Eagles,
Last
night, we had 15 people join us for a virtual meeting. Here is why we were all
smiling….
It all
started with our Virtual Sergeant at Arms, Sandra Centorino, starting up
the meeting…..on time. She opened up with her usual high energy, introducing
our President and Toastmaster of the evening, Christine Austin. Christine
got right to the point and introduced Speaker #1……Tony Centorino.
Yours
Truly gave a speech about his High Performance Leadership Project, Pathways
Now! (That is “Now” with a “!”). Tony shared the results of his project along
with the talent and teamwork that ensured the project’s success. A very, very,
special thanks to the team….Sandra Centorino, Kate Kelly, and Christine
Austin!
Speaker
#2 was Ann McGuire. Ann spoke from the Pathways Persuasive Influence
Path Level 2 project “Introduction to Toastmaster Mentoring”. Ann talked about
the many mentors in her life, specifically naming 5 of them……She also coined the
de facto word of the day when she said “luuuuv mentor”. Ann’s overall message
is that you can learn something from everybody….her call to action was for each
one of us to think about who our mentors are.
Maryanne
Shirshac, our third
speaker, spoke out of the Pathways Project “Connect with your Audience”.
Maryanne’s project was to speak of a topic that would be unfamiliar with her
audience. Her topic was accounting. Maryanne explained that accounting goes far
beyond the numbers…..Accounting is about collecting, analyzing, communicating
and presenting. Maryanne also shared that she joined Toastmasters to help her
with the communicating and presenting. Something she did well in her speech!
While the
evaluators were feverishly completing their forms, Diana Grippen, ran
our Table Topics. Diana engaged almost all of the remaining Eagles that had non-speaking
roles. We learned how Deep Tawari keeps his sanity during our physically
isolated times, Sandra’s adventures to Florida in an RV, Debbie Herget’s
humorous moments, and how Maryanne was locked in her bathroom. We learn the
strangest things at Toastmasters! My apologies to Abhi Palande for not
hearing his Table Topic as I was engrossed in trying to complete Maryanne’s
evaluation form.
Thank
you to all of the dignitaries that participated in our meeting not mentioned
above….Chris Scoppetta (General and Speech Evaluator), and fellow
evaluators Christine Austin and Tony Centorino. Ann McGuire served as our
Grammarian…..and Markus Schumacher humbled many of us as the Ah Counter….complete
with a screen share of bar charts. If he keeps this up, he will be the
permanent Ah Counter!
Our next
meeting will be another virtual experience (really!) and will take place on
5/4. Please sign up for a role……Ann – please sign up to be our Toastmaster….you
will luuuuuv it!
Tony
Centorino
Eagle
Toastmaster Secretary
