In July of 2019 Michele Cuellar, Area Director, was installing officers for the Young Professional’s Toastmasters.  Ramona Smith, the 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking, was giving a speech in that meeting. What a delight to see the “Ladybug Speaker” deliver a speech!

Elaine T. Jackson, BS, PMP, GPM-b

One of the few good things from Covid was that online meetings brought the opportunity to include remote members to Houston Galleria Project Management Toastmasters.  One of our remote gems is Elaine Jackson, who joined HGPMT from Massachusetts. Elaine is our current VPM and is helping us accelerate our club growth.

Elaine is an accomplished speaker with more than 17 years leadership experience with Toastmasters.  She specializes in Project Management and Sustainability training through her own training organization, HolisticPMC. Among her accomplishments have been workshops for PMI and training for PMP Certification.

Houston Galleria Project Management Toastmasters welcomes Elaine’s remote contributions.

Top Left: My Ice breaker was a big hit, and the club gave me the “Best Ice Breaker” trophy. It was followed by “The most informed and balanced speech” and the “Best Humorous Speech.” I was excited about speaking and entered the Tall Tales and International Speech Contest. I won First Place in the Club and Area Contest for both speeches. It was an exciting moment!

In 2007, I received The John Radcliff award at the bottom right. It is awarded to a dedicated Toastmaster every year. I love to speak. My favorite manuals were Humorously Speaking, The Entertaining Speaker and Storytelling. I had received 49 shiny gold cups. All the hard work paid off, and in 2014 I received the DTM.

District 56 member, Elizabeth Ruiz, DTM, successfully coordinated and completed the first two digital Speechcraft programs. The first club she successfully coordinated a Speechcraft program is VNS Voices Toastmasters Club where she is President. A few weeks later, Elizabeth went on to successfully coordinate a second digital Speechcraft program with League City Toastmasters where she is Vice President Education. She signed up ten new members from the Speechcraft programs and earned four official awards signed by Dan Rex: two certified Speechcrafter certificates and two as a Coordinator for newly-certified Speechcrafters!