January 23, 2006 Spokesman

Posted by David Aubry 
 

The Meeting was called to order at 6:30 PM by President Joanne Primavera at the temporary meeting location, Jimmy G's restaurant at Tech City Bowl.

 

President Joanne has mislaid her Inspirational Moment and so we had none this evening.

 

Rachel Knight led the Pledge of Allegiance and also acted as the flag pole for the small flag we had available.

Introductions & Visiting Rotarians:

  • Dave Aubry introduced Deborah Wakefield, from the Columbia Tower (Seattle) Club, who is going to join our club.
  • Steve Brown introduced Warren Crain of the Emerald City Club, and a visitor, Rajesh Kanath who is a developer at Microsoft.
  •  John Overleese introduced Kristy Pripple, who is a P.R Director for a local Real Estate firm.
  •  Bob Auslander introduced his wife.
  •  Tom Sturgell introduced Carl Boreth, of Sterling Savings Bank
  •  Katherine Kehrli introduced our Russian exchange student, Vlad, who seemed unusually quiet and low-key this evening.
  •  Chuck Morgan introduced Sarah Taylor, of Edward Jones Investments.

 

Announcements:

 

  • Felicity Burdick spoke about our two Community Service projects that we did this past Saturday... both very successful.  17 people turned out for the morning project at Evergreen Hospital, and 21 for the evening project at Kirkland Heights housing project Community Center.  Special thanks to Katherine Kehrli for her great work in creating the meal and organizing the serving of the meal at the Community Center.
  •  Linda Julien has a sign-up sheet for Student-of-the-Month interviews, upcoming.
  •  Pat Swenson announced that she has obtained a number of important Duck Dash Sponsors.
  •  Scott Becker announced that we already have three times as many Duck Dash prizes as we had last year.
  •  Mike Hunter announced that applications for Rotary Scholarships are due February 1. He is working with the local schools to obtain names and applications. 
  •  Friends of the Kirkland Library have asked Kirkland Rotary to assemble a three-person team to participate in the upcoming Spelling Bee.  Teams must register by 2/20 and the event is February 28 at 6:30PM.
  •  February 13 meeting is Sweetheart Night at the Rotary Meeting.  There will be a talent contest for members.  Sign up on line or at the next meeting.
  •  President Joanne distributed the event calendar for the first half of 2006.

 

Chancellor Steve Brown arm-wrestled everyone for dollars.  Once again, he won and the coffers are richer.

 

Program

President Joanne then introduced our speaker, Trish May, a passionate and driven social entrepreneur.  She is a former Microsoft Marketing Executive, responsible for PowerPoint, and now founder and CEO of Athena Partners.   Athena Partners is a distributor of bottled water on the Paul Newman model, with the profits going to charity. 

 

She spoke on the Power of One person to make a difference. At this time of year she thinks about new approaches to issues and problems, and about opportunities and setting goals.  The most powerful force is the committed Power of One. 

 

Challenges also represent opportunities.  She related this theme to her own bout with cancer 12 years ago.  She resolved to get involved in finding solutions to this problem.  She participated in fund raisers for Women's Cancer Research, and then got involved in starting Athena.

 

President Joanne announced that we would be donating a children's book about making friends to the John Muir Elementary Library in Ms. May's honor, after she autographed the volume, as a thank-you for speaking to us tonight.

 

No ticket drawing tonight.

 

President Joanne adjourned the meeting at 7:30PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

David Aubry, Acting Scribe