Success & Chocolate

Success & Chocolate Panel at the Commonwealth Club of CA

I had the honor of hosting the Success and Chocolate panel at the Commonwealth Club of California on July 16, 2012, thanks to my friend Cathy Curtis who runs their Bay Gourmet food program. It was a well-attended, fun event! SF Weekly even wrote an article about the evening.

This is the set-up I saw when I walked in the door. Having never been to the Commonwealth Club, I was impressed with how beautiful the room looked, and was also a bit nervous…soon I would be standing at that podium! I had never hosted a panel before or done much public speaking in front of a large audience.

We had four lovely, intelligent, and articulate women on the panel: (from left to right) Zohara Mapes with TCHO, Wendy Lieu with Socola Chocolatier, Kathy Wiley with Poco Dolce , and Ellin Purdom with Toffee Talk. They each brought samples of their delicious chocolates for the guests in the audience. And they donated a larger product towards a gift basket that was raffled off to a lucky winner. These ladies were fantastic, and once I got past the introductions, I had a great time asking them questions and chatting about chocolate and business.

I received many great questions from the audience (above), and I also came with my own list of questions. It was a fun challenge, weaving in the guests’ questions as they were handed to me!

Here we are after the panel ended…all smiles! You can listen to the podcast here…please just ignore the introduction piece, where I got all tongue-tied!

And here I am with the woman who made this all happen…Cathy Curtis of Curtis Financial Planning. I am grateful to Cathy for asking me to moderate the Success and Chocolate panel!