🎨🔦 She Turned a Corner — And the Art Remembered Her

📢 Full House. Two Guests. One Resounding Theme.

Sergeant at Arms Gautam Nair called the room to order — and what a room it was. Every seat at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce boardroom table, filled. The energy of a Wednesday night that already knew it was going to be a good one.

Tonight's icebreaker question, tied to the theme NO!: Tell us of a time where saying no to something made a difference.

(Guest) — found Toastmasters through a coworker recommendation — has been practicing saying no at work. "It's been kind of hard, but I feel like it's made a big difference."

Nick (Guest) — found the group through Google. His answer? He's currently in a philosophy of yes. "I don't have one for you. Sorry." The room loved it. 🔦

🎤 Toastmaster of the Evening: Sheila Vida

Sheila Vida doubled up tonight — absorbing the guest welcome and her Toastmaster role in one smooth handoff from Gautam. "It's just like a smoother transition," she said, already owning the stage.

Sheila's thematic introduction was personal, vulnerable, and characteristically sharp. She confessed to being a self-proclaimed people pleaser who discovered the power of "no" — only to realize she'd overcorrected. A friend invited her somewhere from the East Bay. She could have made it. She said no anyway, because processing the logistics felt like too much. "I realized I've been doing a lot of those," she admitted. Her challenge to the room: be as intentional with your nos as you are with your yeses.

📚 Word of the Day: Demur (verb) — to take exception or object, often with "to" or "at." Introduced by Grammarian Amber Dawn. "So they decided to demur to cancelling the meeting — we did not want to cancel tonight, Sheila."

🎤 Prepared Speeches

✊ "Step into the Need" — Alexandra Williams

Alexandra Williams is running for school board in Oakland's District 6 — and tonight she brought the why in two crystalline minutes. The pattern of her life, she told us, has always been the same: she shows up somewhere for one reason and ends up staying for another. A sub job at Ames High School became a full teaching role when students said, "You should be our math teacher." A civic empowerment meeting became a campaign the moment the crowd found out she lived in District 6. "I didn't come here for this today," she's said at every turning point. And then she steps in anyway.

💬 "Seeing it — you can't unsee it. So I decided to step into the need."

🎨 🏆 "The World of Street Art and Care-filled Design" — Ella Rochelle-Lawton

Ella Rochelle-Lawton — public artist, designer, street art instructor — delivered a conference introduction for an upcoming Figma design conference. She took us on a journey that spanned a circus in West Oakland, a billboard that surprised everyone mid-parade, and a Yerba Buena Gardens installation she stumbled upon after a day of feeling like she didn't belong at the very conference she's now headlining.

Her thesis — that street art isn't just a medium but a way of working, responding, and connecting to community and public space — landed with the quiet authority of someone who has lived every word of it. She opened with "Seismic," a heart she created for SF General Hospital representing San Francisco neighborhoods throughout time. A love letter to the city, delivered at the lectern with her sticker-covered laptop as evidence of a life lived in public color.

💬 "When art lives in public space, it becomes a part of people's lives — not separate from it."

🧹 🧊 "Fail Better" — Dennis Yavuz

Dennis Yavuz delivered his first official Toastmasters speech — and it was the kind of icebreaker that makes you forget it's someone's first time. He opened mid-scene: a stage in Istanbul, a play called The New Tenant, and a line that never came. "I didn't stumble. I froze completely." Someone said they should stop. The lights went off with a heavy clip. That sound — that clip — followed him across an ocean.

Dennis walked us through the kid who hid behind papers at school assemblies, the engineering student who enrolled in acting school to face his fear, and the teacher who gave him Samuel Beckett's mantra: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." He froze during that play — and then he did the one thing Beckett never offered as an option. He just stopped.

Years later, a hackathon partner stood up to present Dennis's product. The room rewarded the man who could explain it, not the one who built it. That was the moment — the real cost of silence, measured in opportunities that walked past him to someone else. On New Year's Eve, he made one decision. Join Toastmasters.

💬 "I'm not here to get every speech right. I'm here to fail better. And tonight — the switch is on."

