Spotlight on Membership: Suzanne Van Stralen
Meeting for the week of October 1-7, 2018
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Spotlight on Membership: Suzanne Van Stralen
Speaker: Suzanne Van Stralen
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page.Each Monday our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time.Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you; read it while on public transit, waiting in line for coffee, or even at the park! Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from President Andrew:
Greetings Members and Guests,One of our newer members, Suzanne Van Stralen, presents the program for this week’s meeting. As our members have likely seen from the influx of new applications, we have had quite a few new members of our Rotary family. I am thrilled that people feel connected to the work of our e-Club and am constantly inspired by the company we keep. From meeting many of our new members and getting to know our current ones, I’ve noticed a shared ambitious spirit: that we can always serve our community in more or better ways.Guests, if you’re checking out Rotary for the first time, I welcome you to consider joining. The people are wonderful and there’s always more work to be done.
Sincerely,
Andrew Taw,
PresidentRotary eClub of Silicon Valley
Weekly Funny with the Lady of Laughter (LOL)
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Yvonne Kwan, our “Lady of Laughter!”
Happy October! October is National Book Month, so here are some jokes to get your pages turning
On a scale from 1 to 10, how obsessed are you with Harry Potter?About 9 and three quarters.
What is the tallest building?The library because it has so many stories.
Yesterday, a book feel on my head.I guess I only have my shelf to blame.
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
Less than 10% of firefighters are women. But what these women lack in numbers, they make up for in guts and inspiration, paving the way for the next generation of women firefighters.
World of
Our very own District 5170 is organizing an Avenues of Service Training.Members, there is a Rotary events grant of up to $150 available to you, and this event is eligible for reimbursement! Sign up soon as this event is on October 4, 2018
Learn more at https://events.rotarydistrict5170.org/rotary-district-5170-events/2018-avenues-of-service.
Coffee With a Rotarian
A natural part of Rotary is the networking and the fellowship you get out of meeting other Rotarians. Coffee With a Rotarian is a monthly program of our club where we match participating club members for one-on-one virtual (or in some cases in person) coffee meetings, so they can learn more about each other. This program is organized by member Tzviatko Chiderov.
This week we have Mahmood from San Jose, CA, USA reporting on a chat with Andrew from Oakland, CA, USA.
Andrew and I met on Friday and had a great conversation. Andrew is an amazing person with a an interesting background. He is a teenage father of 11 year old son. Wow. He is doing some great Philanthropy working for an NGO. He and I brain stormed on some challenges the non-profits go through to raise funds. He has a great insights and we thought we could help by using AI in the process. The main challenge as he described is in two parts. First, the organizations that want to give money (e.g. foundations, State and Federal Governments, WW orgs, etc.), want to give it to the right organizations. The selection process is complex and long. In addition, managing/auditing the donations has its own challenges and risks. Using AI, all this can be made a lot simpler. Second, the recipients of donations have to go through many hoops and write out grant applications to many places and have to have resources, which they don’t have or don’t have the expertise in. Notice that the services delivery NGOs are the value add organizations with a passion and skills to provide services. So AI enablement can help them streamline and automate the process thus reducing time and resources. So, we thought AI is a good way to help drive efficiencies, governance and save money which can be applied to services instead of overheads. I can see that we can have a universal application to help the philanthropy world.
We encourage all club members to participate in Coffee With a Rotarian. You can sign up here!
Service Report
Tell us about service you’ve done recently in your community.Click here to fill out The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Service Survey
On the first meeting of every month, we feature service reports from club members for the previous month. Thanks for your service everyone!
Shaw, Heather
Provided chiropractic services for home bound person (9/16 &9/23) – 3 hours
Abbasi, Ferheen
Volunteered at Stanford Hospital (Aug 1-31) – 48 hrs
Stanford Hospital Volunteering July (July 2-31) – 36 hrs
D’Garay-Juncal, Raquel
Review and provide technical advice to TRF on a global grant application for a Disease Prevention and Treatment project. (Jul 18th – Aug 1st, 2018) – 7h
6th Annual Rotary MusiCamp Learn to Surf Event for the gifted musicians from other countries by giving them the opportunity to surf after experiencing a couple weeks of performing as the International Youth Symphony. (Aug 2nd, 2018) – 3h
Fundraising to help a nursing home in Tijuana, Mexico (Aug 1-31, 2018) – 20h
Collaboration in a research project to improve postgraduate academic programs at the University of Chicago (Aug 21-22, 2018) – 4h
Training on community projects at a middle school (Aug 27-31, 2018) – 10h
Tree-planting in the Friendship Park (Aug 29th, 2018) – 2h
For Members Only
Past Announcements
Member name badges will be shipped out soon.
Claim your @siliconvalleyrotary.com email forwarder! Email Webmaster Mitty at mittyc@siliconvalleyrotary.com to get set-up with your own @siliconvalleyrotary.com email address forwarder.
Join our members-only Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/rotarysiliconvalley/
Our Events & Projects
We hold our meetings online, but we do regular service projects and social events in the Silicon Valley! This section is updated every week with our upcoming events. We welcome guests to all of the events and service projects listed here.
