My Unplanned Achievements
Presentation Mastery Level 1: Ice breaker Speech#1
Below is the first speech I made in my Toastmaster Club. Here are some points to take note of the speech:
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to introduce yourself to the club and learn the basic structure of public speech.
Date of speech: 27th August 2020
Word of the Day: Independence
Time of speech: 5 mins 41 secs (Allocated time is 4–6 mins)
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Most of us were asked this question when we were kids.
Good evening Toastmaster of the evening, fellow members and guest. Welcome to my Icebreaker speech. Like all of you, I am a person made up of my past experiences and I am here today because I am hopeful that this particular experience will make me a better person tomorrow.
Growing up, I wanted to be either 3 things:
1. An Olympic gymnast
2. A popstar
3. Flight attendant
Well guess what, I am NONE of those!
As a kid growing up, I chose gymnastics as part of my after school activities. I had a great time and I wasn’t too bad at it either! I ended up getting a sport scholarship to pursue gymnastics as a career-but my parents coax me into attending “normal school” as it was an expensive sport to pursue and to be honest, my splits were nothing like Simone Biles! Turning myself into a popstar didn’t materialize either because unfortunately I did not inherit the “singing” genes from my dad (who, may I add, is the King of Karaoke!). Although, I would like to think that I am ALMOST a flight attendant. My current job (pre-Covid-19) required me to transport myself via a plane, most of the time to meet clients. The similarity is uncanny in some ways!
But life had other plans for me!
Instead, I became a medical scientist. I have always been fascinated by how science tries to explain things around us. I studied science because I like learning how things are discovered, researched and understood. My first job involved creating and testing new drugs. I worked in a high-tech laboratory, running clinical trials with patients, doctors and medical staff globally.
As a scientist, I observed that medical data capture and data transfer were done using pen and paper in most clinical trial settings, which delayed communication between clinicians and their patients and often led to erroneous data. At that point, I thought to myself, how could I overcome this problem? I quickly realized how mobile technology, specifically smartphone applications, could help address this problem.
With that in mind, I became an entrepreneur, starting my own business in digital health to promote and utilize mobile technology to simplify clinical processes. Because I am integrating science into technology, I needed to ramp up my knowledge in the world of tech, allowing me to be a technology know-how- primarily in coding!
After running the business for ~6 years, I had an investor who was interested to buy out my piece of the business. After much deliberation and difficult decisions, I said yes! 6 years of running my own business thought me a lot and has given me perspective into the many layers of business, technology and science.
Becoming an entrepreneur was a significant part of my life. The highs were high, but the lows were very low- but that is a story for another day. I often journal my entrepreneurial and leadership perspective on online blogs, which indirectly turned me into an amateur writer!
Through my writings, I was approached by a company, asking if I wanted to be part of a team- and that is how I ended up working as a consultant- creating strategies and business growth in leadership.
As I reflect upon my life, there were many things that brought me down, but there were also many things that lifted me up. One of the thoughts I had was “WOW, I have been many things”. It may not be the top 3 things I wanted to be growing up, but I am much more- a scientist, a legal drug pusher, an entrepreneur, a coder, a business consultant, digital health expert, a workforce and leadership specialist, a writer, and now, I am a Toastmaster!
There were a lot of events in between that I wanted to achieve but didn’t happen. I have learned that, THAT IS OK. My message to you tonight is “Allow yourself to discover yourself” and with your own independence , forge your own path. I have gone through many failures and achievements. And I am sure there will be a lot more of them. But let it be known that there are no failures, just lessons learned.
Tonight, I have achieved in giving my very first speech in Toastmasters. I cannot wait to share more achievements with everyone in this club.
Thank you.
Back to you, Toastmaster of the evening.
