Dear Fellow Toastmaster!

Our first meeting of the year started with a bang! It began with a peaceful transition of power from our immediate past president, Katka, to our new president Alex. Two new members gave their (incredible) icebreaker speeches. Michael added a twist to the table topics session when he asked us to stand and speak from our seats instead of walking to the stage (less time walking, more time speaking). Talk about thinking on your feet!

🙋‍♀️ Sign up for roles on our next meeting on Jan 15 🙋‍♀️

🙋 Please reflect your meeting RSVP 🙋‍♀️

 📣 📆 What’s up

Never want to miss out on GGTM social events, workshops and meetings? Click the button to subscribe to our club’s Google Calendar.

• Contest season is coming soon! More information will be released in the following weeks, so stay tuned 😉

• In addition to the annual Toastmasters International Speech Contest, the district will be hosting a Humorous Speech Contest, so bring out your funniest side!

📚️🏫 Toastmastering Together

Let’s get better by learning from each other and sharing resources. Bookmark these for your reference as you go through your GGTM journey!

• Golden Gate Toastmaster Resources (bit.ly/GGTM-resources)

• Toastmaster Meeting Roles One-Pager (bit.ly/GGTM-roles)

• Onboarding Checklist (bit.ly/GGTM-onboarding)

January 8th Meeting Highlights

Last Wednesday, we were inspired by powerful stories of how to be kinder to each other, the sacrifices our family makes and the lessons we can learn from them. Our Toastmaster for the Evening Gene inspired us by reminding us that our hobbies can show us more of who we are than our New Year’s Resolutions.

Thank you for those who took on roles to run our meeting: Hanna, Mike (with the bike), Nik, Aswani, and Katie.

During our meeting we:

• 🗣️ In Alex W’s Two Minute Special, we learned a life lesson: If you want to be alive, you must be useful alive. If you want to be dead, you must be useful dead 

• 🙌 In Katka’s Keynote Speech: Beyond just Nice: Why Forging more Connections is More in Demand in 2025 than ever Before, and learned the BBB Rules:

  • Be Kind

  • Be Real

  • Be Present

• 💕 Heard about Mia’s journey from China to Canada at a young age and her troubles with starting over in a new country: such as learning the language, overcoming bullying and making new friends. She finished up by sharing her gratitude for the sacrifices her parents made for her to have a better life.

• 🎾Derick shared with us life lessons from his late father and the experience of losing him in 2020 and learning to be strong for his mother and sister. He learned to balance the philosophies of both of his parents:  between thinking of the future and living in the present. (🏆 Best Prepared Speech🏆)

• 🎯Carnell (🏆Best Table Topic 🏆) won best table topic, speaking on how it’s never too late to make the changes you want to make in your own life.

• 🥇🥇Had a tie (🏆Best Evaluator🏆) between Adam C (evaluation Mia) and Karishma (evaluating Derick)! Congratulations to both of you!

  • Thank you to our other evaluator Alex I (evaluating Katka). Thank you, Scott, for leading the Evaluation section.

🤩 A Special Word From Our Past President

This is Katka Sabo, your outgoing President. 🌟

In our first newsletter of the new year, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate what we were able to build together in 2024 as Golden Gate Toastmasters. 🙌✨

• Our club fully recovered from the pandemic hangover 🌈 and we have entered a new Golden Era of our club and its 89th (!!) year of existence 🎉.

• From meeting every other week in a dingy language school classroom, 🏫 we are now meeting EVERY Wednesday, exclusively in person, in a well-appointed boardroom 🏢 at one of the most influential institutions: SF Chamber of Commerce.

• Our membership almost DOUBLED over the last 12 months 📈; we now have well over 50 members, with dozens of prospective members discovering us every month. 🚀 We might even need to introduce a waiting list to keep the size manageable!

• Over the course of the year, I have seen tremendous growth in many of our members 🌱. People who first showed up as shy guests transformed into confident Toastmasters of the Evening 🌟, commanding the room with an I-got-this attitude. 💪

• Furthermore, our club has become much more than those 2 hours on a mid-week evening 🌟—new friendships, partnerships, and ideas were born 👫🎤 over bowling 🎳, karaoke 🎤, bonfire 🔥, Gala 💃, and Christmas party outings. 🎄

  • We launched this newsletter 📧 to keep us connected as a community, even when we can’t make it to all the meetings. 🗞️

  • We massively revamped our Educational component, 📚 offering robust support to members progressing toward becoming proficient speakers. 🎤

  • We built our Discord channel 🎮, which has become the online home 🏠 for our real-life community.

• Our volunteer-run club balanced its budget 💰 (despite 2/3 of dues going directly to Toastmasters International 🌐). From the remaining $5/month members pay, we finance room rentals and all small expenses related to club operations.

We could not have achieved so MUCH with so LITTLE 🎯 this year without our fantastic team of committed volunteer officers: 👏
Scott Brown & Nic Teodori (Treasurers) 💵, Sheila Vida, Helen Fream, & Saloni Shah (VPEs of Education) 📚, Juan Basulto (VP of Membership) 👥, Gene Zhou (VP of PR) 🖋️, Alex Wu & Lauren Hurley (Sergeants-at-Arms) 🛡️, and Adam Cesana (Secretary) 📝—a big shoutout and thank you for your amazing service! 🎉

On a personal note: After 18 months of club leadership, I am stepping down to focus on my own work and …speaking. 🎤

✨ 99 days ago, I announced my 100-Day Challenge to see if I could become a Professional Speaker: Today, I’m proud to share that I’ve booked a full-rate paid engagement for mid-January: a 60-minute keynote speech in front of 100 non-profit employees, opening their all-staff day. 💼🎙️

Solely becoming a Toastmasters member will not make your dreams happen 💡, but I can hardly think of another non-workplace platform that allows such incredible growth as a speaker, leader, and human finding their voice. 🌱🌍

Please take this as YOUR SIGN that you CAN take the NEXT STEP toward that scary, exciting thing you’ve been considering for a while ✨ (whether it’s applying for a new job, starting a newsletter, asking for a promotion, launching your side hustle, or moving across the country 🛤️).

Don’t wait to take the first step! 🚀🎉

I and everyone else in our community are rooting for you! Come and share your life wins shamelessly with us (like I just did) so that we can celebrate together 🥳🥇.

😎💡Member Spotlight

Send your member profile to [email protected] so we can feature you next. Share your adventures that we can highlight as well!

Let’s get to know our new member Tavisan. He mentioned during his Icebreaker that he doesn't know who lives next door. Next time you see him, why not ask if he's had a chance to knock on his neighbor's door?

🫵🗣️ Your turn

We would like to hear YOUR stories, information and feedback to make this newsletter, our club and our Toastmastering better. Share it with us!