Family Ties in Toastmasters

If you’re hoping to find a way to spend more time with a family member, or want to encourage some friendly familial competition, take a look at Toastmasters. As the following members demonstrate, being in a club together can strengthen relationships and sharpen skills. Read on to see how family members of all ages have benefited—both in and outside of the club environment.

Bill, Edward, and Tania Moes: Intergenerational Success

Crest Toastmasters Club in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, has a unique bragging right: three generations of the same family in one club. Bill, Edward, and Tania Moes not only participate in club life together, they are all also active in the club’s Executive Committee.

Father-and-daughter duo Edward and Tania joined Toastmasters in 2023. “I said to [Tania], ‘This would be really good for you. You should go to Toastmasters, because it’ll help you in your [university] work and in your business life afterward,’” remembers Edward.

“Bear in mind, I had never been a Toastmaster in my life, but I knew about the organization. I said, ‘How about we join together?’ So we joined together.”

Bill, Edward’s father, became a member about a year and a half later. When Edward and Tania first joined, Bill was living in an entirely different part of Australia. On one of Bill’s visits to see his son, Edward took him to a meeting of the Crest Toastmasters Club. “It was a nice club,” says Bill, who eventually moved to Brisbane, and joined Edward and Tania in the club.

Being in the same club allows them to spend more time together. “We live in three different homes, so we don’t get to see each other very much, except when we’re at Toastmasters,” says Edward. “It’s brought us closer together.”

Switching between family mode and club mode initially took a bit of getting used to. “The weird part at first was having to introduce them by their first names,” says Tania. But having your father and grandfather as fellow members has its advantages, especially in Tania’s role as the club’s Vice President Education. “I know I can always rely on [them] as my backup. I make the agendas at the moment, so, if need be, I can just slot [them] in anywhere.”

There are other advantages, as well. “We have a breadth of experience and a breadth of ages in the club,” says Edward. Because the Moes can relate to each other, they find themselves better able to communicate with other club members in different generations. “We’ve got a few [members] in their 20s, and it’s no problem talking to them, because it’s just like talking with Tania,” Edward adds.

While having three generations in one club might be a unique bragging right for the Crest Toastmasters Club now, the Moes hope that it won’t always be. They’d like to set an example for other clubs and encourage them to look for members across all age ranges. It can even be a recruiting tactic. “Struggling to get members?” laughs Bill. “Bring your grandfather. It works!”

Far left, Eden Medellin and her mother, Avi Greene; Janine Carver and her daughter, Lily.

California Club: Bring the Children

Intergenerational recruitment has certainly worked for the Aliso Viejo Toastmasters club, in Southern California. It was chartered in April 2024, and from the beginning, was a supportive environment for parents to bring their children.

Club members “not only gain the skills and the confidence for themselves, but when they [see] the impact that Toastmasters has on them, they’re like, ‘Okay, my kids need this,’” says District Director Ionut Breb, DTM. “All the parents in the club at one point have brought their kids.”

This is certainly true of Janine Carver and Avi Greene. Janine had heard of Toastmasters in the past, when her children were young, but never had the chance to join. When she heard about Aliso Viejo Toastmasters, she jumped at the opportunity.

“I was going to give my Ice Breaker, and I invited my best friend, Avi … Actually, I didn’t invite her. She just showed up and surprised me, and then she fell in love with the club.” Avi joined not long after.

They both attended regularly for a bit, then Eden, Avi’s 19-year-old daughter, attended a meeting. “I might have tricked her into coming by asking her to come see my speech,” Avi laughs, “but when she did come, she was willing to stand up and participate in Table Topics.” Janine was leading Table Topics that evening, which helped Eden to feel comfortable. “Eden went silent for what felt like an eternity,” Avi remembers. “But then she spoke, and she gave a very beautiful, articulate, very vulnerable expression, and it was so well received that she was willing to continue to come.”

A few weeks after that, Janine’s older daughter Lily came, followed a few months later by her younger daughter Ruby. “I basically made it a house rule that, if you live here, you’re going to attend Toastmasters,” says Janine. “There’s just so much value. There is so much positivity and encouragement. … I thought, I need my kids to be part of this.”

This positivity and encouragement goes both ways. Eden, Lily, and Ruby have not only gotten involved in club life, but have volunteered for District events as well. “They are a source of encouragement for our [older] demographic,” says Ionut. “When they see an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old go up and do stuff, it provides hope … hope that we can connect those generations.”

That hope is strong among Ionut, Janine, Avi, and the rest of the club. “The dream that we have collectively is, at one point, for [the younger members] to take the lead and charter Young Aliso Viejo Toastmasters. They would make a great club,” says Ionut, “and they would probably have us as guests.”

Frank Tsuro (left) and brother Andrew.

