Minutes from Friday, November 14, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie who reminded us of the purpose of our One World Many Voices opener being to speak about an impactful challenge faced in life before introducing our speaker for this week, Toastmaster Chang Yu. Chang spoke of the challenges faced by caregivers, and related to his wife’s mother who has early onset dementia and lives with his family. This requires the use of baby gates and vigilance to keep a safe environment for her and their family. He noted people in these caregiver roles are often dealing with emotional and mental exhaustion while trying to maintain a strong countenance and encouraged us to reach out to those in similar situations to show any support we are able to give. The meeting was handed back to Abdulrahman who concluded 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 Anu Parvathaneni who thanked those who stepped into fill roles and led us through a round of introductions for our guest Jo-Anne Barr. “Kismet” was the chosen word of the day and was defined as destiny or fate.
Toastmaster Dave Burr introduced our speaker, Toastmaster Bettina Ross who was presenting a 20-25 minute speech to practice delivering a webinar for her upcoming business launch of Simply Bettina- The Mind Architect and Lifestyle Design Strategist. Tina Joe began with an ear-catching music bumper and vocally introducing herself as a builder and believer in designing your life with intention. She led us through her own journey and challenges to get her where she is today, the science behind the process, purpose of conscious association, use of transformation tools and finally experience. Tina Joe stressed awareness representing the beginning of the transformative process and the neuroplasticity of the brain which allows you to change and rewire from old habits that keep you fixed. This requires an intentional process and three necessary steps are to interrupt the old pattern, install a new belief, and reinforce this by taking action. She described use of the Conscious Ascension Framework and Compass as a means to bridge from survival mode to creativity, and led us through the Transformative Tools that will be available to participants in her program. There were visuals and options for audience participation throughout the talk.
Table Topics was led by Abdulrahman and focused on kismet, and were of shorter duration this week due. Questions included whether ‘luck’ was real or not, and was life random or planned? We were able to hear from Toastmasters Kendra Hiatt and Savvy Murphy.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Tim Murphy served as our General Evaluator who pointed out that Tina Joe’s presentation this morning was a perfect example of the use of Toastmasters as a tool to benefit us in other segments of our lives. He then turned it over to Dave to complete today’s Speaker evaluation. Abdulrahman and Toastmaster Abigayle Burnett filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Food for thought:
Vision without strategy is just a wish.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest – Benjamin Franklin
Roles for Friday, November 21 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Summer
One World, Many Voices: Tina Joe
Speaker 1: Savvy
Speaker 2: Yoko Honda
Table Topics: Kehinde
Gen Evaluator: Melissa
Evaluator 1: Norris
Evaluator 2: Abdulrahman
Timer: Tim
Grammarian: Abigayle
