Hangin’ with the world’s top Toastmaster, Jana Barnhill. (She’s kind of a big deal.)

Toastmasters International President Jana Barnhill was the special guest at the District 62 Conference in Grand Rapids October 24-26, but prior to the conference she had a busy schedule crisscrossing lower Michigan making appearances in Flint at the University of Michigan for a luncheon and later in Port Huron for a meet and greet at the Fogcutter Restaurant.

Not one to pass up a publicity opportunity, Fenton Toastmasters’ Vice President of Public Relations Stacy Lukasavitz reached out to the Port Huron club, Hi-Noon Toastmasters, explaining that her boyfriend, Mark Will, is the program director of the college radio station in Port Huron, WSGR 91.3 F.M. and offered some on-air promotion of the meet and greet event. The meet and greet was filled with members of the Hi-Noon club, interested members of the public, Will, Lukasavitz, and even Fenton Area Toastmasters’ two DTMs, David Cady and Milton Wendel.

A week prior to the event, Will had his students read the announcement of Barnhill’s visit on the air at regular intervals, and after much email tag with various District 62 higher-ups, was able to secure an exclusive, live on-air interview of Barnhill following the Fogcutter meet and greet. It wasn’t a done-deal until the day before, so there wasn’t much time to publicize it, but from what we heard it was well-received by not only the listening public but Jana Barnhill herself.

We planned on posting an .mp3 of the interview on this site so that it could be listened to by the internet masses, but unfortunately, the digital recording device that used to record the interview didn’t work and the interview was lost (unless somebody in the Hi-Noon club recorded it on tape, if so, PLEASE CONTACT US!).

Overall, however, both events were a success, friends were made, and fun was had by all.