By Jackie Sandquist
I first checked out Toastmasters after I gave a couple of presentations at work. When I was asked in 2010 to present at a managers meeting about how I had led my team in a fundraising campaign, I was nervous about standing up in front of two hundred of my peers. I wrote down some notes and thought about what I was going to say, but when I got up on the stage I simply rushed through my presentation. At the end, I cocked my head slightly to the left, smiled, and said, “And that’s what I did!” I knew I’d blown it, but of course my coworkers were nice to a fault. “Good job!” they said. This is Portland, and we all know how to do nice. I wanted to forget about the whole thing, and I vowed never to get anywhere near a stage or a microphone again.
Eliot Neighborhood 