Dear Fellow Toastmaster!

Here we are with another report from our weekly meeting.

Last night we

• spoke about upcoming flights to London and Havana,

• welcome 18 guests (!)

• had a cameo visit from an angry CIA Director,

• paid a tribute to SF Giants and lanyard-wearing SF visitors

  yet …the overarching theme of our stories has been our love and strong connection to our City by the Bay.

📣👮‍♂️Officer Announcements

•  Scott Brown, President: It’s official! After 6 week pilot, we reached an agreement with the SF Chamber of Commerce to extend our partnership indefinitely - thank you Mike Z for initiating this great upgrade.

• Katka Sabo, VP of Membership: Thanks for all the Yelp love everyone send our way + thanks to Aggie, Lisa & Juan for leaving fantastic reviews We are on our way to become #1 Toastmasters in Yelp’s Top 10 Best Toastmasters in SF roundup.

  • Please take a moment to share about your experience with Golden Gate Toastmasters on our Google Maps profile - it helps more people like you to find us🙏.

And lastly, @Members, you can still be the Toastmaster for the next week + many other speaking slots and functionary roles are still available - go for it!

Meeting Notes

As to celebrate the extension of our partnership Rodney Fong, CEO of the Chamber visited us our meeting last night and shared how the public speaking lessons he gathered with Toastmasters early in his career are relevant in his high profile role to this day.

We also had another 2 sets of special guests

• Chamber of Commerce employees: Rolando, Tyler and of course Mike Z - it was great having you with us, do come back next week!

• Leaders from Toastmasters District 4 namely Roselia Villalobos (District 4 Club Growth Director), Angie Chau (Division F Director) and Andrew Shentu (Area F4 Director)

• Roselia came to speak about the leadership opportunities within the broader Toastmasters organization and encouraged everyone to consider stepping outside of their comfort zone and serving as a leader (1-2 hrs/week commitment max) - ping her if you want to learn more

Katka S, the Toastmaster for the Night (and yours truly author of this week’s newsletter), opened the meeting sharing her mixed feeling about the latest AI news, however she expressed hope that people will always figure out ways how to be Thriving in The City (= the theme of the night)