🧩 "Organizing Your Speech: The T-Puzzle Method" — Sheila Vida

Sheila returned to the lectern — this time for a Level 4 Better Speaker Series workshop on speech organization. She walked us through the Toastmasters manual (the basic formula, the outline, the mind map) and then offered something entirely her own: the T-Puzzle.

Four puzzle pieces — Message, Impact, Audience, Flow — that can be arranged in 160+ documented configurations. "No one's stopping you from randomly putting the pieces together," she said. "As long as you can defend it and make a point, it's going to fly." She literally printed the pieces and built shapes on her desk at midnight the night before, sleep-deprived and inspired. A paperweight. A tent. A factory with a chimney. All of them valid — because the T-puzzle's lesson isn't about finding the right shape. It's about owning whatever shape you choose.

💬 "A well-organized speech creates impact, delivers a message, connects with the audience, and brings one into a state of flow. And as long as it's your way — it's a good solution."

💬 Table Topics: Stories from The Moth

Table Topics Master Helen Fream — unapologetic about being "particularly lazy" tonight — pulled out her trusty Moth storytelling cards. Each speaker got a theme, 10 seconds to think, and two minutes to deliver. What followed was 25 minutes of raw, unrehearsed personal narrative.

✈️ Jay Yamamoto — Impossible Odds — Lost his physical flight ticket at a Madrid hostel the day before Hurricane Katrina hit. His dad called the airline, paid a $100 replacement fee, and Jay flew home to San Francisco just before the storm closed everything down. Moral: "Don't lose your flight ticket in a day when you print it out."

⚖️ Vedant Bothikar — Karma — Had a disagreement with his boss about investment strategy. Went home, researched, came back to say "actually, you're right on some points." Weeks later, the same boss messaged him on a weekend to say "Vedant, this is a very useful product — thank you." The lesson: apologize when you're wrong, and it comes back to you.

😈 Katherine McCann — Betrayal (turned Karma) — Katie chose her own card. Her dad — "a pathological liar since before I was born" — recently remarried, and his new stepdaughter is exactly like him. He complains to Katie about it. "I was like, if you weren't already bald, you'd be balding from the stress." Years of vindication, served on a silver platter, from the safety of the opposite coast.

🧡 Caitlin Brown — Lost and Found — Her 21-year-old son once won a plastic heart from a crane game — a game she thought was "a waste of time and money." Then the heart disappeared. Years later, she found it in storage. Bringing it back to him felt like recovering the memory itself — the miracle of the crane, the thrill on his face, the annoyance she felt that night turning, retroactively, into gratitude.

💥 Valeriy Vislobokov — Blunders — While visiting family, Val got accused of scheming, and he was cut out of all family group chats. Val's blunder? In a reactive moment, he changed the password to the business email 😜. "Retrospect — probably a blunder. I haven't seen or talked to my godson a lot."

🌎 Ping Liao — Risk — Left Sydney in 2009 for London during the global financial crisis. Took six months to find work. Then moved to New York in 2010 — four months to land a job. "Time and again I've taken these risks. There are no wrong decisions. You just have to be open to feeling whatever comes your way."

🏔️ Nick (Guest) 🏆 — Surrender — Planned an Alaska trip where he swore off backcountry camping. Bears. Unknown terrain. White flag raised in advance. They went anyway. First thing they saw after pushing through bushes? Bear tracks. Moose tracks. They set up the golden triangle (tent, food, cooking — 100 yards apart each). His friend went to get the bear box and screamed. Not a bear — a ptarmigan. A giant chicken. Surrender accepted.

⭐ Moaad (Guest) — Destiny — Missed his dream school in France by a fraction. The backup had an exchange program with the US. Getting to America meant fighting through bureaucratic nightmares — a wire transfer with wrong numbers, a $20,000 semester he didn't have, calls upon calls. He got his master's degree on time. The disappointment of missing that first school became the door to everything that followed.

🎯 Evaluations

🧭 General Evaluator — Valeriy Vislobokov

Valeriy Vislobokov — doing double duty as General Evaluator and photographer tonight — noted the full boardroom, all functionary roles filled ahead of time ("actually not that common"), and great guest participation. His one push: the Toastmaster role needs to be filled at least one day before the meeting. "That feeling of 'it's going to be tough' — I'll tell you, that never really goes away. But come in with the assumption that you're doing a role."

