This week’s meeting kicked off with a warm welcome from VP of Education, Toastmaster Tina Joe, followed by the One World, Many Voices segment led by Toastmaster Danielle. They shared insights into daily life in their community, where power outages and loss of water are the norm. Danielle explained how these challenges often bring communities closer together and reminded us that water is a precious resource. They encouraged everyone to be grateful for it, noting that acknowledging its importance can make us better neighbors. Following the segment, Tina Joe briefly introduced the Bias Flag and explained its purpose. The Bias Flag is a tool our club uses to promote inclusive and mindful language throughout our meetings.
The meeting was then turned over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Summer, who provided an overview of the agenda along with a brief explanation of the typical meeting flow, acknowledging that we had three guests in attendance. Summer introduced the Word of the Day, aspiration, defining it as a strong desire to achieve something great, as well as the medical definition, when something other than air enters your airway. She provided an example, “Trudy Ederle had an aspiration to be the first woman to swim the English Channel.” Summer then led a round of introductions, asking members to share something they have an aspiration for in three words or less. With that, she guided us through a great meeting.
We had two speakers this week. Our first speaker, Toastmaster Kerstin, delivered a speech titled “Our Voice Is Our Sword,” where she spoke about the many frustrations of navigating the current state of healthcare in the United States. These challenges are compounded by the revelation that major healthcare companies, such as United and Optima, continue to generate year-over-year profits. Notable quotes from her speech included, “Our voice is our sword,” and “United Healthcare owns me.”
Our second speaker, Tina Joe, presented a speech titled “Soap Box Talk.” She shared a personal recount of the emotional rollercoaster she has experienced from 2022 to the present day, highlighting milestones such as graduating from an MBA program alongside deeply personal losses, including mourning the death of family members. Key takeaways from her talk included grieving and growing at the same time, the show must go on, traumatized or not, and “not denial, this is direction on a mission.”
Table Topics were led by Toastmaster Norris, who centered his questions on the themes of motivation and achievement to tie into the Word of the Day. Questions included: What inspires a shift in your mindset? Have you inspired someone to make a change? What inspires you to make a difference at work? Responses ranged from reminders of what does and does not work, to turning a dog lover into a cat lover, to seeing numbers change on a dashboard as validation of a job well done.
Next, we transitioned into our Breakfast of Champions segment for those on the East Coast of the United States, or Lunch or Dinner of Champions, depending on location. This portion of the meeting focused on evaluations and feedback. Toastmaster Tim led the evaluation team and provided thoughtful feedback, including a club-wide suggestion to increase utilization of the Toastmasters Pathways program for prepared speeches.
Speaker evaluations were delivered by Toastmaster Sophie and Toastmaster Yuko, who highlighted strengths such as the effective use of visuals to enhance delivery and noted that one speech was a masterclass demonstrating a high level of preparation. Suggested areas for improvement included experimenting with pauses after particularly emotional moments, as silence can often be the loudest tool. Toastmaster Abdullahi and Toastmaster Chang Yu supported the session by timing speeches and tracking filler words, helping keep the meeting on track.
The meeting adjourned right at 8:00 AM EST, and we’re already looking forward to next week’s meeting.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on May 15, EST. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Abdulrahman Albazie
One World, Many Voices: (Open)
Speaker 1: Abigayle Burnett
Speaker 2: Syed Shah
Table Topics: Kenny Eniola
General Evaluator: Savvy Murphy
Evaluator 1: Kerstin Haase
Evaluator 2: Matthew Choate
Timer: Gulnara Askerova
Grammarian: Melissa Dutmers