Frank and Andrew Tsuro: Brotherly Love

Encouraging leadership in the younger generation is a point of passion for Frank and Andrew Tsuro, both Distinguished Toastmasters. When Frank, who lives in Zimbabwe, became Director of District 74 (Southern Africa) at 27, he was apparently the youngest person to ever take on that position in the District. That is, until his younger brother Andrew broke his record.

Frank joined Toastmasters first, in 2012, after watching video clips of the World Championship of Public Speaking^® on the internet. “I decided that I would join a club and participate in a contest,” he says. “And then I discovered [that] the interest in contests in Zimbabwe, at the time, was very low.”

Not to be deterred, he decided to plan a Toastmasters speech contest himself. After planning his own club’s contest, he ended up helping other clubs plan theirs, and organized the Area contest as well. “I think that’s what made me prominent enough to be appointed an Area Governor. … I became established as a leader because of the way I planned contests.”

In 2015, as part of Frank’s Area leadership role, he wanted to charter a new club in the brothers’ home city of Bulawayo. “That’s when Andrew came into the picture, because we needed to make things happen.”

“[Frank] was based in the capital city, Harare, and I was in Bulawayo, and that’s how I got manipulated, or coerced, or ‘voluntold,’ as the elder brother would do, to help him set it up,” Andrew quips. He agreed to help, but, at that point, he didn’t know what all the Toastmasters fuss was about. “I thought I was just getting away from dishes duty at home,” he laughs.

But it didn’t take long for Andrew’s Toastmasters career to take off, and he followed in Frank’s footsteps through Area, Division, and District leadership roles.

The brothers use the skills they’ve learned in Toastmasters to support each other—and others—outside of the club setting as well. “One thing that we’ve made very intentional in our journeys is to focus on the transferable skills of the Toastmasters program,” says Andrew. “We say that ‘Toastmasters is where leaders are made,’ and we come from a country and a continent [where leadership] does not have a good image.”

Brothers Andrew and Frank Tsuro, dressed for success.

Both Andrew and Frank are passionate about leadership development. “We are on a mission to redefine leadership in Africa by creating young, ethical, and smart leaders—we call them YES leaders—[to] contribute to developing the continent at grassroots levels,” says Andrew, now a resident of Centurion, South Africa.

“That’s really what keeps us in the organization,” adds Frank, who served as an International Director from 2023 to 2025. “Toastmasters is a beautiful platform to develop the leaders that we want to see on our continent.”

Connie and Tom Jameson enjoying a vacation in the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

Tom and Connie Jameson: Couple Has Long Loved Toastmasters

In 2024, as Toastmasters International celebrated its 100th anniversary, Tom and Connie Jameson also celebrated a milestone: Together, they had been in Toastmasters for a century.

Tom joined the Riverside Breakfast Club, in Riverside, California, in 1969 and has remained a club member ever since—56 years in all. Connie, meanwhile, is a 46-year member of the Burnt Toast club in Riverside. Both are Distinguished Toastmasters.

Their Toastmasters journey has changed since the early days. For one thing, their comfort level with public speaking has been transformed.

“I was required to take a speech class in college,” says Tom, “and never once was able to fall asleep the night before. I was so nervous.”

He started a new job, and his boss, who was the President of a Toastmasters club, suggested he join. “When you get a new job and your boss tells you to do something, what do you do? You say, ‘Yes, boss.’ And so I went … [to the] last place in the world I wanted to be.” Once he was in, though, he loved it.

Eventually, he encouraged his wife to join Toastmasters, in part to overcome her shyness. Despite her initial hesitation, Connie quickly found her footing. “I joined in the spring, and by fall, I was already in my first speech contest,” she says. “It just amazes me—and I like to share that with people—how quickly it works. You gain the confidence that ‘I can do it,’ and then it’s just onward and upward from there.”

Tom and Connie Jameson pose with the captain of a ship on a vacation cruise.

They’ve belonged to multiple clubs over the years, sometimes together, sometimes separate. Tom and Connie, who have both served in numerous officer roles, say Toastmasters has positively impacted their family life: They help each other with speeches and other Toastmasters projects, have more awareness about their communication as a couple, and have shared their enthusiasm with their children as well.

“We took them to Toastmasters events, such as speech contests, at young ages,” says Connie. “They learned how to listen, behave appropriately, and interact with adults, providing them enhanced confidence and skills for school and other social situations.”

As much as Toastmasters itself resembles a family, there’s something unique about the organization. “Toastmasters is the only place that you will go where the goal of everyone in the room is to help you to become better and achieve your goals. That won’t happen at a family reunion,” says Tom. “To me, that’s what [Toastmasters] is, and that’s what it should be.”

Connie and Tom have belonged to a number of different clubs in Southern California.

And that’s what it has been for Connie and Tom for more than 100 combined years. “It’s actually 102,” laughs Tom, “but who’s counting?”

10:30 minute video of Past International President Matt Kinsey and his son, Brandon, talking about their time in Toastmasters.

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