Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our club President Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie. Toastmaster Abigayle Burnett filled the meeting role of One World Many Voices, by sharing an event occurring in their community which may be having a positive or negative impact and the significance she personally derived. Abdulrahman concluded the meeting introduction with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers.
The meeting was then turned over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Tim Murphy who introduced the word of the day, “gregarious”. This was defined as enjoying the company of others and marked by companionship and sociability.
Toastmaster introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Savvy Murphy. Savvy delivered a pocket speech about making New Year’s resolutions. She noted that development of such personal goals or markers for the year allow a person to start of the year with a feelings of joy and teeing one up for a successful 2026.
Toastmaster introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Bettina Ross who presented her competition speech for the second time, “Permission to Exist Beyond Survival.” This is an inspirational speech that will be delivered by Tina Joe for the 2026 Toastmasters International Speech Competition. Using powerful personal storytelling, she traces her journey from childhood trauma and survival to intentional living and self-authorship.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Sophie Wu and focused on our word of the day. We were able to hear from Toastmasters Yuko Honda, Tim, Lisa Garafola, Tina Joe, and Syed Shah.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations.
Roles for Friday, January 16 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Savvy Murphy
One World Many Voices: < open >
Speaker 1: Chang Yu
Speaker 2: Melissa Dutmers
Table Topics: Abdulrahman Albazie
Gen Evaluator: Sophie Wu
Evaluator 1: Norris Bass
Evaluator 2: Tim Murphy
Timer: Stiles Burr
Grammarian: Chang Yu
