Toastmasters gets ever more interest from the financial institutions here in London. Before this year, we had company clubs at Credit Suisse, Marsh and Citigroup. This year, we have added a chartered club at Lehman Brothers called Bank Street Speakers. Thomson Financial have started a pre-chartered club. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants have chartered NZICA Bank Speakers (which is an open club). And just today, I have set up a meeting with the folks at Goldman Sachs to talk through the process of starting a club.
With this in mind, it was great to be contest chair at Citi Criers International Speech and Evaluation contest last Thursday. It was a brilliant evening. Over 25 of us met in Citigroup's offices and despite the current financial gloom, everyone was up for a great fun evening.
The contests were won as follows:
International Speech Contest - Helen Thomas
Evaluation Contest - Mariano Tufro
Please see photos of me handing over the trophies to a very happy Helen. Also see Mariano doing his usual annual winning thing! Both will be strong contestants at Dave Brook's Area 31 Contest . This is being hosted by Women In Banking and Finance on April 14th. Try to get along if you can.
On top of this, it was also Catherine Desson's first evening as President. For the past 15 months Maria-Jesus Rojo has been the President of the club. She has been a fabulous standard bearer for Toastmasters. Now, after a spell as VPE, it is Catherine's turn. She did a great job on her first night and is a great asset to both Citi Criers and Toastmasters. She will need help from the broader Toastmasters community for outside GEs etc so please volunteer to help make her time as President a success. You can reach her at [email protected].
Company clubs can be a great growth area for Toastmasters, providing cost effective communication and leadership training to both companies and members. It is great to see how well our existing clubs are doing.
If you work for a company that could be interested in having its own company club, please get in touch and the London committee can talk you through the process.