🎨 Vedant Bothikar — Ella

Vedant Bothikar admitted he knows nothing about art — but found himself curious at every slide transition. "That's a strong indication your speech is doing its job." He praised the structured journey (personal art → college → conference failure → rise) and the deep interest radiating from Ella's delivery. The stretch goal: own the room, not the slides — face the audience, ditch the notes, and let the natural authority that's already there fill the space.

🧹 Amber Dawn — Dennis

Amber Dawn called Dennis's title "excellent — simple, and it told us clearly what the speech was about." She highlighted his immediate story hook, his presence and projection, and the beautiful Beckett quote from his teacher. The stretch goal: let the powerful moments breathe. Take that pause between sentences — give the Beckett quote the silence it deserves. Lean on bullet points instead of full scripts as confidence builds, and use that natural physical presence to move through the speaker's triangle.

🧩 🏆 Kathleen Hurtubise — Sheila

Kathleen Hurtubise opened with a zinger: "Sheila did not demur from making the message directly her own." She praised the unexpected T-puzzle metaphor — "I thought, what is this all about?" — and the revelation that 160+ configurations exist, mirroring the unlimited ways to structure a speech. The stretch goal: when Sheila said "I said so" mid-speech, it drew attention to a stumble better left invisible — if the audience didn't notice, don't flag it. And the diagram labels needed tighter alignment so the message-to-definition mapping reads clearly from a distance. "Overall, excellent. I'll use that T-puzzle when I present my first speech."

🎵 The Language Backstage: Alliteration, Filler, and One Verb That Wouldn't Quit

• Grammarian Amber Dawn tracked both the beautiful and the filler. Standout language of the night

• Ah Counter Caitlin Brown kept the tally with characteristic thoroughness.

• Timer Ping Liao — Prepared speeches all within bounds.

Quiz Master Gautam Nair tested the room's attention span:

• 🎨 What piece did Ella begin her talk with? → "Seismic" — the heart for SF General Hospital

• 🎭 What play did Dennis freeze during? → The New Tenant

• 🔦 What did Dennis say about the switch? → "Tonight, the switch is on"

• 🧩 What puzzle did Sheila introduce, and what are the four pillars? → T-Puzzle: Message, Impact, Audience, Flow

⭐ The Envelope, Please

📣 Club Business

🗳️ Officer Elections: Coming in early June. Nominations open until May 27th. Submit your nominations here — you can nominate yourself or others for as many roles as you want. The Treasurer role is open — it's a one-year term but "the easiest role to do."

📣 What's Next at GGTM

📅 Wednesday, May 27, 2026 | 6:00–8:00 PM

📍 San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 235 Montgomery St, 7th Floor

Nomination deadline for officer elections is May 27 — bring your ambition (or your friend's name) and sign up before the meeting. And if you're thinking about being Toastmaster: raise your hand now. Val made it clear — the day-before panic has to stop.

🔦 Thank You

To Sheila for running a tight, personal, beautifully themed evening. To Helen for weaponizing a card game into 25 minutes of gut-level storytelling. To Gautam for the steady hand at the gavel and behind the quiz.

To our speakers — Alexandra, Ella, Dennis, Sheila — for saying yes when the stage asked. To our evaluators — Vedant, Amber, Kat — for saying what needed saying with care. To Val for holding the mirror up (and the camera). To Ping, Caitlin, Derick, and Amber for keeping the numbers honest.

To Jay, Vedant, Katie, Ping, Val, Caitlin, Nick, Moaad, and every storyteller who stood up when the card was drawn.

And to every member and guest who showed up, filled a seat, snapped for demur, and refused to say no to a Wednesday night downtown. The switch is on. 🔦

🍾 The meeting ended. The celebration didn't

🎉 Val's Big News: Our photographer-slash-General-Evaluator signed a new employment contract this week. His offer to the room: first round of drinks at Irish Bank. Legend behavior. Val's new contract, a round of drinks, and the kind of conversations that only happen after you've spent two hours failing better together. 🔦

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you!