Our benevolent President, Kelsey Long, opened this week’s meeting with a thought that, when making our New Year’s Resolutions, we all keep in mind actions we can take to support organizations we feel are trying to do good things. Kelsey then led us into our usual minute of silence in acknowledgment and support of the Black Lives Matter movement before turning the meeting over to this week’s Toastmaster, Savannah Murphy.
Savannah chose “mint” as her word of the day, noting the great variety of definitions applied to that word. We had twelve members and one guest, Joe Stack, in attendance. After reviewing the meeting roles, Savannah turned the meeting over to our first speaker of the day, Alvin Powell.
Alvin, who just retired from his position as the Chief Health Equity Officer at Cone Health, shared with the group a recorded interview in which he talked about the racial disparities in health care. After a review of the historical basis for these inequities, Alvin talked about more recent events, including black NFL players’ receiving less compensation for concussions because of a perceived difference in cognitive loss based solely on their race. Alvin concluded with a call to action for leaders to be intentional about making health care equitable by providing for people according to their needs in a fair and just way. His evaluator, Anu Parvathaneni noted that Alvin was very confident and knowledgeable in his interview. Anu also mentioned that hearing about these issues from someone who is in a position to affect change made the talk very powerful.
Our second speaker, Kelsey Long, gave a Level 2 presentation on mentoring from the Innovative Planning pathway. In her talk titled “Sunshine and Rain,” Kelsey talked about the cascading effects that different experiences can have in our lives. One such “butterfly effect” for Kelsey started with her position as the protégé of a former boss and the positive and negative experiences that helped shape her career in the corporate world. Although her mentor was, at times, a toxic force in Kelsey’s life, her influence has led Kelsey to take a more proactive and self-supporting approach to her business career. Her evaluator, John Doggett, observed that Kelsey did a great job of tying all of the parts of her speech together with the butterfly effect reference. John also applauded the engaging way Kelsey made her speech feel like a conversation with her audience.
Karen Rhodes served as Table Topics Master, and brought back a previous topics theme: Muscle or Roman Emperor. Each respondent was given a Latin word and had to expound on whether the word related to a muscle in the human body or the name of an ancient Roman Emperor. Our members gave creative and often humorous back-stories of emperors, some spoiled, others heralded, with memorable jumping skills and a love of ale.
Dave Burr served as the General Evaluator, and provided a thorough review of the meeting. Kerstin Haase was the Timer this week, and reported on times for the prepared speeches, Table Topics responses and speech evaluations. Norris Bass, serving as Grammarian, reminded us to watch our filler words during impromptu speaking.
The roles for January and February will be posted soon. Please make sure you send any changes in availability or requests for extended speaking time to the Vice President Education, Savannah Murphy, before January 5.
Upcoming Events:
- Sunrise Toastmasters members and their families are invited to our winter holiday celebration: a stroll through the Sunset Hills neighborhood lights display at 6 pm on January 2. Please let President Kelsey Long know if you did not receive the invitation email she sent out last week, and remember to send in your RSVP. Hope to see you there!
- Sunrise Toastmasters will host an Open House meeting on January 7. Please invite friends and family and former members and guests to join us on Zoom on that date during our regular meeting time. The Open House will have one prepared speech and two Table Topics sessions to give as many people as possible a chance to speak.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be the Open House meeting at 7 am, January 7 EST on Zoom.
The roles for that meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Dave
Speaker: Tim
Table Topics 1: Savannah
Table Topics 2: Anu
Gen. Evaluator: Kelsey
Speaker Evaluator: Amelya
Timer: Karen
Grammarian: Kerstin
Share your passion for Sunrise Toastmasters with your friends and family by inviting them to our Open House meeting on January 7!
