by Emily Murray DTM IPDD
Solar Flare Director’s Focus Award
This award recognizes a member who committed to helping others achieve their goals, resulting in greater benefits for themselves and fellow members.
The recipient of this award is Jenny Riddle
Jenny has an open hand, an open ear, and an open heart to help, to listen, and most importantly to encourage others on their own paths. She represented the Share Your Sunshine focus by shining a bright beam across the district with support, grace, and encouragement.
District Director’s Service Award
This award honors a District 25 member whose dedication to service, loyalty to the district, and adherence to the Toastmasters Promise provided outstanding leadership, inspiring other to excel.
The recipient of this award is David Winkowski
David is a pillar of strength for the district, he is an unwavering rock of support and known for his “say yes” attitude no matter what time the request comes in – or how unusual it might be. He takes all things in stride with calmness, provides effective solutions to a wealth of issues and also happens to be an incredibly supportive team leader. David earned this award by always being there somewhere doing something to help others – always willing to serve no matter how big or small.
Area Director of the Year
This award recognizes an area director whose dedication, commitment, and area team significantly contributed to district goal achievement.
The recipient of this award is Jin Lim
Our AD of the year did so many things to grow others that it is impossible to list them all. He supported members working towards their DTMs, connected members and clubs to create growth opportunities, volunteered for just about everything that anyone needed help with. He assisted with a heap of TLIs and Contests across the whole district; and attended every open house, celebration, or workshop he knew about. Jin is also working towards his own future growth and the growth of the district by becoming the current year TLI chair and encouraging other members to step into AD roles or get involved in other ways. This tremendous above-and-beyond reliability, engagement, and lifting up of others is what made Jim Lim our Area Director of the Year.
Division Director of the Year
This award recognizes a division director for outstanding performance in membership building and retention, club extension, education/training, leadership, and other areas critical to district success.
The recipient of this award is Shameika McAllister
Our Division Director of the year is an energy powerhouse. Shameika was our team cheerleader- picking others up and encouraging when needed and radiating positivity and sunshine. She was instrumental in creating an atmosphere of support, gratitude, and willingness. She set an expectation of excellence and created avenues for herself and everyone to achieve that expectation. She guided her ADs into cohesiveness, success, and three distinguished areas and her division into Select Distinguished. Because Shameika can’t turn off her sunshine, she shares it in abundance as our Division Director of the year.
Toastmaster of the Year – Sallie Spradlin-Jett
This award recognizes the Toastmaster whose dedication, commitment and efforts significantly contributed towards achieving the goals and mission of the district and who best exemplifies the values of Toastmasters International: Integrity, Respect, Service and Excellence. This honoree exemplifies the true meaning of Toastmasters.
Sallie had a significant impact on our international reputation this past year. District Twenty-Five was already well-known as an excellent district, but Sallie made sure the world heard it. She led a multitude of one-on-one training sessions, developed mentoring for VPPRs across the district, continued and created public networking and skill building groups, and so much more. She worked closely with the trio, the web team, the District Executive Committee, and anyone else needed to keep us on point, on time, and compliant with TI policy. Her boundless creativity shone with the incredible social media posts-both external and internal to the district. Sallie and her team made sure that our members had every opportunity to be informed and engaged with what was happening in the district at all times. More than all that, Sallie also grew teams of people in their skills, knowledge and most importantly confidence so that they could do these same things for their clubs and for the district. She is a stellar example of using creativity, passion, and willingness to bring her light out and shine it on others. She is true model of a Toastmaster and shares her shine so brightly that she’s been asked to be the Region 3 Public Relations Manager this year. For all of this and more, Sallie Spradlin-Jett is our District 25 Toastmaster of The Year.
