IN BRIEF

✦ Thirteen guests came for the club's 2026 Open House — the largest crowd of the year.
✦ Alumnus Michael Dart returned for a live Q&A on courage, comebacks, and the speech that accidentally launched his career.
✦ Alexander Wu's "Past. Present. Future." asked the room what they'd want their life's story to say.
✦ Carlos proposed to his partner, Laura, mid-answer during Table Topics. She said yes.

Live Q&A with Michael Dart

Michael Dart joined GGTM in 2003, spent roughly twenty years in and out of the club, and went on to become Executive Director at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and co-author of two books on the retail industry — alongside a District Humorous Speech win in 2005 and an Evaluation Contest win in 2008. Hosted by Irene Suwarno, he spent the night's centerpiece answering questions from the room, returning more than once to the same idea.

Asked whether great speakers are born or made, his answer was unambiguous: not born. The panic-attack adrenaline of early public speaking never fully disappears, he said, but improvement "isn't linear" — fits and starts, not a straight line. He recalled a member who once froze completely at the lectern, said almost nothing for two full minutes, and stayed standing anyway; years later, that same person delivered a milestone tenth speech that left the room genuinely moved.

His own turning point came from a single early GGTM speech about buying a pair of jeans — a bit that unexpectedly got laughs and built into a paid keynote career, including a hot room in Dallas in front of a hundred people. Not every booking landed as well: he once agreed to speak on "the future of retail" without doing his homework, only to discover mid-talk that the room was a funeral-industry association, not a retail one. "One of the worst experiences I've ever had," he said. "But I got through it."

Asked for his best advice on giving a strong evaluation — the skill behind his own 2008 contest win — his answer was practical: open efficiently, almost with a stock framework, because a real evaluation only gets two minutes and twenty seconds, and every second spent finding your footing is a second not spent giving something useful back.

TTM Juan Basulto (Upper Left) built the night's questions around heritage and tradition, fitting for Mexican Independence Day. Jay(lower far left corner) traced his musical roots to '90s East Bay hip hop despite no Japanese or Korean heritage of his own. Agasthian (next to Jay) shared a Tamil Nadu upbringing and a Buddhist-community habit of offering food to others before eating in front of them. Derick(above Jay) named his wife's home cooking, learned from her mother, as the reason he skips group happy hours. Immediate Past President Shubham Saloni (upper block, lower left), asked what he'd bring to a potluck, landed on chole, an Indian chickpea dish — fitting, since he has an actual one in two weeks. Kathleen Hurtubise (SAA) chose water to represent herself: something that sustains, and bends instead of breaking.

And then there was Caleb(Lower Right), at his very first GGTM meeting, asked to name a tradition outside his own he'd want to join. He told the room about his German surname, Tenenbaum — Christmas tree — and a movie everyone kept referencing that he'd never actually seen, until he finally watched it and found himself singing along to "O Tannenbaum" with his in-laws, understanding for the first time how much of that tradition was already his. It won him Best Table Topics before the night was even over — a guest, on his first visit, taking the one competitive category the Open House still ran.