters, and he has a great story.’ I just wanted to keep it as chill as possible. But I am super thankful for that moment because it did get me an opportunity to openly have this conversation with everyone I was playing with at the exact same time.

I got to share that with 4.8 million people who were watching. And I hope that that moment was able to create other conversations that people felt comfortable enough to ask their friends, family or coworkers who stutter about the best way for them to feel supported.

Ultimately that moment was huge. The amount of people who reached out to me afterwards, whether it was other people who stutter or teachers and coaches, so many people were really appreciative of me just openly having that conversation. I hope that conversation will continue to be used to show others the importance of openly asking what other people need for them to feel comfortable and successful.

For me, I wanted to have this experience. I wanted the chance to win a million dollars and to prove what I was capable of doing, and ultimately, I got so much more than that. I just hope that I was able to encourage other people who stutter to know and realize that just because you haven't seen someone who stutters play Survivor or do what you want to do, that doesn’t mean it's not possible. It just might mean you have to be the one to go and do it first.

THE BIG PICTURE

Ultimately it came down to me consciously making a choice that I am probably always going to be a person who stutters, and I can choose to let that hold me back or I can choose to let that be something that sets me apart.

I'm so thankful I'm a person who stutters because it has shaped me into the person who I am today. I don't need to apologize for how I communicate, and I shouldn't feel like it is a burden to anyone I ever communicate with. I think just changing how I viewed myself when I was with others was something that was really impactful.

Jeff Probst spoke about me on his On Fire podcast and just hearing that I was the easiest and fastest “Yes” that he had during the casting process was just super humbling. He went on to just talk about how it was because of my vulnerability and my willingness to put myself out there and to go and do something incredibly hard that most people who stutter wouldn't put themselves in.

It was just a good reminder for me and hopefully for other people that when you choose to be vulnerable and you choose to put yourself out there, it ultimately is going to make you stronger through that because you're choosing to do something hard.

I'm so thankful that I continued to apply after all of those years. And it just goes to show you that you truly never know what you're capable of doing unless you're willing to put yourself out there.

BACK TO SCHOOL

The past year has been incredibly wild, but I think one of the coolest things from this overall experience is every day I get to openly stutter in front of 700 kids. What's cool is I have a couple of students who also stutter. Just getting to see my students who stutter see me stutter on national TV and they get to see hundreds of other people watch me do this really hard thing, it's been cool just seeing some of them become a lot more confident and willing to openly speak up at school.

One of my students volunteered to speak at his Christmas Program, and this past week one of my 5th grade students who sometime last year wrote a letter to the Stuttering Foundation, which he brought to school, showed it to me, and then he read it in front of the whole class. It was just so cool. I never would have done that as a kid in the 3rd or 4th or 5th grade.

Just getting to see these kids become so much more confident in who they are as people is truly the biggest gift I could have ever asked for from this whole experience. Just to be able to stutter on Survivor really has impacted so many people.

FINAL THOUGHTS

You have to surround yourself with people who are going to encourage you to do the crazy things that no one thinks are possible. Regardless of what your dream is, you have to have people surrounding you who are crazy enough to think that you can do it too.

If I could ever be of help to anyone, whether you're an SLP or you're a person who stutters, or you have a child who stutters, or you know someone, reach out to me on social media. I would love to be a resource if I'm able.

There are so many incredible resources out there in the stuttering community and I never used any of them. I only used the SLP at my elementary school, and I only started going to speech therapy later on in high school. But there are so many incredible organizations that you could be a part of that truly offer some incredible resources. So, if you find yourself struggling, please reach out to any of them. I truly think that I struggled alone for a really long time when I didn't have to.

FOLLOW MITCH ON SOCIALS:
FB: @mitch.guerra.50 
IG: @mguerski 
X: @mguerski

This article is from our Fall 2025 Magazine