On January 31st, 2020 Lauralee Norris completed Level Five of Innovative Planning Path, one of the Paths offered in the Toastmasters Education Program Pathways. Lauralee is the only current member of Yaquina Toastmasters who has completed a full Path on Pathways.
Norris chose Innovative Planning because she wanted the challenge of developing a long term project, and seeing it through from conception to celebration. For her Path, Norris chose to explore topics that she was not familiar with, such as creating a podcast and presenting an hour long presentation at Oregon Coast Community College.
One of the projects required to complete the Innovative Planning Path is to complete a High Performance Leadership Project, which would be the second High Performance Leadership Project Norris has completed with Toastmasters. The first project focused on a public relations campaign to bring awareness to Yaquina Toastmasters. For Innovative Planning, Norris chose to use her position as a Pathways Guide to help spread information about the Pathways program, and make the program easier to understand for everyone. To do this, Norris created step-by-step guides and recorded videos to help other Toastmasters navigate the new education program.
Norris said that "for the new Pathways program, I wanted to lead by example and show that this new education system is meaningful for everyone to try." This is why she created over 70 blog posts and videos to help Toastmasters with this program.
When reflecting on her journey on Pathways, Norris felt like it has given her a variety of opportunities to experiment with new ways of public speaking, like her podcast project and trying out new public relations strategies. While there have been both ups and downs, Norris has enjoyed being able to use her skills as a Pathways Guide to become a mentor through her videos and blog posts for Toastmasters near and far.
Norris said that "throughout this journey to one completed Path on Pathways, I have become a mentor my fellow club members, grow as a speaker and become a more organized leader."
