Toastmasters Podcast #143: Ramona J. Smith—2018 World Champion of Public Speaking

The Toastmasters Podcast with Greg Gazin with Ryan Levesque and Bo Bennett

The Toastmasters Podcast is a talkshow designed to amplify the Toastmaster magazine content, featuring interviews with Toastmasters, contributors and those connected with the articles of this monthly publication. ALL 250+ Episodes can be found at ToastmastersPodcast.com.

[23:57] On Saturday August 25, 2018, Ramona J. Smith of Houston, Texas, U.S.A, District 56, became the 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking. Her contest speech, "Still Standing" was delivered to an audience of nearly 2,000 people from around the world during the finals of the Toastmasters International Speech Contest in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Smith is a high school educator, speaker, author, blogger and poet and is only the fifth woman to capture the title of World Champion of Public Speaking title since the contest's inception in 1938. 

In this episode, Smith offers us a glimpse into her journey and what she learned along the way. We get an insight into her championship winning speech and how she uses the analogy of a fight in a boxing ring to share how she was able to overcome her failures, including a divorce and dropping out of college not once, but four times but was never down for the count. We also learn a little about her miracle son, Ryan.

Ramona J. Smith can be reached at RamonaJSmith.com.

You can watch Ramona's winning speech, or catch her semi-final speech along with the entire competition at Toastmasters-On-Demand.