Page 14 - May 2020

FROM THE DESK

And the Winner Is . . .

PJ Kleffner, DTM - Program Quality Director

Did you hear what sounded like a sonic make Saturday look like just another routine
boom last Saturday, May 16? It was actually a day in the life of District 7 Toastmasters.
huge sigh of relief from your PQD when the The day began with the D7 Evaluation

District speech contests were finished. I am Contest. The eight Division champions gave
so thankful that we didn’t have any technical their feedback to Model Speaker, Arlene
glitches with Zoom, and a nice clean video file Cogen from Toastmasters for Speaking
of our winner has been sent to Toastmasters Professionals. We took a break for lunch, and

International for the Region quarterfinals. then launched into the International Speech
Speaking of winners, the results of the Contest.
District 7 2020 contests are displayed on the The competition continued to be fierce,
opposite page. and each Division Champion gave the judges

I also want to give a huge shout out to and audience their best performances. In the
all the people working behind the scenes to end, the winners were chosen by the secret
make both contests successful. Past District panel of judges.
Governor Alexis Mason was our Toastmaster Congratulations to everyone for a job well

for the Evaluation Contest while last year’s done!
Division Director of the Year, Jenny Thomas,
ran the International Speech Contest. Past
District Director Michelle Alba-Lim was our

Chief Judge for both contests.
In addition to all these “visible” faces, Model Speaker
there were judges, timers, ballot counters, Arlene Cogen
and sergeant-at-arms who all flawlessly Toastmasters

executed their duties. Of course, there were for Speaking
a couple of other roles we haven’t had in Professionals
previous contests, the Zoom Master and the
Chat Master, who helped maintain some

semblance of order in the cyberspace universe
of our contests. In case it wasn’t obvious to the
casual observer, we all spent many hours in
pre-contest briefings and practice sessions to

14 ONE COMMUNITY