Also be sure to join our Meetup Group for automatic calendar updates and to RSVP for our events! These are open to all guests as well!
Past Events & Projects:
Here is a screenshot from our last online member social!Here is a picture from our recent school supply donation to Scott Lane Elementary School:
Upcoming Events:
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)More events coming soon! All events are open to guests, unless otherwise mentioned. Feel free to join us! If you ever have questions, please email inquiries@siliconvalleyrotary.com
What would you like to do?
Hey Members! What would you like to do? We’re working on putting together some exciting socials and impactful service projects for our upcoming quarter’s event calendar. Let us know what you want to do by posting in our members only Facebook Group (if you don’t have access, please request it with Webmaster Mitty). Remember, you’re only taking advantage of the full impact of Rotary when you’re stepping up to get involved.
Happy Dollars: Do Good by Sharing Something Good
Each week we ask our members to share stories with the club and toss in a few dollars to support our efforts. The primary goal of this section is to provide a fun way of getting to know each fellow members and guests, while giving back to a good cause.
Happy dollars is an opportunity to share something positive that has happened in your life whether it is personal or business. Think of it as your opportunity to brag a little, but also put a little bit into a karma jar. The money donated through happy dollars is put to charitable use, and the message that you leave for happy dollars will be posted in our online meeting the following week for the entire week for folks to see! (Pending that it’s appropriate!)Here are the happy dollars contributions from last week!This section is usually updated on the early hours of Saturday, so contributions made over the weekend may not be listed here.
An Anonymous donor made a $25 donation.Got some very good news from family this week – always an energizer for that to happen!
Nan Herron made a $25 donation.I was so excited to speak with Mitty this week about becoming a member and then…. wow! Dr Wade just blew my mind! What a force!!
Share your happy dollars thoughts with us and help with doing good around the world.
Selected Comments
Every week at the bottom of our meetings, there is a comments section for members and guests to tell us what they enjoyed about the meeting or to ask questions to the speaker. We select a few comments every week from last week’s meeting to be featured during this week’s meeting.
Here are the comments selected from last week’s meeting.
Raquel D. Juncal said:As a woman in science, this program was mind-blowing! Thank you, Dr. Jessica!
Vandana Agrawal said:Physics lesson on “Laser cooling” which slows down the atoms in liquids, solids and gasses to reduces the temperature of the matter was informative. It was interesting to learn how “Magneto optical traps” can cool down atoms to rare state of matter which have wide applications in Physics.The presentation by Dr. Jessica Wade on organic semiconductors was very interesting.
Ferheen Abbasi said:So. I will argue that this meeting was the best one I have ever attended in my time in this club!!!! I absolutely loved Dr. Wade. Huge shout out to Roger for connecting us to her!!!! As a woman in science, I have fought tooth and nail to get the credit I deserved in my lab. It is so difficult to be a woman in science and the work she is doing, something as simple as editing Wikipedia articles, is exactly what we need. Dr. Wade, thank you so much for everything that you have done and continue to do. I am inspired and hope to follow your path!!!
Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this week’s meeting after you watch the program below, and perhaps you’ll see your comment featured next week!
Program: Spotlight on Membership: Suzanne Van Stralen
Every week we bring to you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others.
Suzanne advocates for local and global community building and has been an active Rotarian for the past six years. She joined our club on August 11, 2018, and transferred from the Rotary Club of North Napa where she served as club president during 2015-2016. In addition to working on local projects, she is passionate about international projects including Rotary International’s Peace Fellows Program and Rotary’s partnership with Mediators Beyond Borders.She lives in Napa, California and has over twenty-five years of experience as an Organization Development Consultant and Leadership Development Educator and Coach. Suzanne earned a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning and Change and earned a MSOD degree from Pepperdine University. She has consulted to large corporations such as AT&T and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals as well as small to medium-sized businesses and non-profit agencies. She believes that her marketing experience with AT&T grounds her consulting in practical outcomes that rest upon collaboration, effective communication, and agility.Suzanne served as a core adjunct faculty member for Saint Mary’s College’s Master in Leadership Studies Program from 2003 – 2013. While she spends a great deal of time working with adults, she is also passionate about helping youth identify core values and related skills that support meaningful living, direction, and leadership.Suzanne is the owner of SVS Consulting Services and a partner with Dr. Martin Hall in developing a start-up company named the Compass Series.
Share your thoughts or ask our speaker a question in the comments at the bottom of this meeting page!
Upcoming Program Recording Schedule
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always https://zoom.us/j/5104080000. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
You’re Almost Done! One last thing: The Attendance Survey…
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done. First, we have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
Visiting Rotarians, this is how you can get an email receipt to pass along to your club’s secretary as proof that you’ve attended our meeting if you need it for makeups.Non-Rotarian Guests, we would love to see who is dropping by our meetings! This part is optional for you. If you think you may want to join our eClub at some point in the future, we would strongly recommend you fill out the attendance form as it will improve your chances of success for your membership application.More importantly, for all members and guests — we strongly recommend and ask that you leave a comment below in our comments area below. Tell us how you enjoyed the program. Ask this week’s speaker any questions you might have. Or just stop by and say hello and tell us where you’re from!
