Meet Our Members

Antoinette Byron
As an adult she began a successful acting career, followed by teaching at a theater school. She now teaches presentation skills for colleges, companies and individuals.
Her passions are storytelling, golf, international travel and her rescue dog.
She enjoys refining and refreshing storytelling skills with the all star members of StoryMasters who continually inspire and embolden each other to shine bigger and brighter.

Aprille Isham

Bharat Sangekar

Catherine Magruder

Elizabeth Smith
Liz has been an active member of Toastmasters for several years and particularly enjoys being a member of StoryMasters. She recognizes the value of storytelling; an effective way to captivate your audience by teaching a lesson, sharing success, evoking emotions or sharing personal anecdotes. As a retired health care executive and currently and executive coach for professional women; Liz uses her public speaking skills to empower women to overcome their limited beliefs and self-doubts, elevate their self -confidence, live life passionately and fulfill their destiny with enormous impact. A great way to engage her audience and clients through storytelling!

Hiba Hamdan
A co-Sponsor of StoryMasters, Hiba Hamdan believes in the power of well-crafted stories that entertain us, teach us, and inspire us.
Having learned the storytelling techniques from her wonderful mentors, she keeps on using this knowledge to enhance her presentations, and to help other professionals create compelling speeches.
After a 20-year career in the Airlines and Telecommunication industries, Hiba currently works on a part-time basis at TV Santa Barbara as the Director of Media Programming.
In 2018, Hiba initiated a series of short TV interviews with senior community members, which she named “Wisdom of our City”.
Hiba speaks English, Arabic, French, and Spanish.

Jill Vanderweit

Kathy Falco

Lin Van Gelder
Lin is married and they are servants to their pet cats. Being retired, they would often travel, which makes a storyteller of anyone, Lin believes. Lin truly loves to hear the stories told by the amazing and highly-skilled members of StoryMasters. For fun, Lin plays ukulele, and writes stories and poetry.

Mallery McMurtrey

Margaret Mitchell

Miyo Yamauchi

Tina Tomiyama
While working at Mattel in 2001, Tina joined the company Toastmasters club. (“I was shamed into it,” she says, “by watching a shy staffer with little English bravely get up and give a speech.”) Tina appreciates how Toastmasters helped her become a better workshop trainer, but once she heard the spellbinding storyteller Barbara H. Clark speak, Tina was hooked on storytelling.
A retired graphic designer, Tina studies with Barbara H. Clark and others. While she has spoken at several professional venues, she confesses, “Listening to stories is far more enjoyable than telling them. My fellow storytellers are my window to the world.”
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Congratulations StoryMasters on the beautiful website! Outstanding job!
With much love and gratitude,
Hiba
Thank you and welcome back, Hiba! Looking forward to hearing your stories. 🙂
You have crafted a telling, inspired bouquet of champions introducing our sassy members. We are all endeavoring to be a sensation at doing online stories in this awkward age of Corona 19. We StoryMasters are invincible with your daring website resource and leadership expertise. Kudos to you MIYO!!!