Gerald Green
Excerpt from Gerald Green's speech at District 80 Annual Convention 2012
Gerald Green, Accredited Speaker (DTM) is a professional speaker and trainer/coach in Speech Communication.
A Malaysian of Eurasian race, Gerald was born in Penang and educated at St. Xavier’s Institution. His last employment was as a marine superintendent in a shipyard, when in 1979 he took four months unpaid leave to do a Speech Communication course at the San Jose State University, Ca. USA and graduated with Honors. On returning to Penang he resigned from his job and ventured into the speaking business and never looked back since.
Gerald has more than 30 years of experience conducting "SPEAK UP WITH CONFIDENCE" his flagship course to people from all walks of life – from university graduates to senior managers and seasoned professionals. He has shared the platform with the best in the speaking business from the USA, Southeast Asia and Malaysia.
Author of three books 'The Magic of Public Speaking' and 'My Pocket Speaker’s Brief', and 'Speak like a True Leader'.
He was instrumental in the formation of MAPS, The Malaysian Association of Professional Speakers, and was its second President (2002-2003).
He is also a past President of the Penang Eurasian Association (1998-2005).
A pioneer of Toastmasters in Malaysia, Gerald is Malaysia’s first Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM - 1990) and the first Asian to receive the Presidential Citation (Toronto 1993) - this for spearheading the formation of the Pan-Southeast Asia Territorial Council merging toastmasters from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia and was its first Chairman.
He is among a small number of toastmasters in the world to have received accreditation by Toastmasters International for professional level speaking skills. (An Accredited Speaker must meet a stringent set of requirements and pass several levels of tough judging, where only the best pass). In 1994, he became the 39th in the world and first and still only Accredited Speaker outside the USA and Canada.
This achievement is recorded in the Malaysia Book of Records.
Gerald is also the first Malaysian to be a featured speaker at a Toastmaster World Convention. (New Orleans 1997).
His passion is to help as many people as possible improve their live style because they heard him speak.
Today he says – "I don’t have to be first anymore – I just have to be available."