Talk to the top

You're introduced to make a presentation. Suddenly, your legs go numb, your mouth gets dry, your mind goes blank and the only thing you hear is your heart throbbing.
Sound familiar?
For many people, public speaking tops the list of immobilizing fears. And with e-mail and text-messaging becoming near-universal forms of communication, many of us don't get enough practice at just plain talking.
But there's an old-school solution in this digital age, and it beats the potentially psychologically scarring practice of visualizing audience members in their underwear: Toastmasters.
Since 1924, Toastmasters International has offered the chance to learn through self-paced speaking assignments at club meetings. The group has long attracted corporate climbers and entrepreneurs looking to enhance their speaking skills and confidence and parlay them into promotions and business opportunities.

"It helped me a lot in the business world," said Ron Pena, who owns Aristo Office Equipment in Los Angeles. "I couldn't have accomplished what I have if it wasn't for Toastmasters."

Although membership was limited to men for nearly five decades, today's Toastmasters welcomes women and people of all ethnic backgrounds.

And Toastmasters talk is cheap. Run on a volunteer model, the nonprofit organization charges a one-time initiation fee of $20, with local clubs assessing dues that run about $100 to $200 a year.

I first walked into a Toastmasters meeting a couple of years ago, on the advice of a friend who credited some of her personal and professional success to the skills she honed at club meetings.

Public speaking once came easily for me, but my game had suffered after several years of working in the solitude of a darkened video-editing bay.

As a biracial woman in her 30s, I was pleasantly surprised to see such diversity in gender, generation and ethnicity at the Jewel City 29 club that meets at Glendale's American Red Cross office. (Glendale is nicknamed the Jewel City, and this was the 29th Toastmasters club to be chartered.)

The club also included people from all walks of professional life: accountants, entrepreneurs, engineers, executives, professors, students and journalists among them.

Greeting me that first night was 25-year Toastmasters veteran Darryl De Bond, a native of Sri Lanka and the dean of the club. His warm, poised greeting convinced me that he must have been there primarily for the socializing side of things.