Mike Raffety, DTM, PID

Biography

I grew up on a farm in Iowa, where my parents still grow corn and beans. I attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, majoring in computer science, with minors in political science and business. I moved to the Chicago area, and did database programming for a small family company for a year after college, then got a great opportunity with the financial derivatives trading O'Connor and Associates.

Over the course of my 21 years with the organization, O'Connor was merged into Swiss Bank, which then merged into Union Bank of Switzerland, with the resulting company called simply UBS. Other companies that are now part of UBS include Paine Webber, Dillon Read, and S. G. Warburg. In the first few years, I built and administered the Source Code Administration system, but then in 1991, shifted into the budding networks group. For the last few years, my focus has been on global network performance and capacity planning, making recommendations for technology upgrades to ensure our ability to meet users' needs.

In 2008, I found a new career opportunity with Northern Trust, a Chicago-based bank. I am currently working on problem management, which involves both a tactical response to computer system and application outages, as well as strategic planning on how to better design systems for high availability, identify potential problems pro-actively, and monitor availability.

I earned my Masters of Business Administration from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in 2000, graduating as a "Hotchkiss Scholar", a group selected from the top 5% of the class. I heard several professors endorse Toastmasters during my courses there, and a few months after graduating, I saw a sign advertising a club meeting in the lobby of the building where I work. I figured it couldn't get much easier than taking the elevator!

At the meeting, there were several speeches, one of which was the visual aids speech. The speaker told us all about the jackelope, and near the end of the speech, from behind the lectern, she pulls out a stuffed and mounted jackelope! I was impressed, came back to another meeting, and decided to join.

One of the club officers was Toni Rodgers, DTM, PDG, and at the time, I had no idea what DTM or PDG meant. She evaluated my Icebreaker, where I talked about bungee jumping in Cairns, Australia. As I progressed through my first year giving CTM speeches, though, I came to understand she was a senior member who always gave great feedback. I look on her as my first Toastmasters mentor, someone whom I respected and admired. She's the person who got me involved outside the club, when she asked me to be a facilitator/introducer at the 2001 summer TLI in Grayslake. It was so much fun, I ended up assisting with the 2002 summer TLI, and then volunteering to be dean of the 2002 summer TLI, running that as my first High Performance Leadership project. (Coincidentally, she also works at Northern Trust now!)

Charles Brooks, DTM, PDG, was the man who, at my Area Governor training in July 2002, asked me what I was doing the next year. I was already feeling challenged (and energized!) by everything the AG is responsible for, and here he was asking me what I planned on doing the following year! He was going to be District Governor next year, and he was already working on filling out his DEC -- and it made the need for succession planning very clear.

As I neared the end of my year as Division Governor, I thought I'd be able to relax a bit, maybe be an AG again, or PRO, but no, Dick Storer, PID, had other plans for me. He pushed me to run for Lt. Gov'r of Marketing. And he wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. I knew it was a four-year commitment, thought long and hard about it, and finally said yes. I still remember my two-minute campaign speech to the District Council, just before the election -- or should I say, do not remember it -- it's a blank to me now. Now, I make off-the-cuff speeches to crowds of hundreds of people without even blinking. At least, on topics I know well, like Toastmasters.

A very important person whom I met as a new LGM was Joan Diehl, DTM, PID, who is now my campaign manager. We spent a delightful Friday driving all over Chicagoland visiting five different new club opportunities in the fall of 2004 when I was LGM, before the district conference. She provided me with the insights into what happens outside of my home district, and got me curious about going even further.

Running for International Director was a simply amazing experience. I met wonderful people all over Region V while visiting 6 out of 8 district conferences in fall of 2007, and 5 out of 8 in the spring of 2008 (the others were on the same weekend as another conference). But even better was spending two days at the Calgary international convention getting to know district leaders and fellow Toastmasters from all over the world, leading up to the election at the 2008 business meeting.

My two years on the board went by so quickly. The first year was finishing the work of the last several years on Proposal A and explaining it to our member clubs. Hearing that vote total and that it passed at the Mashantucket convention was so gratifying! But the work was not done -- the second year was spent working through the implementation details and policies that were affected by that. Plus, we even got to critical issues like a new strategic plan and new area, division, and district recognition programs!

I've been overwhelmed and gratified by the interest people showed in talking to me, and in the district performance reports that I produced. I look forward to helping the hundreds of thousands of Toastmasters in coming years.