Members of Toastmasters District 23 may think Program Quality Director Carlos Lobato has no life outside of Toastmasters. After all, he has served off and on — mostly on — in district leadership since 2014. He does, however, have a career and a family, both of which are very important to him.
A self-employed certified public accountant who volunteers as president of his church’s finance council, Lobato devotes what little downtime he has to his wife, Sanjuana; a son, 17; and three daughters, 14, 11 and 6. Lobato said Sanjuana whole-heartedly supports his Toastmasters endeavors.
“She is very supportive because she’s seen the improvement in our life,” he said.
Those endeavors started in 2004 when he joined Los Chismosos Club at New Mexico State University.
“I found Toastmasters because my real profession is auditing, and there’s an aspect to auditing in which you have to present your results to executive management. I did a very good job on my audits, but when it came time to present my results, I think I did a poor job,” he said.
Lobato took some public speaking classes at the university but did not see improvement.
“I wasn’t happy with the outcome. They’d lecture you, and you’d have two public speaking opportunities,” he said.
Chatting with a former co-worker who had moved to Tucson, Arizona, Lobato heard about Toastmasters. He did a Google search to find his club.
“The rest is history. It improved my skills tremendously. English is my second language. I thought I needed to work on my accent, but Toastmasters said, ‘No, work on the message and targeting it to your audience.’ Now I present to boards of directors of banks,” he said.
In 2014, Lobato was ready for leadership. He became area governor (later renamed area director) and two years later, was elected division director. In 2017, he started the first of two consecutive terms as the District 23 finance manager. Last year, he served as club growth director, his first year as part of the “district leadership trio.” His proudest accomplishment as club growth director was keeping the district intact when declining membership threatened its existence. (A district must maintain 60 clubs, and District 23 ended the year with 71 clubs.)
“We were going downhill, so keeping it intact was an accomplishment. Now the focus is on growth and retention,” he said.
As program quality director, Lobato’s focus is on club-officer training.
“The DCP (Distinguished Club Program) says four officers in each club have to be trained, but my expectation is that they all go through training. We’re providing them with a lot of opportunities (for training). When you know your roles, you execute them, and the outcome will be a distinguished club,” he said.
Although he will focus on trainings and contests this year, he still cares about recruiting members because of the changes his own membership made in his life, and he plans to work in collaboration with the other trio members to “turn the ship around on growth goals.”
“There are still a lot of individuals that don’t now about Toastmasters. Let’s make it known that Toastmasters changes people’s lives. If you can’t communicate, you’re not going to be effective,” he said.
