Minutes from February 21, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Kerstin Haase. Kerstin recalled a recent enjoyable evening she had over dinner with coworkers in which people cited and acknowledged their own personal biases in the midst of recounting experiences. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. She concluded with reminders such as the use of the bias flag as a tool to help us become better speakers before turning it over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie. Abdulrahman welcomed our returning guests, Palavi Jakati and Matthew Choate, and Toastmaster Reggie Goodwin. Upon completion of club member and guest introductions, Abdulrahman introduced the word of the day “bamboozle” which is defined as means of deceiving or tricking someone or playful deception.
Toastmaster Anu Parvathaneni introduced our first speaker, Kerstin. Kerstin spoke of a personal and meaningful gift she had received, the opportunity to write a letter of recommendation for her nephew who is applying to Law School. She shared the letter she had written with us and we were able to feel and see the love she has for this young man. It was clear from the letter that he is indeed a special individual with character traits and attributes that will make him a great addition to the profession of Law.
Toastmaster Summer Murphy introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Bettina Ross. Tina Joe spoke about the development of “Simply Bettina” a mind architect and transformation lifestyle design strategy which applies a framework called the Conscious Metamorphosis Compass. She shared great visuals to anchor this, describing the 8 key aspects of the compass and emphasizing the need for self awareness and staying true to yourself.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Savannah Murphy and focused on things that remind you of home. These ranged from animals (squirrels) to phrases or words (safety, comfort) to landmarks that make you think of home (a banyan tree and the brightly lit Harris Teeter), and finally street names. We enjoyed everyone’s responses and some laughs as well (squirrels and Harris Teeter!).
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt filled the role of General Evaluator, leading us into Speaker 1 evaluation by Anu and Speaker 2 evaluation by Summer. Toastmaster Dave Burr and Toastmaster Tim Murphy kept us honest by serving as Timer and Grammarian. The meeting was then turned back over to Kerstin to close us out.
A reminder that Reggie is the Area 44 director for Toastmasters International, who mentioned he is looking for a competition level Speaker volunteer as well as a volunteer for Table Topics for an upcoming in person Toastmaster event. Please contact Kerstin if you are interested in participating in this opportunity.
Roles for Friday, February 28, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster- Tim
Speaker 1- Kendra
Speaker 2- < OPEN >
Table Topics- Dave
General Evaluator- Summer
Evaluator 1- Norris
Evaluator 2- Tina Joe
Timer- Kerstin
Grammarian- Abdulrahman
